Good morning ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Slawomir Wolf,
I'm the CEO of AVSystem.
I will try to be time efficient,
I hope you had a great morning today.
Today I will try to share
some information
and our views, basically,
on what you should do
if you want to build
scalable IoT services.
A few words about our company.
Basically, we are committed
to device management services.
AVSystem is a Polish company.
We're based in Cracow,
Poland, in Central Europe.
We have offices
around the world,
in the US we have
our office in Boston.
My colleague, Will Yan,
is the President of Americas.
Will, maybe you can stand up?
If you'd like to talk to Will,
as I said, we have a stand
very close to us.
We have 150 people in the company,
more than 100 customers.
Acting globally, we've been
on the market 13 years.
As I said we are specialized and expertized
in device management solutions.
Over those 13 years, we engaged with
many Tier-1 telco customers.
Among our customers we have
Telefonica, Claro - America Movil,
we have Vodafone, T-Mobile,
as well as customers in the US.
The largest customer in the US,
basically, of AVSystem is AT&T.
We deliver to AT&T
basically two products
which are pretty interesting
in terms of today's topic.
Our flagship product for the IoT
device management called Coiote.
Coiote IoT Device Management.
It's a platform used by AT&T for
device management of the IoT terminals.
It's integrated with the AT&T...
We have some issues with the fonts.
AT&T data flow - I hope that
you know that solution from AT&T.
Also AT&T AMOC - AMOC is a platform
for asset tracking services.
We delivered for AT&T also the inter-
operability and certification platform.
So, basically, all OEMs, ODMs,
wanting to deliver the devices
for AT&T network
need to be certified from
the device management point of view
with our platform.
One can ask, basically, what are
the ingredients for a good IoT service.
A good or bad, any kind of IoT service.
So first of all you need
to have connectivity.
I believe that the market today
is going towards cellular IoT.
So two of the most popular,
basically, two...
The only two standards which we have:
LTE Cat-M1 or Narrowband-IoT.
We have also the standards using
the unlicensed band like Sigfox or LoRa.
But this is not our focus today.
So you need to have devices.
Sometime you need to have devices...
Basically, IoT is about devices.
It's hard to offer and deliver
IoT service without the devices.
Once you have the devices,
one can ask basically:
How I can manage the devices?
So we at AVSystem believe that
the particular mandatory tool
to deliver and to build the working
and scalable IoT services
is a device management solution.
So, basically, if you have devices,
anything above 50, right?
Because if you have the network
of the devices below 50 pieces,
basically, you can do it on your own,
you can do it manually.
But if you have bigger network,
you need to have the solution
which will help you
manage those devices.
Once you have all of these three, then
we can think about application, right?
Application, which is frequently considered
also as a kind of an IoT platform.
IoT platform is a kind of
a buzzword today
for a lot of companies in the market
delivering IoT platforms.
You can easily count almost three
or four hundred companies
claiming that they have IoT platforms,
but "IoT platform" is such a fuzzy word.
You need to think
in terms of application.
Once we have that, we can talk
about the data processing.
So, why do we care about
device management?
Why do we say that device
management is important?
Basically, when I founded
the company 13 years ago
and we started to play with
device management
nobody considered device management
as something really hot.
Device management was
a kind of a service
or a kind of a functionality
which was delivered and
demanded only by the telcos.
Because if we go back
10 years backwards,
only telcos and telecommunication operators
were a kind of industry requiring
device management solution,
because it was the only industry
using the devices at scale, right?
The same or similar type of devices used
for the delivery of broadband services.
I believe that most of us don't even
see the examples of the
device management services
or the device management applications
which are around.
Two years ago we had a pretty bad
weather situation here in the US,
it was the hurricane Irma.
More or less the same time a year ago
end of August, beginning of September.
And it was pretty hot news around Tesla,
about Tesla - what they did.
I don't know if it was Elon or
somebody from his advisors,
but Tesla remotely upgraded
the battery in the Tesla S model.
As you know the Tesla had at the time
two Tesla S models:
One with a 60 kWh capacity
and a better, but more expensive, model
with the 75 kWh capacity, right?
So Tesla over-the-air upgraded
the capacity of the battery of the car,
just letting the people go
from the zone of danger.
So it's basically
device management, right?
They literally changed
the configuration of the car.
I'm not sure if it was related to that
firmware upgrade or some configuration
but they unlocked additional
hidden power in the car, right?
So the people using the Tesla 60 kWh
were able to get additional
30 or 40 miles of range.
And a similar thing we have if we speak
about device management in the IoT.
So if we have devices which are distributed
most probably around the globe,
or in quite a big area, basically,
devices which are quite cheap.
So cheap that it's not profitable to send
an engineer to do something with them.
We need to have a solution which
will help us to manage them.
To maintain them, right?
And such a device management solution
can be used for a couple of use cases.
So one of them is device onboarding.
So everything that is related to
onboarding of the device,
to prepare the device to serve
the service to the customer.
Device configuration,
applying security patches - security is
also pretty important for the IoT.
