Optimisation & Disruption in the IoT Journey

Transcript

Intro (00:01):
You’re listening to IoT leaders, a podcast from Eseye that shares real IoT stories from the field about digital transformation swings and misses, lessons learned, and innovation strategies that work. In each episode, you’ll hear our conversations with top digitization leaders on how IoT is changing the world for the better. Let IoT Leaders be your guide to IoT, digital transformation, and innovation. Let’s get into the show.

Nick Earle (00:31):
Welcome to the IoT Leaders podcast with me, your host, Nick Earle, the CEO of Eseye. And for those of who are new to this podcast, this is about giving you insight, information, best practices, learnings about how to deploy a successful IoT project. And in each episode, I interview one of the leaders in IoT. And in this episode, I’m delighted to introduce Dr. Miroslaw Ryba, who runs global IoT for EY. Miro, welcome very much. Welcome to the podcast.

Miroslaw Ryba (01:04):
Thank you for the invitation. Glad to be here.

Nick Earle (01:07):
Great. Now I know you’ve got quite some experience, so maybe just for our listeners, maybe you can just give me an overview of your role at EY and how long you’ve been involved in IoT.

Miroslaw Ryba (01:18):
Yeah, sure. So actually, this might be a bit shocking for some people because EY is mostly associated with financial advisory, financial services, tax, or transactions, but actually, at EY, we are working and I’m working with IoT for over 12 years. We started in 2008. It was long, long before this topic became as high as it is right now. And we’re thinking first about purely security, how to secure the whole IoT ecosystems, how to build those next steps in our thinking.

Miroslaw Ryba (01:54):
We started a small team. Now we have reached the size of over 3,000 people around the globe who are IoT experts in this domain. And my role here is actually to lead this practice and make sure that these 3,000 will turn into 6,000 in a couple of years from now.

Nick Earle (02:13):
Okay, well, we need to unpack that. There’s a lot in there. I’m going to start off with actually the date part of it, and you’re right, we talked about this on previous podcasts, is that you said 2008. Of course in 2008, as our listeners will know, it wasn’t even called IoT. It was called M2M, machine to machine, or SCADA factory floor. We were connecting machines. And then around 2011, we started saying, “Oh, it’s going to be IoT.” And the famous prediction, there’ll be 50 billion things connected by 2020.

Nick Earle (02:41):
And here we are, just at the beginning of 2021, we’re at 11 billion. So we missed hugely. And maybe we can start off there in terms of what happened. From my perspective and seeing in your view … and you have a very global view … it seemed like the first was classic Geoffrey Moore, pre-chasm, innovators, early adopters, products that were, “Oh, isn’t that cool? You know, I can connect my toothbrush.”

Miroslaw Ryba (03:09):
Starting in my local garage, this is how it started, right?

Nick Earle (03:12):
Yeah, and look at this. Look what I can make it do with a button. And it’s like, “Yeah, but why do you want that?” “I don’t know. It’s just cool.” So for the big companies, and EY is a huge multi-billion dollar company and you work with multi-billion dollar clients, where are the true business outcomes? Where’s the money for these clients? Is it just smart enabling products or is it much more fundamental to do with their business processes?

Miroslaw Ryba (03:39):
As you said, it started in the garages. This whole mindset of building IoT was first driven by a group of passionate people who are trying to change something. They saw this new opportunity on the market and technology was catching up. Suddenly we realized that, technically speaking, you can do almost everything. Originally, this industrial IoT or machine to machine, as you said, in 2008, 2010, was kind of a playground for trying to change something, to introduce new technology, new solutions to the existing ecosystems.

Miroslaw Ryba (04:18):
And it was the first wave. The first wave was to put in whatever you can into your ecosystem, to your whole technical landscape, and see how this can improve the business, how you can get additional value, additional enablement, thanks to the emerging tech IoT connectivity. This was kind of a first wave. The big challenges started. The whole question mark, “Okay, I have a homogeneous environment, so how am I able to protect it? How to make sure that this environment is reliable?”

