Regarding how the COVID-19 has changed the deployment of location service solutions, and the advantages that Bluetooth location service solutions can provide for the post-COVID-19 era.
Dialogue with Rom Eizenberg (Chief Revenue Officer at Kontakt.io)
Q1: What does Bluetooth location service bring to your company?
Bluetooth indoor location services can provide a wealth of in-building location awareness services. In the past ten years, we have become accustomed to the location-aware function of smartphones. However, since GPS signals cannot penetrate buildings, these functions cannot be used indoors. Bluetooth infrastructure such as wayfinding beacons or Bluetooth access points can enable smart phones to achieve indoor navigation; enable information systems to track high-value assets; enable building management software to collect data from sensors through wireless networks, thereby connecting dozens of environmental systems to an information pipeline.
These functions help us safely evacuate people from the building in emergency situations, optimize the utilization of building space and improve the workplace experience of employees. We also use Bluetooth tags to track high-value laboratory equipment to improve availability and reduce costs.
Q2: How does the COVID-19 affect the deployment of Bluetooth location services?
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19, the demand of indoor location services has increased. According to a recent survey conducted by PWC, 78% of CFOs stated that their priorities for 2021 is to relocate their offices to achieve remote work, and 54% of CFOs said that this will be a long-term change. The survey also found that 81% of companies hope to use technology to improve workplace safety measures and requirements, while more than 73% of respondents said they will focus on technology investment to improve operational resilience, agility and Workplace flexibility.
It can be seen that companies of the market are accelerating their previously under-budgeted digital transformation plans to respond to the COVID-19, and by optimizing work processes and space to meet the company's evolving needs, realizing the vision of long-term flexibility.
The Wi-Fi access point update cycle (such as Wi-Fi 6 infrastructure upgrade) provides companies with more opportunities to realize this vision, enabling them to combine network updates with the Bluetooth gateway or infrastructure function provided by the network provider (For example, Cisco's 91xx series access points and DNA Spaces cloud service). Our IoT solutions can provide support for these functions.
This is why we often tell corporate customers to treat Bluetooth technology as an infrastructure. Based on the above trends, we can see that indoor IoT services will expand rapidly in 2021, putting early adopters in various markets in a competitive position.
Q3: Can you introduce a specific project that your company has recently delivered or is currently working on that can demonstrate the long-term benefits of a Bluetooth location service solution?
In 2020, we started to cooperate with PostNL to help them realize the digital internal roll-cage supply chain. By digitally quantifying the journey of a unique loading device (ULD) called roll-cage, we can achieve higher clarity in the process of tracking parcels and improve the data collected in each link of the logistics chain Information quality. So far, PostNL has digitized 250,000 roll cages through Kontakt.io's Bluetooth beacon. As it is associated with delivery trucks or facilities, PostNL is now able to track the location of container equipment. Now, it is possible to more effectively planning the travel of the roll cage between the customer and the warehouse. A key decision made by PostNL was to select Bluetooth Low Energy as the wireless standard, which enabled them to choose the best supplier to deliver the required components.
Q4: Why do technology decision makers and product managers choose Bluetooth technology as their infrastructure?
The IoT solution stack has three interconnected technology layers:
· IoT edge devices - from employee work cards to patient wristbands connected to wristbands, asset tags or room temperature sensors, these are usually low-cost, battery-powered edge devices.
· Infrastructure - Supports tags positioning and mobile phone positioning, as well as the aggregation of sensor data from the edge to the cloud application.
· Software - covers everything from IoT device management to data APIs to use cases, and sometimes specific vertical applications across use cases.
Among the three, it is more appropriate that the infrastructure is the "problem child" of the Internet of Things, or the "problem child" that used to be the Internet of Things.
Through Bluetooth gateways and cloud technology that has become standard, companies can almost overnight turn paper-based office processes into fully automated, hands-free quantitative work processes (or buildings). It is precisely because of the high cost of wiring and cable that the Internet of Things becomes out of reach with the promotion of proprietary readers and customized solutions.
Network infrastructure vendors recently released information including that Cisco’s 2020 fourth quarter news mentioned that their DNA-Spaces cloud and access points support Bluetooth gateways in the new Wi-Fi 6 access points. This trend enables technology leaders to take advantage of a number of strategic advantages, including:
· Solutions driven by standards
- Meet current use cases while maintaining flexibility for the future
- Extract building data from information islands, enabling IT to play a key role in meeting the needs of future business lines
- Providing funding for the crossover of urgently needed network upgrades and OT initiatives will not only reduce the cost of ownership, but also bring a substantial return on network investment.
We believe that Bluetooth technology has a key role in enabling the Internet of Things and can provide a unique value proposition - open standards, low energy consumption, low cost, high penetration, scalability, etc. This makes Bluetooth technology the preferred technology for most location services and IoT services.
Bluetooth Module technology has also achieved another important business index - scalability. After deploying a Bluetooth project, you can choose to use the same basic infrastructure for almost unlimited expansion, which can achieve cost savings while meeting business needs. This is far better than standard infrastructure, allowing your business to scale with little additional cost.
