IoT Supplier Roundtable Featuring Abundant IoT, Claro Enterprise Solutions, and Epic iO

Our November 7th Telarus Tuesday Call welcomed Graeme Scott, recently promoted to Telarus VP of Mobility and IoT. Graeme brought on three suppliers, Abundant IoT, Claro Enterprise Solutions, and Epic iO, to talk all things IoT and the tremendous growth it is projecting. They discussed how to equip technology advisors to answer their client’s questions and handle requests. To learn more and access the full recording, log into Telarus University by clicking here: https://telarus.learnupon.com/

Doug Miller: Welcome everyone. This is the Telarus. Tuesday. Call for November seventh, 2,023

Doug Miller: New Month. No more daylight savings time reminds me of the song when the moon hits your eye, and it’s 4, 45. That’s November.

I’m Doug Miller, director of Order experience. And now the singing voice of Telarus, thank you for joining to day’s event

Doug Miller: on last week’s Telarus Tuesday. Call right here. We were joined by Telarus Co. Owner and chief commercial officer, Richard Murray, for our Fifth Tuesday’s senior leadership team fireside chat with strategies for you and your Channel business from the perspective of our TelarusTelarus suppliers.

Doug Miller: Now, Richard oversees all of Telarus, supplier relationships. He serves on multiple advisory councils. He’s a tireless advocate for the Channel. Now he understands why suppliers seek distribution through our partners, and how partners can best benefit from these extremely valuable supplier partnerships. We learned last week how Telarus manages these valuable partnerships for your benefit.

Doug Miller: so I highly recommend watching Richard’s presentation from last week. If you missed the call, you can access its recording at any time at Telarus university.com

Doug Miller: to day is the month’s first Tuesday, which brings our monthly supplier Round Table to day, featuring a powerful discussion on IoT. The Internet of things led by Telarus VP. Of advanced solutions, for IoT.

Doug Miller: Graeme Scott, and featuring the industry and solution experts from epic, I/O. Claro, enterprise solutions, and Abundant. IoT. All of that, and more on today’s Telarus. Tuesday. Call

Doug Miller: to day. We have issued those Collector, Telarus, Tuesday call Hall passes

Doug Miller: to Telarus partners attending the 3 day. Telarus ascend Cx. Training in Scottsdale, Arizona partners there will emerge as experts on the opportunity. Rich customer experience, solution, category hope everybody has a great time in Scottsdale.

Doug Miller: and beginning next Tuesday, Telarus will have a powerful presence at the CVX. Channel vision expo industry, event at talking stick resort and casino. Now that’s also in Scottsdale.

Doug Miller: The event features a keynote address by Telarus, senior, Vp. Of sales, Tim Bossa on recharging Channel sales in 2024,

Doug Miller: and we’re hosting a special reception next Wednesday evening at Tosh from 9 PM. Until midnight. You can visit Telarus while you’re there in booth. 4001, and you can save on registration now, using the code. Telarus 23. So join us next week at the CVX. Expo. You will have a terrific and a very productive time.

Doug Miller: Well, with just 2 months remaining until years, and we remind you that Telarus partners who have sold at least 125 k. In new MRR. This year

Doug Miller: will join us for President’s club coming up this spring in Cancun.

Doug Miller: now higher sold revenue will earn additional trips as well. Now you should also know that some of our generous Telarus suppliers have provided phenomenal offers that can also get you qualified with a much lower threshold for selling their solutions. So our thanks go out to AireSpring, CBTS, Dialpad, Granite, Nextiva, NHC, Peerless, Infobip,

Doug Miller: Spectrum and Zoom. For these terrific offers. Fourth quarter is moving along quickly, but there is still plenty of time to qualify for Telarus Presidents Club in Cancun, and don’t forget that our top 10 selling Telarus partners overall world wide, will join the chairman’s club and join us in may for an 8 day tour of Ireland.

Doug Miller: You can get there contact Telarus today, and we will help you map your fourth quarter strategy. It’s what we do we help our partners win.