Miroslaw Ryba (04:57):
So these basic questions led various companies to actually start asking questions. Okay, so what’s next? I can do technically everything. I can create a lot of the market, whatever solution I want. But a fundamental question is, okay, how am I going to maintain it? How am I going to protect it? And how am I going to eventually make money on this whole investment that’s clearly associated with IoT projects or IoT initiatives?

Nick Earle (05:27):
It’s interesting the way you phrased that, because it’s a little bit like saying that people started off with the what, and even the how, because they went straight into the technologies. And I’m sure we’ll talk about that later, but a lot of people forgot to ask the question why. Why would it benefit me if I could connect-

Miroslaw Ryba (05:45):
Because I can.

Nick Earle (05:46):
Yeah, because I can, because it’s cool. Look at this. The engineers. It was driven by the engineers and starting off, it’s like Simon Sinek, he says, “Start off with the why.” Why are you doing this? What value does it give to customers? So with 3000 consultants working with clients, what are the business benefits? If you’re in front of senior directors at CXO level in a larger company, what are the business benefits in terms of business processes, backend business processes? Because we talk a lot about digitization. What types of business processes can truly be transformed, as opposed to just doing cool things by connecting products?

Miroslaw Ryba (06:28):
That is entirely true that now this question “why” starting curve slowly starting to emerge. This IoT journey actually is changing from the level of engineers to the level of the C-suite. And at the level of the C-suite, the only question is, how am I going to make money on it? So why am I supposed to invest in the digitalization?

Nick Earle (06:55):
Yeah.

Miroslaw Ryba (06:57):
The digitalization is actually today. Everything is digitalized. And especially now with all the lockdowns and people not able to work permanently in different locations. There’s more and more investments or the need to actually make sure that we are digitalizing all the processes, which originally were actually assumed that they have to be made in person manually on sites.

Miroslaw Ryba (07:23):
Now we are talking with different heavy industry clients, how to make sure that some of the work in the field and shop floor can be done remotely, how to apply emerging tech, Hololens or augmented reality, to enable the operators who provides or operates the equipment, the machines. So there is lots of use cases, but when we are talking the decision-makers, what are the use cases? What are the business cases or the value they can drive?

Miroslaw Ryba (07:54):
It’s always the fundamental question which eventually comes up is, what are your main pain points? What is the way you want to optimize? So this is the first dimension. But there’s a second dimension of digitalization, bringing IoT to the big corporations, is actually the whole aspect of disruption because you can optimize the existing environment, the existing processes, but this just gives you some little disruptions-

Nick Earle (08:28):
Incremental-

Miroslaw Ryba (08:28):
… to your program.

Nick Earle (08:28):
It’s an incremental benefit, yeah.

Miroslaw Ryba (08:29):
Exactly. The key thing and the key opportunity for various clients actually looking for this disruption. There was a study that we did quite recently and it shows that roughly 50% of CEOs believe that their company did enough in terms of disruption of their business. So there is still huge untapped opportunity to disrupt the existing forms of doing business. That’s exactly what we are trying to work our clients, to look for these areas-

Nick Earle (09:01):
The disruptions.

Miroslaw Ryba (09:01):
… where it can disturb their current business processes, the way they think about the revenue streams. And then when we are at the stage of finding these areas of disruption, we finally start reading technology. So for us, the whole topic of IoT partly changed from the technical aspects to the business driven technology enabled solution.

Nick Earle (09:27):
Yeah.

Miroslaw Ryba (09:27):
This is how we think about IoT today.

Nick Earle (09:30):
And I think that’s a really good point. I know here at Eseye, we’ve got 2000 … We’re pure IoT play and we have 2000 customers. But it is very, very common people to start off with saying, “Hey, I want to connect a device. I believe you do connectivity, global connectivity. I want to connect a device.” We have to train our business, the dev pre-sales and sales salespeople to say, “Well, can you tell me about your business case?”

Nick Earle (09:53):
And in 70, 80% of the time, the person who was asking us the question doesn’t know. And I think your point is, start with the disruption first then look at what the business benefit could be, either cost saving or competitive, new business model innovation, and then eventually land on the technology. And it’s the opposite way around to where a lot of the, if not all of the, projects have been so far.