If everything is going to be
connected to the net,
I rather would like to be sure that,
you know, the device,
the asset or kind of the intelligent
gadget which I have, which I carry,
will not create a kind of
a security hole.
FOTA - the name and the kind of a word
which you should be familiar with.
So, firmware over the air.
From time to time the device vendor,
device manufacturer is releasing
a new firmware version.
And that firmware version needs to
be applied on the device.
So it's one of the basic,
really basic capabilities of
the device management solution.
Once we have all of them, we can talk
about some proactive maintenance.
So if we have the big population of
the devices we can collect data from,
and try to, in a smart way, predict
when the device is going to break,
when the battery is going to die,
so we are able to predict,
basically, to optimize our cost.
Do we have any other reason to
think about device management,
such boring stuff?
We realized one day, some time ago,
that there is a very similar
business model,
very similar offering in another industry
and basically it's called insurance.
So it's called insurance.
If you have device management
you can be sure that one day,
if something happens,
you have the tool, you have
the tooling at your hands
to fix it, right?
So, you know, the device management
may not be used for many days,
but one day if you really need to change
the configuration of your network,
the solution is there,
so you are prepared.
So a similar thing like with insurance,
right? We are paying for that,
if you are not using it,
you are pretty happy, right?
Because if you need to use your insurance
that means something happened.
So similarly with device management.
And how we can scale?
This is a question of our
today's presentation.
What we should do, basically,
to scale our IoT service?
So... first of all, I believe we should
follow industry standards.
Number one, there is no need to
invent the wheel from scratch.
There are many smart people around,
a lot of smart companies around,
and basically the industries which
are utilizing the standards around,
like telcos.
We should consider
the interoperability, right?
Another keyword today
on the IoT landscape.
If we have the devices and we are
building the IoT service,
I wouldn't recommend to go
for the non-vendor-agnostic solution.
For example the devices which can be
connected only to one cloud provider.
One day you want to change
the cloud provider
and you may have a problem.
So the interoperability.
And the security, of course,
the third one.
So I would say that those are the
three ingredients to ensure
a good foundation for building
a scalable IoT service.
So, if we come to the
industry standard,
because I said that from our point
of view it's very important,
we believe it's very important
and as a company specialized
in device management
we are actively developing
the standard
which is called
Lightweight Machine-to-Machine.
It's a standard which
is already accepted,
approved by the largest Tier-1
service providers around the world.
So as I said at the beginning we work
with AT&T here in the US.
But not only AT&T is using
Lightweight Machine-to-Machine
right here in North America.
We see a lot of traction about
the LwM2M on other markets,
like Japan, Australia, also Europe.
So what is the Lightweight
Machine to Machine?
I will, very briefly, try to introduce
this protocol to all of you,
who are not familiar.
So LwM2M is a protocol coming from
OMA, today it's OMA SpecWorks.
OMA is Open Mobile Alliance.
It's kind of the working
group specification,
group responsible for specifying
the technical standards
coming from the telco industry.
So many years ago they specified
and defined OMA DM.
The protocol which is still used,
for example,
in our handsets which we have.
Automotive industry is still using
OMA DM today for FOTA,
for upgrading the car software.
There are a couple of benefits
of using LwM2M.
First of all the protocol
was designed...
with the IoT in mind,
so, basically, everything
that is constrained,
you know constraint related to
connectivity and the battery life,
and the throughput of the network
below 10 kilobits per second.
What are the benefits of
the Light-weight Machine-to-Machine?
As you see, basically,
it's very power-efficient.
Number two, it can use
both the IP network,
non-IP delivery network for
the LwM2M 1.1 standard, the latest one.
As well as we can use text messages,
for example to wake
the device up, right?
So if we have the IoT device
which is sleeping,
just to save battery,
you can basically send a text message
over the cellular network
to wake the device up.
So this is the only standard which
defines this kind of activity.
From the helicopter view -
the stack of LwM2M.
So, we have the whole logic
which is defined by the standard.
So the good thing is that, basically,
the different devices using the standard
compatible with LwM2M
can be easily,
out-of-the-box, supported
by any kind of device management platform
also supporting LwM2M.
COAP - constrained application protocol,
which is used as a transportation layer,
and UDP which is much more efficient
than the TCP protocol used
for example by MQTT.
LwM2M defines also interfaces
for different use cases.
So again, this is something
that we get free of charge.
Another advantage of LwM2M:
It defines the concept of data model.
Certainly, it's not a new concept
because several other protocols
use exactly the same concept,
like mentioned previously OMA-DM,
or even the TR-069, another telco protocol
coming from the broadband industry.
The good thing about the data
models here is that...
that the ODM or the OEM or even
another company can define
their own specific data model.
So we can basically extend the number
of the parameters we'd like to support.
Such data model can be present
later on in the platform.
Here is a screenshot taken from
our DM platform, Coiote,
the same solution used by AT&T today.
So the data model can be presented
to the user or to the administrator
or to the technician
in a pretty simple way.
LwM2M brings also the concept of
the gateways to the industry.
