Back

"We are one of the few companies capable of providing a truly end-to-end IoT offering." Q&A with Philipp von Gilsa, CEO at Kontakt.io

A rapidly growing IoT market has made Kontakt.io a leading provider of BLE solutions. According to Philipp von Gilsa, CEO at Kontakt.io, the greater market potential for the IoT still remains largely untapped. In our exchange, he explains how Kontakt.io will be the first to address this potential with a truly end to end IoT solution.

With the release of your article “Simplifying IoT” you touch on the need to radically simplify the way location and sensor solutions are bought, distributed and deployed if the market is to keep up with industry projections. Can you tell us more about how IoT offerings must evolve to address this untapped market potential?

Location-aware IoT solutions can be among the most complex and prone-to-failure projects an organization can undertake. Different use cases such as wayfinding or asset tracking can call for different protocols and wireless infrastructure requirements that very quickly require knowledge and skills that are not inherent to the organization. That means they must work together with an IoT solutions provider to map the solution architecture, install the hardware, maintain the infrastructure, etc. This is not something most companies can afford to do. And yet, the benefits of the technology are well proven and are rapidly decreasing in cost.
At Kontakt.io, we have defined five hypotheses that will simplify the complexity of creating and using location and sensor data to unlock the long-tail of the of the market over the next three years. These are:
1) Forever-battery tags driving down the TCO of location and sensor data creation to zero.
2) Ubiquitous gateways driving down installation costs and infrastructure growth barriers to zero.
3) Dedicated agnostic device middleware for IT users which will be completely separate from the business application interfaces, empowering IT to drive the IoT adoption internally.
4) Widget-driven, plug-and-play location and sensor analytics for dedicated use cases and dedicated business users, which will reduce sales and adoption cycles to under three months
5) Machine Learning-driven recommendations and decision making will be powered through network effects spanning multiple customers; adding one customer will make the analytics more valuable for everyone.

Kontakt.io has established itself as the leading Bluetooth hardware and infrastructure provider over the last six years. In the last six months, a number of interesting announcements were made that hint at a strategic shift in your offering. Can you elaborate on Kontakt.io’s strategy in relation to the five hypotheses?

Our expertise in Bluetooth hardware, firmware and device management has placed us among the few companies capable of providing a truly end-to-end IoT offering. We believe this to be an essential characteristic for building and delivering a product that addresses the need for simplification. That being said, new technologies are being developed that will realize these trends and Kontakt.io has established strategic partnerships with the pioneers among them.
Atmosic Technologies (forever-battery tags) removes the current roadblock of device battery life with the introduction of batteries that never need to be replaced because they last virtually forever.
Partnerships with leading Wi-Fix Access Points as BLE Gateways that directly link data back to the Kontakt.io Ecosystem.
On top of that, we officially opened our platform to third-party devices at the end of last year, which allows us to broaden our growing infrastructure to encompass existing devices on the market through a simple update to their firmware (agnostic middleware).
Together, these three trends will uproot the challenges posed by disparate hardware and rigid connectivity.
Once the barriers to capturing data are dismantled, we turn our attention towards analysis and action. The next phase of Kontakt.io is the creation of a separate business unit delivering  location and sensor analytics built for operational users. We’ve just released Simon AI, an end-to-end software suite that brings together these five trends in an easy to use, holistic, simplified IoT solution.

What separates Simon AI from other IoT platforms?
Simon AI is not an IoT platform. It’s a workflow-centric analytics suite that allows operational users to build workflows, reports and dashboards related to preventing operational inefficiencies and improving safety and work quality in mainly indoor environments. Users don’t require engineering know-how and can get started and set up in a couple of hours. The main use case categories include asset location, material flows, people visibility and condition monitoring.
Is there a specific industry or organization that Simon is built for?
We focus on industrial environments such as manufacturing and warehouses and further support healthcare and commercial buildings. The flexibility of the platform can be adjusted to various use-cases.
More specifically, who within an organization will benefit most from Simon AI?
Operational managers, risk managers and human resource managers.
Can I request a demo of the Simon AI Platform?
Yes. You can request a demo of the solution here.
How is the offering priced?
The license starts at $1000 per month, full-serviced 3-month POCs including the hardware at $5000 total.