Nick Earle (10:18):
I was thinking, as you were speaking, it’s very analogous to the first wave of, well, the internet itself, is that we started talking about HTML and web browsers and cool stuff. But ultimately, the companies that really succeeded were the people who disrupted business models. The obvious example, Netflix today completely disrupting the Amazon, Uber disrupting transportation, Airbnb disrupting hotel business, where people just say, I could actually create a brand new model. So you’re operating by looking at the disruption. So let’s assume that you have a client

Miroslaw Ryba (10:57):
Not only the disruption, but the disruption need to be followed by a whole value created around the product. And just give you the example, now we are talking about whenever you turn on TV, there’s news about COVID. Now the whole world is talking about COVID and the vaccination. But look what’s happening with the vaccine. You have a vaccine, but you have a product. But technically, when I was thinking about it, you could build a whole ecosystem around the product itself, where this incremental cost of maybe one year or so. Because now, the current price of the Pfizer is at 15 pounds, 20 euros for a vaccine.

Nick Earle (11:39):
20 Euros, yeah.

Miroslaw Ryba (11:40):
So for Moderna, it’s a bit more. For AstraZeneca it’s-

Nick Earle (11:47):
Less.

Miroslaw Ryba (11:47):
… way less. So for one of these companies, the competition is growing, there is more and more products that are-

Nick Earle (11:52):
That’s right. It’s growing.

Miroslaw Ryba (11:52):
And I think in a critical state. For one of the products, they are very competitive. They are vaccines for the disease. But when you could apply this additional layer of the service around the vaccine, you could provide the blockchain, the traceability of the containers to make sure that the temperature was properly-

Nick Earle (12:14):
Or optimize the supply chain for the delivery.

Miroslaw Ryba (12:16):
Exactly. Then you have, when you’re vaccinated, you can check on a blockchain site if this vaccine dose you are getting, history, after the whole chain was properly-

Nick Earle (12:28):
Yes, you look back with an adverse reaction and work backwards to the batch.

Miroslaw Ryba (12:33):
Exactly.

Nick Earle (12:33):
And that would not be about-

Miroslaw Ryba (12:34):
And then

Nick Earle (12:34):
Great example, it would not be about the vaccine because they’re all about 93, 94%. It would actually be about the logistics, the supply chain, the traceability, and the data would determine who the winners are.

Miroslaw Ryba (12:45):
Exactly. And then you could go once step further. You would know exactly what vaccine you took and you are assured that this vaccine was properly transported, so it’s fully effective. And then you can associate this tag with your personal ID or your social insurance ID. You have the whole ecosystem built around the product. And now we are not talking about … You’re not asking yourself, “Okay, am I going to choose to Moderna or Pfizer or AstraZeneca or any other?” I’m choosing the one which gives me the whole benefit, where I am emerged by the whole ecosystem around the vaccine.

Miroslaw Ryba (13:29):
This gives the company which launches this additional service huge competitive advantage on the market. And for me as a user, I have a choice. And here, I have additional benefit, which let’s be honest, when you’re talking about the vaccine, which I will take eventually. So now I have to choose which one I want. The price is not the issue here now. So there is room to actually implant this additional ecosystem around the vaccine itself.

Nick Earle (13:59):
Yeah. It’s interesting this issue, and it comes back to the question I was going to ask you which is about the data and the power of vast new amounts of data. The IoT, the connectivity part of IoT is turning products into experiences, but it’s creating massive new amounts of data. And that data can be used in completely different ways. I was reminded there. We’re working with a very large pallet company. Let me say that. They sell physical products. They sell pallets. But they want to turn themself into an information company, selling information to their clients as to where their client’s assets are.

Nick Earle (14:35):
Because their client’s assets, machine parts, car parts, are sitting on top of pallets. So rather than sell them the pallet, embed the tracker inside the pallet, and then tell the clients. The granularity is supply chain data that you’re referring to in that supply chain part of that example, they have more information than their clients, because they always know where the pallet is. So you then would sell the information. And so the data becomes more valuable than the physical product.

Nick Earle (15:01):
But they’ve actually, they started by saying, “What is the disruption that we could apply?” And the disruption would be to transform ourselves into an information company as opposed to a pallet company. So I think the big companies are now moving into this sort of area. So let’s talk about the data. Vast amounts of data are now being used. What are the best practices that you see in terms of people using data? Perhaps you have some examples of where people are using data in innovative ways in your clients to actually optimize these supply chains or manufacturing or warranty processes, or backend processes that you’re talking about, as opposed to-

Miroslaw Ryba (15:46):
Sure.

