Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Tony Paine, CEO of Kepware (Part 4)

Tony Paine: When you think of the oil and gas market where you have remote sites that are perhaps drilling wells, that information has been historically self-contained on the site and requires someone to be out there to take measurements. The thought is, that is not realistic going forward. The industry doesn’t have the same amount of experts for the same amount of remote sites. >>>

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Tony Paine, CEO of Kepware (Part 3)

Tony Paine: What we are seeing now is there is a big push to Internet-enable these systems so that people can get visibility into what’s going on at multiple, remote sites and pull it into a central location and to be able to make intelligent decisions based on it. Kepware is starting to get pulled into this new space called the Internet of Things (IoT). I say it’s a new space. A lot of the stuff that we’ve been doing for the 20 years is exactly what’s required to build out an IoT solution. It’s the ability to go and recognize that there are multiple data sources that contain valuable information. However, the way that they expose that information may vary. It may vary in the actual communications medium. It could be wireless, Bluetooth, Ethernet, or a number of other things. >>>

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Tony Paine, CEO of Kepware (Part 2)

Tony Paine: This was the beginning of our introduction to, what I would call today, Internet of Things. We were network-enabling a wide variety of data sources and making them available to other parties. Over the next couple of years, the industry got together and decided that vendors shouldn’t go and create their own inter-operability interfaces into their products. They should work together to come up with a standard. One of the standards that came out of that was a standard called OPC. It was a way to exchange information primarily running on Microsoft Windows PCs.

Kepware decided to go and incorporate that into a communications offering. >>>

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Tony Paine, CEO of Kepware (Part 1)

Internet of Things has actually been around for a while, especially in the industrial automation space. Kepware Technologies has been catering to the needs of that industry for 20 years. Let’s discuss why things are accelerating now and where the gaps are.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself as well as Kepware.

Tony Paine: I’m the CEO of Kepware Technologies. Kepware is a software company focused on communications software for the industrial automation market. We’ve been around since 1995. We started Kepware in order to fulfil the need in the market for a low-cost human machine interface product for the industrial space. Such a product would allow you to visualize what’s going on within a plant. When we started the company, standards to exchange information between applications from different vendors >>>

Building an Internet of Things Platform Company from Zaragoza, Spain: Alicia Asin, CEO of Libelium (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: So all the selling that you do around the world is done through your Spanish operation. You sell on the phone and web.

Alicia Asin: Yes, most of the sales are direct sales due to inquiries through our websites. This year, we started opening distribution channels. Now, we have existing distributors covering most of the European territory, Singapore, China, Japan, South Korea, India, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, and US as well. This list is growing every month.

Sramana Mitra: Excellent. I think I’ve got your story. Is there anything else you want to share?
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Building an Internet of Things Platform Company from Zaragoza, Spain: Alicia Asin, CEO of Libelium (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Other than universities, are there any other vertical trends that you see in terms of kinds of companies – retail, logistics, or healthcare? Where are you seeing the projects?

Alicia Asin: Because we are a horizontal platform, we have customers not only in universities but also in system integrators and communication companies.

Sramana Mitra: I understand. This is more of a trend question. What kinds of killer apps are you seeing? What segments are coming up with IoT killer apps than others.

Alicia Asin: The first one is Smart cities. It’s a dynamic segment in the IoT. It’s surprising that agriculture seems to be a mature market where we also have a lot of innovators willing to test technologies.
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Building an Internet of Things Platform Company from Zaragoza, Spain: Alicia Asin, CEO of Libelium (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Somehow, you managed to get through 2007 and 2008. At what point and what strategic moves did you make to get to a more sustainable path?

Alicia Asin: I think it was 2009. Through the maker shop, we were able to sustain the salaries of all the personnel. We were 10 people by 2009. We launched our official business line, which is the biggest one now and the one that is generating 70% of the revenues. I think that was the inflection point for us.

Sramana Mitra: When did you figure out that product – the product that today is generating 70% of the revenue? What was the process in figuring out the precise specs and product/market fit of that one? That’s the real business builder, right?
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Building an Internet of Things Platform Company from Zaragoza, Spain: Alicia Asin, CEO of Libelium (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: This is not unusual. First time entrepreneurs start with very vague ideas with what they’re going to do. When I started my first company, I was a graduate student at MIT and I wanted to be an entrepreneur but I didn’t have a good idea about what I was going to do. Can you talk us through the process of how you navigated your way? Once you started, what happened? What did you do? How did you get your bearing?

Alicia Asin: We started thinking about doing projects in wireless sensor networks.

Sramana Mitra: These would be custom projects? You would do contract software development?

Alicia Asin: Yes. We thought about being a solutions provider. From the very beginning, we had a very clear vision that we wanted to be a global company. We thought that, from a scalability point of view, being a solutions provider and working project >>>