Enter Iain Davidson, Product Marketing Manager at Arkessa, a tech-immersed marketeer with an irrepressible passion for improving the world via the Internet of Things.
Few make the successful transition from an engineering development background to marketing, but the zeal to extol what you believe to be transformational technology can be an irresistible driving force. "I am passionate about the Internet of Things (IoT) and its potential to make the world safer and more energy efficient," stated Davidson. "Getting out of the lab into the marketplace has been a journey, but I should have made it earlier and quicker. Great technology needs great marketing and commercialisation."
Davidson joined Arkessa in June last year from the embedded processor and networking world where the 50 billion connected device forecast first emerged. Davidson's experience and insights gained during his time in the engineering sector, combined with Arkessa's growing market presence, is paying dividends. He worked primarily in the automotive, enterprise and industrial sectors, and along with his mass market experience Davidson has gained a strong understanding of best practices when it comes to working productively with a global channel partner network.
Arkessa began its commercial life in 2002 when it was established by a group of like-minded TMT industry leaders and serial entrepreneurs. The firm is part of the Telefonica M2M Global Partner Programme, and the majority of its team is based in the Bishop's Stortford office, located near Cambridge and the Silicon Fen and Cambridge Wireless communities. It also has offices in London and Germany.
Following an MBO in 2009 the company went in search of its first customers. "Our passion has always been to make it easy for organisations of all sizes to connect their devices and assets to the IoT," explained Davidson. "That means being easy to do business with and offering a technical solution that is easy to adopt, integrate and scale. We provide our M2M managed connectivity service to customers in the automotive, transport, industrial, retail, energy, health and smart city sectors. Some customers are start-ups or SMEs while others are large enterprises or multi-national corporations."
Arkessa's greatest challenge has been to dispel the hype around IoT and drive the adoption rate in line with market forecasts. "We are still in the infancy stage of IoT and large enterprise adoption has lagged behind that of the faster moving SMEs," said Davidson. "Nevertheless, we have developed some long-standing relations with leading enterprise players over the last six years and that's now paying off. In that context, we have enabled numerous successful projects that have showcased the technology and business benefits. But perhaps more importantly for larger scale enterprise adoption, they have proven the concept, created new business models and demonstrated RoI."
Educating the market is top priority and is an area that Arkessa invests in significantly. "But it is sometimes frustrating to have to battle the noise and inertia of the global organisations entering IoT," noted Davidson. "This is made easier by working with strong enterprise and industrial SIs such as Fujitsu and Siemens, as well as Zest4 which shares our passion for making M2M and IoT easy. We are achieving success with a diverse group of channel partners and we are excited by material progress with enterprise partners and customers."
Davidson also noted that Arkessa's approach to the enterprise space differs from IoT device or product companies, and its go-to-market generally is differentiated. "Our partnership with Zest4 is a great example," he explained. "Zest4 provides UC solutions to traditional dealers and reseller partners across the UK. It has a modern and refreshing approach to selling M2M services in a style that organisations across a number of sectors can relate to. For example, inroads into construction, logistics and the taxi sectors have yielded early successes. Together we make M2M more accessible to businesses that are not bamboozled by IoT hype and clearly understand the solutions and their benefits."
Looking ahead, Davidson is intrigued by modern attitudes towards purchasing and ownership and the potential impact of this on IoT. "The pay-as-you-go/use culture is nothing new, it didn't arrive with the millennials," he said. "The model came to prominence across many services and industries such as AirBNB, Netflix and Uber which are key examples. In an IoT context, this trend creates the conditions for service oriented 'as-a-service' or ad-funded business models, as well as opex-based purchasing which will all help accelerate growth."•