Nick Earle (15:46):
… enabling product. Any examples you can share with us would be appreciated.

Miroslaw Ryba (15:51):
Yeah, of course. And actually what you said is actually crucial, that this data is driving the whole ecosystem. With the easiness of implementing additional sensors to get additional data, to get the more comprehensive view, the data is not the issue anymore. The only issue is your imagination, how you can use this data to build the use case in services. And this was, you mentioned that your pallet company is trying to be data driven, data operator, data company, not a pallet company, that’s a more and more common pattern in the market. But we can still remember that, at the end of the day, they are transmitting the pallets-

Nick Earle (16:37):
Yes. It’s not a business product.

Miroslaw Ryba (16:38):
The core business needs to stay. We had this fantastic project, super challenging, for office elevators. And when you realize the scale of this company, they operate two million lifts around the globe. Every day, they provide two billion unique user rides. So statistically speaking, every person in the world is in the office elevators twice a week, statistically, of course, because some of them are never in their lifetime in the office elevator.

Miroslaw Ryba (17:16):
But they offer two billion unique rides per day. There’s a huge, huge network of lifts. So now the question was, okay, how can they leverage this huge potential? They provide the service, which is the lift ride, and they know everything about their lifts. They know where they are, they know what conditions they are. So what additional extra value they can get out of it? So we created for them a study where we identified with them over 100 different use cases, how they can generate additional value based on the data from their lifts?

Nick Earle (17:55):
Did you say 100 different examples of how they could use the data? Is that what you said? 100 different examples?

Miroslaw Ryba (18:04):
Yeah. And for example, one of the cases was, based on this reach they had, they could actually monitor the condition of the buildings where the lifts are operating. And this could be an additional revenue stream for them. They have infrastructure from the basement to the roof. So technically speaking, I think some connectivity features, they could become the 5G provider in the areas where they are. And they’re already there, right?

Nick Earle (18:38):
Buildings, facilities management. We were talking to a lift company … for our Americans friends, an elevator company … and they were saying about China … I don’t know whether you’ve heard this example. In China, I was going to say pre COVID, but they’re powering on so they’re probably still doing it. In China, where you have a luxury restaurant on, say, the 80th floor, the idea of the walls of the lift become digital advertising spaces, because it takes you two minutes or whatever to get to the top. You’re a captive market.

Nick Earle (19:08):
If they know you’re going to the luxury restaurant, they know that you’re a high net worth. And the idea is almost like if you can identify yourself with the phone in some way, or they can pick up through your phone, you may want to get loyalty points or access check into the restaurant on the way up. But they know who you are now, and then they can start targeting advertising to you. So actually, to your point about an elevator might be not just a means of transporting people up and down, it might be a way of doing facilities management.

Nick Earle (19:37):
In their mind, they were saying an elevator is actually a personalized advertising capsule which is going to show you the menus, but also perhaps, there’s a range of luxury goods they’re going to advertise to you.

Miroslaw Ryba (19:47):
Exactly they could show you wherever.

Nick Earle (19:49):
It’s the data. It’s this explosion of data. And I like the phrase you said, you’re only limited now by your imagination. So I think the theme that we’re both saying here is, don’t start with the technology. It’s sort of a hard thing for tech company.

Miroslaw Ryba (20:03):
Think broad.

Nick Earle (20:03):
Think big.

Miroslaw Ryba (20:05):
Think broad, look for the-

Nick Earle (20:07):
Think the art of the possible. Start off with the disruption, look at the business case. How could you enable the business case? And then you suddenly realize with all these sensors, actually, you probably can enable the business case. So it starts with a an imagineering type process.

Nick Earle (20:22):
The issue of China … I want to move on, Miro, if I can. The issue of China. And of course there are different privacy … I’m sure some of our listeners say, “Oh yeah, but identifying yourself to the elevator.” In China, they let you do that because there’s different privacy regulations. That brings the … And that’s true,

Miroslaw Ryba (20:39):
But the privacy is changing. Look at how eager we are right now to give up our privacy-

Nick Earle (20:46):
Yeah, we’re desperate to share.