Doug Miller: Well, I hope you’ve received and have been reviewing, underlining, highlighting, the just released Telarus’s 2023 Technology Trends Report this highly anticipated report boy, it lived up to its hype. It’s absolutely packed with exclusive insights to help technology advisers

Doug Miller: better understand the key issues and trends that are impacting. IT leaders buying decisions. Over the next 5 years Telarus has done all the research we’re showing you the emerging technologies in which the industry is seeing the most interest.

Doug Miller: you’ll be able to uncover opportunities and cutting edge solutions that boost your client’s capabilities. It is all in your free Telarus Technology Trends Report. You’ve got to register to get it. But get your copy to day.

Doug Miller: And following up on the unprecedented success of Telarus’s SolutionVue, intelligent sales assessment platform. QSA. Modules we had. Let’s see, cybersecurity. We had cloud. Now we are announcing the launch of the new contact Center, QSA Module for a SolutionVue.

Doug Miller: This powerful new tool has been available for just really a few weeks.

Doug Miller: The partners are already excited about the benefits. The SolutionVue contact center QSA. Asks questions based on your client’s answers to prior questions. It carefully guides the conversation and ensures a focused, brief discovery

Doug Miller: of the appropriate contact Center solution contact center is big business and you can capitalize on it. The new tool is available now, as is the recorded launch call which can be accessed at Telarus university.com, check it out and prepare to cash in on lucrative contact center opportunities with help from Telarus. Amazing technology.

Doug Miller: Well, Telarus and our suppliers offer many powerful training opportunities throughout the year and throughout each week.

Here are 2 we are featuring this week, and we hope you’ll plan to join

Doug Miller: to day at 2 PM. Eastern time. There is fascinating training from Level AI I called Death of the Survey. That sounds ominous.

Doug Miller: How generative. AI is reshaping voice of the customer programs. Now, you’ve heard that large language modules or LMS

Doug Miller: have the potential to revolutionize the way that businesses capture, analyze and act on customer feedback.

Doug Miller: Well, this training will teach the limitations of traditional voice of the customer programs and how to leverage generative AI to reduce the effort for the customer’s experience team

Doug Miller: and how to deliver customer wants and priorities with no friction and with no bias. So join this powerful Level AI training. It happens to day at 2 PM. Eastern.

Doug Miller: and then tomorrow, Wednesday at noon, Eastern plan to join critical event management, Provider Everbridge, and learn about their Grant assistance program.

Doug Miller: This will assist certain customers with projects that use Everbridge for crisis communications. Now, some of the eligible eligible customers include state and local governments, healthcare nonprofits, transportation organizations. If you have these types of clients, you will learn all about these grants, the customers for whom they’re available, and how you, as partners, can leverage this program.

Doug Miller: overcome budget blocks and help your clients obtain crisis communication solutions from Everbridge. This important webinar takes place Wednesday to-morrow at noon. Eastern.

Doug Miller: Well, this week we’re also featuring a pair of tremendous promotional and spiff opportunities. First up from Xcitium

Doug Miller: a fourth quarter, big money bonus that will help you bling in the New Year. Now, through year’s end you can close a deal with Xcitium and earn a big cash bonus, a 50 KARR. Deal will earn you $2,500.

Doug Miller: Move that up to a 100 KARR. Deal. You’ll get $5,000, and so on up to a 300 K. Deal which will earn $15,000. Now there’s only a 12 month agreement required on any of these deals Xcitium’s detectionless

Doug Miller: 0 dwell powered Edr, Mdr. And Xtr. Defeat undetectable threats and prevent cyber damage even when detection first strategies fail.

Doug Miller: big money for you through year’s end from Xcitium.

Doug Miller: And how about this offer? From Comcast Business and Masergy? A. 4 XMRR. Spiff on masurgy, secure network edge. a premium, secure network solution designed for Smb.

Doug Miller: it’s fortunate powered security with nextGen Firewalls for perimeter security and sock services for threat, management and response, and your clients receive enterprise, glade, cloud security. Cloud connectivity services at low cost, and they get the peace of mind from built in security features to prevent against cyber threat.

Doug Miller: 36 month sales. Earn a 4 XMRR. Spiff on new customer or new location sales, along with a one XMRR. On new corresponding underlay when it’s sold through Masergy.