So, basically, a simple gateway can
combine also other connectivity,
like Bluetooth, Z-Wave, ZigBee,
this kind of stuff.
And the latest update of the protocol
we call LwM2M
brings a few pretty important
technical improvements.
So first of all CoAP over TCP,
bindings to the low-power networks,
like the non-IP data delivery,
and additional encodings.
What I would like to highlight:
the difference between LwM2M and MQTT.
It's very important to
keep in mind that the MQTT
is not a device management
protocol, right?
MQTT is pretty popular,
is an old protocol,
it's very famous,
it's very simple, right?
So literally, we can take
an MQTT library,
and have it up and running
in less than half an hour.
What's the issue with MQTT?
The issue is that it doesn't guarantee,
it doesn't bring you
any kind of compatibility.
So anytime you need to code
and you need to develop,
you need to design your own logic,
your own processes
from scratch, right?
If you have one device using MQTT and
you have another device using MQTT,
basically, it's a completely
different world.
So this is number one and
the most important difference.
Sometimes MQTT as a protocol
is used by the cloud providers
because both Microsoft
in the Azure cloud
and Amazon in AWS cloud use MQTT.
But it's not the way to go for
the proper device management.
So what kind of an issue you can
consider to be solved with the LwM2M?
Number one, it delivers
standardized FOTA,
firmware over the air, right?
So if you have LwM2M terminal
and a LwM2M-capable platform -
the server side,
basically, the FOTA is
no longer your problem.
You can rather think
about the policies,
how the new firmware
should be applied,
whether, you know, the new firmware
should be applied in a cascade,
or basically applied only to
a particular number of the devices.
But it's so simple.
Basically, the platform
with the LwM2M
gives you the full auto-discovery
of the device capabilities.
So, we can say it's plug-and-play.
Additional interfaces for
remote management
and remote configuration.
And a very important thing,
an interesting thing:
due to the nature of the protocol
and the design,
we can send the telemetry data,
the monitoring data
to the server site.
So this is how the deployment
for AT&T has been done.
All the data not on...
So, basically, LwM2M is used for FOTA,
for management of the devices,
but at the same time LwM2M is used
to transport the telemetry data from
the devices to the central site.
A lot of features which...
basically, we can discuss here longer,
but if you're interested -
as I said: come to our stand -
related to the platform,
so the remote configuration,
user management, policy management,
workflows, tasks...
Basically, you know,
we brought our 12 years
of experience
in the device management
in this product,
so I believe that we can cover
at least 99% of the use cases.
No matter from which
industries they come.
One important thing,
which I wanted also to mention,
AVSystem is considered as a leading
company of the LwM2M initiative.
A year ago we've been mentioned
as the market leader
in the LwM2M, by MachNation,
a reporting group.
This year among more
than 15 companies
which were evaluated in the report,
Basically, on this graph we are
hidden under the name here.
So we are vendor number 11.
As you see in the ranking,
MachNation considers AVSystem with
the device management solution
specialized in IoT device management,
a number 2 player on the market.
And for at least four years
we actively participate in:
number one, in designing
the standard,
and number two,
testing our implementation
with other companies,
because certainly...
It's our interest to develop the market
and to spread the information,
the popularity of
this technology.
So these are the results from
the last year's Testfest,
a kind of event where
different companies
are bringing in the server
and the client's implementation
to verify the interoperability level.
So, as you see, our entrant proposition
got a better score
than Nokia and Ericsson.
Before I finish...
I just would like to mention as well
that we have an open-source library,
supporting LwM2M,
it's called Anjay.
You can find it on GitHub.
So, it's pretty... I would say it's...
most simple way to start the journey
with this technology.
So, this is all I wanted to
share with you today.
If you have any questions, feel free.
If the questions will bring...
will come to your mind a bit later,
we are here, just
next to this space,
so feel free to come to us and talk.
Thank you.
Any questions?
So you mentioned LwM2M,
but did you consider oneM2M,
the other protocol made by ETSI?
And the other question is:
are you using LwM2M on the phone,
to manage the phones at AT&T,
or to manage other devices?
OK, so the oneM2M is not a protocol,
it's rather a concept, you know...
taking all different ideas,
specifications,
and trying to 'umbrellize' the direction
and the specification
of the IoT platform.
So, I would say that LwM2M fits into
the oneM2M concept, number one.
And to answer your second
question for the AT&T:
No, the phones today still are
powered by the OMA-DM.
So the LwM2M is used by AT&T
with our platform only
to empower IoT devices.
So two or three weeks ago,
the AT&T together with Sercomm
announced the availability
of the new device,
it's called a tracker.
A very small - this size - box,
which you can attach basically
to the container,
or the engine if you are Boeing,
and you want to track, basically,
where your thing is.
So it's a device which can send the data
once a day for at least 2 years.
And the LwM2M is used
to control that device, for FOTA,
to configure that device, and also...
as a channel to send
the telemetry data
from our platform to the core
network element of the AT&T.
Thank you once again,
have a good afternoon.