Miroslaw Ryba (20:48):
… to different companies. Or in some countries, you have to give up your privacy just to be able to enter to the restaurant.

Nick Earle (20:56):
That’s true. So when you have to, you will give it up. So it’s tough for the regulators, isn’t it? In two ways. One is the privacy of the data issue. But also I’ve heard some people talk about, as we have this explosion of devices, we’re actually … and we talked in a previous podcast about devices that go on parcels … You talk about the COVID vaccines, real-time track and trace, pallets, parcels, frozen food, chilled food.

Nick Earle (21:28):
We’re creating things which are almost like disposable devices, especially if it’s on a box of frozen crab legs or whatever. So we are actually exposing more data and we are actually creating more things. When you talk about China and people say, “Oh, well yeah, they have different privacy laws in China and people will give up their data voluntarily.” But as you say, people are giving it up voluntarily all the time. And with COVID, that’s accelerating, which raises the issue of the regulator and what role the regulator will play on a variety of issues.

Nick Earle (22:04):
It seems like the regulator has a tough time. They’re playing catch up all the time. This thing is moving so quick, and yet it has to be regulated. So what is your experience and your belief as to what role the regulator may play in the future in this explosion of IoT?

Miroslaw Ryba (22:19):
Actually, what we see around the globe that regulators are trying to catch up with this new trends and new changes in the markets. And definitely, the decorators are seeing the need of introducing some new ways of dealing with all the aspects of privacy of the data. And whenever you go anywhere, your data is transmitted with you. So your location is obvious, your preferences are assured. So the regulators are aware of it.

Miroslaw Ryba (22:55):
More and more people are willing nowadays to give up their privacy for some benefit. And you can see it all the way around. And another thing is, when you are talking about the regulators, they are clearly finding their role in this new ecosystem. And one of the things which is important here from the whole society perspective is eco-friendliness. And you mentioned about there’s more and more devices. So there’s always a question mark, what to do with all the devices, which are now broken or not really use anymore?

Nick Earle (23:32):
Yeah, we’re creating a problem. Yeah.

Miroslaw Ryba (23:33):
There’s a huge problem. And from eco-friendliness, that’s a huge playground for the regulator to make sure that they entered this scene from the environmental perspective, they could use some regulations to actually help or enforce these proper ways of dealing with the waste. And you can take a look at what’s happening in different country, different geographies, they introducing this sugar tax just to force or enable people to reduce the consumption of sugar.

Miroslaw Ryba (24:10):
So there’s an economical factor. There’s an economical way to force you to think, am I going to buy a product with sugar? So I have diabetes, I will impact the healthcare system. And okay, it’s tasty but it’s super expensive, so maybe I’ll buy a cheaper product with more healthier sweetener. So the same concept could be adopted to the IoT space. That would be an additional factor for the companies. Am I going to use the cheap, bad quality sensor or the digital device which is taxed additionally with this digital IoT sugar tax?

Miroslaw Ryba (24:50):
Or am I going to use this self disposing IoT sensors, which are much more eco friendly, but they’re much more expensive in terms of production?

Nick Earle (25:02):
Yes.

Miroslaw Ryba (25:03):
So this difference in the cost of production of the ecological friendly sensor versus the regular one would be balanced by this additional tax. And it would be good for everyone, for the budgets of countries, especially with all the stimulus that all the word is printing money nowadays. Plus, it will have a great impact on our planet.

Nick Earle (25:26):
And talking about printing, people listening thinking, how on earth can you have an environmentally friendly device? And we’re probably going to make this a subject of a future podcast. But we’re now seeing IoT devices being printed. Literally they are. You print the circuit, you print the battery, you print the sensors.

Miroslaw Ryba (25:42):
You can print everything nowadays.

Nick Earle (25:43):
It’s a fascinating area. And then the idea is, if you can print it, can you actually make it recyclable and can you make the other components compossible? So it’s a whole new area which we’re on at the moment. So let’s finish then by talking about some innovative case studies that we’ve each seen. Here at Eseye, we’re 14 years old as a company. We’ve got tons of case studies. I always try and introduce one cool case study per podcast.