Doug Miller: this Comcast Business, and Masergy’s secure network Edge spiff runs through December 20. First. we’ve got many available spiffs and promotions. Currently, in effect, we always do. You can see each one of them at our website. promos.tellerus.com.

Doug Miller: Well, your questions and comments as always, are welcome in the chat window to day for any of today’s presenters. We are very excited to present the Telarus supplier Round table a discussion of IoT. Solutions and opportunities featuring several of our suppliers. Epic I/O. Is here to day Clara Enterprise Solutions

Doug Miller: Abundant IoT, and today’s discussion is moderated, moderated by the one and only Telarus, Vp. Of advanced solutions for IoT Graeme Scott has

Doug Miller: Graeme, and all welcome to our Tuesday call. It’s a pleasure to have all of you, Graeme. I’m going to let you introduce the panel as you go along today, and we’ll take some questions. You can take them during the call, if you like, from the chat window, or we’ll hold them until the end, and do them all at once. Great to have you here today. Graeme.

Graeme Scott: Yeah, thank you so much, Doug, and and thank you to everybody who’s joined us today. Very excited to be here. As Doug said, my name is Graeme Scott. I am the newly installed Vice President of Advanced Services for Mobility and IoT taking over for the legendary Chris Whitaker. Based out of Atlanta. So look forward to working with all of you and meeting you over the next several years as we grow this practice.

Graeme Scott: we are very excited about the group of suppliers we have here today, and we’re gonna talk about IoT. So why IoT? Why is IoT such a big deal? Well, we live in a connected world. I think everybody realizes that and sees that my fridge has a connectivity to the Internet and tells me when I’m out of milk. So that’s just kind of the way things are these days, and it’s very important for us

Graeme Scott: us to make sure that we are equipping you as our partners, to be able to work with your customers, answer their questions, and make sure that you can handle their requests for these types of services. IoT is not going away. It’s only growing, and it is projected to be a 1.5 trillion dollar business by twenty-thirty-two massive. So we wanna make sure you, our partners are well equipped

Graeme Scott: with the knowledge and the option supplier partner options to be able to meet your customers needs. So

Graeme Scott: what we’ve got here today, we got 3 excellent suppliers. We’ve got Abundant IoT Claro and Epic IO, and we’re gonna start off by letting each of these folks introduce themselves. I know some of you guys may not be familiar with them, and who they are. So we’ll give them each 30 s or so to introduce themselves. And then we’re gonna go into some questions. If you have questions during the the presentation. Please feel free to drop them in the chat each of our

Graeme Scott: supplier partners here. Do you have somebody monitoring the questions and any real good ones, Doug. If you want to hold those, we can save those for the end, we’ll have a QA. Session at the end there, and hopefully answer them for everyone. So

Graeme Scott: alright. So without further ado, Abundant IoT. Why don’t you give us a little quick introduction of who you guys are?

Vince: Absolutely thanks so much. Graeme, Vince Bradley, and I’m the CEO of Abundant IoT where we digitally transform business ecosysTims via IoT,

Vince: which is IoT focused on energy services very unique model.

Vince: So we engineered sensor based solutions as a foundation. And then we layer energy technology on top of that, including recurring revenue from all energy services.

Tim: My name is Tim. Well, I’m the SVP of Mobility and IoT. I’ve been in the in the industry since the 90S. So I’ve seen the transformation of mobility into IoT. And now bringing energy into it

Tim: to be able to provide that digital transformation to businesses that you guys work with

Graeme Scott: awesome.

Graeme Scott: alright. Thanks, guys. Clara Franklin. You want to introduce yourself

Franklin: morning and happy. Tuesday. Everyone. My name is Franklin Degioia. I am the Channel manager at our enterprise solution.

Franklin: Clara is a global provider focusing on IoT, of course, our manage services cloud and our cyber security solutions. We’ve been a long time current partner’s. And we’re looking to continue supporting you and supporting you with any questions and concerns and needs for your clients. Thank you for all that, for the opportunity.

Graeme Scott: Awesome, Patrick!

Patrick: Good morning, everyone welcome. My name is Patrick Verdugo. I am the director of IoT product management for Claro enterprise solutions. I have been in the IoT world for almost 20 years. I was part of the IBM Watson team before joining Claro, and in the last 5 years I have brought IoT solutions to market on behalf of Claro which will help you earn tremendous potential revenue with all kinds of customers in different parts of the business. Thank you.

