13.05.2019 by Florian Marte

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The Internet of Things is not about technology, it's about strategy – says Rami Avidan, the new head of IoT at Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems, in an interview with the British magazine IoT Now.

A true digital native, Rami Avidan has been in the world of networked things for 20 years and has also been involved in the Internet of Things (IoT) right from the start. The 43-year-old knows the problems companies can have with their IoT projects. "The players that fail today start off looking at IoT from a technical perspective but this is not a technology play," he tells the magazine IoT Now. "Anything you want to do today can be done with technology so the question is what do you want to do in your business. Therefore, you need to focus on the strategy of what you want to achieve." Avidan recommends that customers "think very big and for the long term but start small.”

“When I engage with enterprise customers, the last thing I talk about is technology."

Companies have also made the mistake of combining IoT products from different manufacturers into a single solution. Avidan: "Companies need a partner or set of partners who can help them put all the pieces together. It’s only in the last one or two years that we have seen systems integrators doing this effectively." However, it’s impossible for a single company to be an expert in chipsets, sensors, connectivity, storage, applications and integration services all at the same time. The IoT boss recommends partners “who have built an ecosystem around themselves and have flexibility that allows customers to pick the partners they want to work with from within that ecosystem.”

“For me, it’s great to be able to wake up every morning and work in IoT”

Security and data protection are also vital: "IoT security is very complex," says Avidan. “The more handovers you have between systems and the more differences in processes within the different systems, the greater the opportunities for security weaknesses to be exploited.” Avidan therefore sees standardization, with clear rules of engagement on technologies for security, as a top priority. "Telecoms providers have focused on security for many years but we did this for our own sake. Now we need to extend this to our customers so they can reap the benefits of our deep security knowledge.”

Read the full interview here: https://www.iot-now.com/2019/05/15/95769-strategy-not-technology-challenges-enterprises-iot.