Nick Earle (26:08):
But let me start with you. Are there any examples of companies that you’ve worked with that you think are doing it well? That didn’t start with the data, that started with the disruption perhaps, that have managed to get through the, working out how to use the data and are actually now in market with some innovative IoT solutions that you think are making a difference out there?

Miroslaw Ryba (26:30):
Yeah, I’m just thinking which case to choose. But we work with various clients who are trying to disturb or disrupt their way of doing business. But the case which I believe is super powerful and it can be also found in public places is Royal Caribbean. We’ve worked with Royal Caribbean for a couple of years now. This has actually changed completely the whole way of providing the service on the cruise. So before they adopted this cruise business, they knew everything about you before the ship. After you boarded, there were different connectivity on the shape because it’s a big, floating box so there’s always the issue for connectivity.

Miroslaw Ryba (27:22):
So working with them, we actually disrupted all the way, how the user journey starts from the moment you come up with the idea, “I will go for a cruise,” to the moment when you board the ship. And then you have all that digital enablement during the whole journey on the cruise.

Nick Earle (27:44):
During the experience, yeah.

Miroslaw Ryba (27:45):
And then when you disembark the ship. So that was a great journey that we went together with Royal Caribbean, where we built these use cases and we implemented this together with them. So now, from the perspective of the Royal Caribbean, they are able to adopt or adjust the offer to the unique personal needs of each of the passengers on the cruise.

Miroslaw Ryba (28:14):
And from the personal perspective of a person who is buying this cruise, you have all this digital sphere, digital ecosystem, where you can act and find yourself and choose what services, what features you want to get, you want to buy, just to make sure that all your cruise is remarkable.

Nick Earle (28:38):
And all of which they lose the loop, don’t they? Because then, all of which means that after you’ve experienced, you’ve had this fantastic experience, which is, everything was connected and you’re able to access all these services while you’re there. And then when you finished the cruise, you have this great feeling that, oh boy, it was just such a great experience. So you then start dreaming about your next cruise. So in a sense, IoT is almost becoming more important than the ship and the facilities, because your experience is determined by the services that are presented to you and customized.

Miroslaw Ryba (29:06):
The ship is the carrier.

Nick Earle (29:06):
The ship is the carrier, yep.

Miroslaw Ryba (29:06):
The IoT sensors and connectivity is actually now the block in the whole system.

Nick Earle (29:18):
Yeah. That the product’s becoming experiences. Maybe I’ll finish with one of our … It’s not as good as Royal Caribbean, but I think it’s a very innovative case study, and one that many people will use everyday, and that’s the Costa Express. Costa now bought by Coca-Cola. Previously, the strategy is to have coffee shops all over the place, and they still do, but they then went into vending machines. They’re a customer of ours, but people might not know, there’s 90 sensors inside a Costa coffee machine. 90. Can you think of that? It is quite amazing what’s inside them and we helped them, working with their partner to help them design the machine and aggregate the data from the sensors and back haul it into the center.

Nick Earle (29:57):
But one of the things that they do is the coffee machines are now big digital displays. And to your point, it’s like the cruise ship is just the vehicle. The machine dispenses coffee, but actually, it’s a digital display advertising unit. What it can do is obviously give you lots of choices. It’s one square meter. It’s not on a Costa premise, it’s in somebody else’s premise. It’s a single product SKU that they roll out in every country with global ubiquitous connectivity.

Nick Earle (30:26):
But one of the things they’re now doing is you can get your loyalty points by scanning the QR code with your phone. Now, the point about opting in to privacy is that you are saying, “Yes, I want my loyalty points,” but they know who you are. So now you’re building up this incredible data of everyone’s coffee drinking profile on a unit of one: what they drink, where they get it, which choices they pressed on the screen, and how often they drink it. And you think of the power of that data and the ability in the future to personalize the machine to only show-

Miroslaw Ryba (31:01):
Then you can do the whole ecosystem around it.

Nick Earle (31:03):
Yeah.

Miroslaw Ryba (31:04):
Additional services, additional features, additional third parties to sell you stuff, which is going well with processes.

