Sramana Mitra: You’re saying that this is something that is in pilot. Tom Bianculli: It’s not in commercial deployment, but two of the top five freight carriers in the world are trailing it. Sramana Mitra: Any other use case that you want to present? Tom Bianculli: There’s one in the healthcare space that I can
Sramana Mitra: I would like to see a real case study with proper metrics about these customer use cases. We try not to report stories that are foo foo. What I’m looking for is the impact. For one thing, is this a pilot in one store at Macy’s or is this something that is being
Sramana Mitra: Let’s do a few customer use cases that are significant and are exhibiting interesting trends through your work with these customers? Tom Bianculli: Retail, I mentioned, is a significant part of our business. There’s no secret about what’s going on there with regard to e-commerce competition and the desire to create online analytics for
Further view into the use cases and trends in various verticals pertaining to IoT. This interviews looks at retail, transportation, and healthcare. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by having you introduce yourself as well as Zebra. Tom Bianculli: I oversee the technology office here at Zebra Technologies. My team incubates new opportunities that are adjacent to
Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about from the point of view of building this company. You said the company started in 2009? Olivier Hua: The company started in 2007. Sramana Mitra: At that point, the product was the thermometer? Olivier Hua: Correct. Sramana Mitra: How long did the company function in that one product mode and
Sramana Mitra: How do you go to market? Are these sold as consumer devices? Are they sold as devices to doctor’s offices? How is the go-to market strategy structured? Olivier Hua: Initially, our products were sold through pharmacies. Sramana Mitra: A thermometer being sold through a pharmacy makes sense, but you’re talking about ECGs and
Sramana Mitra: Switching gears a bit, what do you see as trends in your industry and how does that throw light on emerging challenges and open problems that you would encourage new entrepreneurs to look into with the expertise in your general area? John Horn: We know that there will be hundreds of billions and
Sramana Mitra: Tell me a bit more about your customer base. What customers are you serving and how? John Horn: In the past, our technology was used primarily to build private networks. Our customer base at that point were utilities, municipalities, and oil & gas companies. These were industries that were looking for an alternative