IoT partnerships - a chain is only as strong as its weakest link

Deploying Internet of Things networks can require a host of different skill sets and fast-evolving disciplines from various technical fields. For many businesses, it can be difficult to get all of these skills in-house. However, this shouldn't be a roadblock. It's simply a case of working together. The route to success is through IoT partnerships. In this article, u-blox Partner Development Director for EMEA, Alex Sewell points out the holes in IoT strategies and demonstrates how, through partnership, we can plug them together.

Using IoT partnerships to solve the connectivity problem

I attended a large IoT conference in London a few years ago. As is often the case at these kinds of events, the Wi-Fi service was poor, to say the least. We’ve all been there, right?

The irony of the situation was not lost on one of the key speakers in particular; His opening gambit was, "is it not ironic that an Internet of Things event has no internet?". This received a few laughs (and groans) of course.

Connectivity to the internet is now a critical service for going about our daily lives and certainly for the majority of businesses.

It will come as no surprise to you that finding the right connectivity solution for IoT devices is not only important but absolutely business-critical. For example, if you're tracking goods across borders, it's not particularly useful if you can only do so for part of the journey. Selecting the best connectivity method for connecting sensors and devices to the internet is not as straightforward as we may presume. For this reason, u-blox partners with device makers and solution providers to help them achieve their connectivity needs in creating truly fit-for-purpose solutions.

Addressing connectivity issues with IoT partnerships

By talking, and more importantly, listening to our customers and partners, we have found a few common threads where connectivity is concerned. The main issues we have helped our partners and customers overcome are:

• Traditional network connectivity methods that deplete device battery power too quickly
• Unpredictable data roaming charges when crossing from one network provider to another
• New forms of connectivity that offer little coverage today and can be expensive and complex
• A future-proof solution that covers existing data layers and future (from 2G to LTE, etc)
• Some network technologies that require you to have to find a communications protocol and figure out which is most suitable and how to integrate it
• Having to manage infrastructure and base stations, as well as onboarding
• Limitations on how many messages can be sent to and from devices

These concerns often delay time to market for many IoT projects and leave holes in a solution. Through IoT partnerships, we are able to help customers plug these holes and create the end-to-end solutions they need.

To demonstrate how we help our partners solve these problems and to get a better idea of the part u-blox plays, take a look at the following articles from our blogs:

• The death of 2g - What switch off means for IoT
• LPWAN – What does low-power really mean for IoT devices?

Hardware, YOU are the weakest link!

So, connectivity issues can be solved but connectivity is only one critical link in an IoT project. One other, you may be surprised to learn, can be hardware.

At u-blox services we are working with partners of all shapes and sizes; from the biggest processor and SIM card manufacturers to the largest distributors, from Systems Integrators to IoT platform vendors.

We have technology partners and customers who want to adopt the u-blox, Thingstream platform enabled hardware and we have created a u-blox enabled hardware device directory for them to choose from. This hardware will be promoted through our partner channels to satisfy as many customer project requirements as possible.

Still, our u-blox community needs more partners that can fulfill hardware requirements. Partners with the skills, competencies, and facilities to build good rugged power-efficient hardware.

If you are interested in exploring a partnership with u-blox, get in touch. You could be the strongest link!