Nick Earle (31:12):
Advertising. Yeah, the whole vending is that then you could actually have relevant advertising. And then when 5G comes along, because you can do augmented reality, think of Pokemon. This is not Costa, it’s some other company’s. But think of Pokemon where you point your phone and you can see characters on the street. Well then with 5G, you put your phone in front of the vending machine and you get a bill of materials, virtual bill of materials, which shows you the supply chain. Is it fair trade? Are they fair trade ingredients? Or how many calories? Where was it manufactured? And people are wanting to understand that information before they buy products.

Nick Earle (31:49):
So the whole area of retail is going to be much more about the information than the product itself. So it’s very, very interesting. Listen, we could talk all day. We need to finish off. I want to finish off by asking you one last question. It goes back to the very first thing that you said, which I’m still thinking about, wow. You’re running a global organization. You’re expecting it to double over a period of time, so this is a very, very hot area. So there’s lots of interesting people in this area doing interesting things and that’s what we try and do for this podcast. So is there one company or one person that you would recommend that our listeners would benefit from if they were to appear on a future IoT Leaders podcast?

Miroslaw Ryba (32:36):
Actually, the biggest challenge is to say one.

Nick Earle (32:41):
Yeah, only got time for one.

Miroslaw Ryba (32:46):
There’s a challenge, because this world is full of great inventors and companies and ideas. I know that you are in touch with all the big players from Microsoft to Intel.

Nick Earle (32:56):
Yes, that’s right.

Miroslaw Ryba (32:57):
So I’m not going to look in this direction. I believe that we could reach out to maybe Jean-Pierre Tirault. He can share with you great war stories from the project they did, it’s Transition Technologies.

Nick Earle (33:21):
Which technologies? Sorry, Miro?

Miroslaw Ryba (33:21):
The Transition Technologies.

Nick Earle (33:21):
Okay.

Miroslaw Ryba (33:22):
They operate worldwide and they work with Microsoft and PTC. So he can share with you the war stories and great cases they implemented, either as transition technologies or together with PTC. So I believe that this could be the great idea to invite him to share with the audience.

Nick Earle (33:41):
I will tell him that you recommended him. And you mentioned Microsoft. Yeah, Tony Shakib who runs IoT globally for Microsoft, is actually going to be a future guest, so that episode will be recorded shortly. So we will have the head of IoT for Microsoft on a future IoT Leaders podcast. But let’s leave it there. It’s fascinating. I think being only limited by your imagination, starting off with the disruption, working from that way, and then getting to the technology is the big learning. It is so hard to do, otherwise, everybody would be doing it, but I think that is a really, really valuable piece of advice to our listeners.

Nick Earle (34:20):
Also, I just want to wrap up here, and thank everybody, as always, for listening to the IoT Leaders podcast. We have a large list of people who are wanting to come on the show and share their experiences. So thank you for tuning in, thank you to my guest Miro, who I know is recently, in the last couple of months, been promoted to the worldwide level. So congratulations, Miro, on your promotion. You got a very big job with a lot of very big clients, and there’s a lot of innovation going on and a lot of disruption.

Nick Earle (34:49):
So thank you for sharing some of your insights and we look forward to talking to all of our listeners again in the next version of the IoT Leaders podcast. So thanks Miro.

Miroslaw Ryba (35:00):
Thank you for the invitation. Thank you for the great discussion.

Nick Earle (35:02):
Yes, great. We’ll leave it there. Thanks very much. Bye now.

Miroslaw Ryba (35:05):
Take care. Bye-bye.

Outro (35:06):
Thanks for tuning in to IoT Leaders. A podcast brought to you by Eseye. Our team delivers innovative global IoT cellular connectivity solutions that just work, helping our customers deploy differentiated experiences and disrupt their markets. Learn more at Eseye dot com.

Outro (35:28):
You’ve been listening to IoT leaders, featuring digitisation leadership on the front lines of IoT. Our vision for this podcast is to be your guide to IoT and digital disruption, helping you to plot the right route to success. We hope today’s lessons, stories, strategies, and insights have changed your vision of IoT. Let us know how we’re doing by subscribing, rating, reviewing and recommending us. Thanks for listening. Until next time.