Graeme Scott: Perfect alright and Epic IO Kenzie, you there! I’m here.

McKenzie: Hello! Hello! I’m Mackenzie Mannis. I’m our National Channel manager here at Epic. IOI actually used to work at Telarus before that. So always good to be back with the Telarus team at Epic. We specialize in wireless connectivity, and then AI and IoT kind of the bread and butter of what we do is deep insights, which is our AI platform super excited to dive into a little bit more about that later, but super happy to be here with you guys today.

Graeme Scott: Awesome. Well, thank you. Everybody for the quick introduction. So we’re gonna go ahead and dive into some questions here, and I’m gonna start with the Abundant IoT as our first to respond on this, we’ll go in alphabetical order. So where are you guys currently seeing opportunities emerging with IoT, what industries? And can you give us any use cases or examples of some success you’ve had with partners or in the industry in general.

Vince: Yeah, I think, Graeme, you know, we’ve been seeing great success in the Enterprise space.

Vince: You know, we’ve we’ve noticed that Smb’s again. It’s it’s a different motion. They have a little bit bigger challenge with IoT, just because, it’s harder for them to scale throughout their organizations.

Vince: But with enterprise they typically have a plan. They have an IoT strategy, and they know what they’re doing.

Vince: Typically, I say, we also see some success with the mid market.

Vince: And so I think that with that we’ve seen some proliferation as well. And again, I think with our solution, we’re doing really well, because we bring the energy component in. you know, used to be you had an IoT network and an energy network.

Vince: Well, with sensor technology. Now, it could be one network. And so that’s kind of how we focus

Vince: Tim, any any question or any feedback on the case. Studies on that real quick. Just want to check in and see if you want to add to the conversation.

No, not nothing just at this moment.

Vince: Okay, well, I would say, one of the ones that we have had. That was a real good success. And again, a good case study. This is one where we went in and provided IoT sensors to the customer, started the conversation, as I mentioned earlier, and with that the conversation kind of exploded into a conversation of looking at everything that they had. So you know, I know we’ll talk about connectivity today.

Vince: Didn’t think we talked too much about energy on an IoT. Call. But with what we do it’s important.

Vince: We actually went in. And that opened up to a 15 million dollar contract with that provider who was having problems managing their energy services. So we were able to implement sensor solutions. And then, literally, it grew to the point where we got

Vince: their electricity. Natural gas services, close a 15 million dollar deal with sensors and the energy services. And that advisor is making 2 million dollars in commission. So nice case study to start off here. Thank you.

Graeme Scott: Yeah, that’s awesome. And I think you know, one of the things you’ll hear today from all of our suppliers on this call is some

Graeme Scott: kind of different angles, I mean, who would have thought you’d be on a call and hear about energy? Right? I mean, definitely, IoT brings us into some unique areas and some unique industries, and gives us an opportunity to talk to our customers about things. Maybe we haven’t spoken to them about in the past. So right now, I’m gonna turn it over to Clara. Same question, guys, where are you seeing? Some opportunities? And and where, where are you seeing any case studies you can provide

for us.

Patrick: So I’d like to share with you that we are seeing tremendous success around our

Patrick: artificial intelligence machine learning based video analytics product.

Patrick: This is a product that leverages existing video surveillance infrastructures. You don’t need to change your cameras. You don’t need to change your implementation, and we can add the intelligence on top so that we can monitor for situations like intrusion, detection, weapons, detection.

Patrick: fire, detection, facial recognition, license plate recognition, all kinds of different used cases which can be essentially assigned to a particular camera. If I have an outward looking camera, and I want to keep track of an intrusion. I want to keep track of what? A potential weapon someone approaching the facility with a weapon. All of these things can be

Patrick: essentially detected and alerts generated, which can be sent through push notification to mobile apps. browsers, and also via email, we can integrate with existing alarm sysTims and access control sysTims. We do much more than what I just mentioned. Those are just the basic use cases that seem to draw most of the customers in

Patrick: tremendous success in the education space. Lots of very small schools, mid size schools, even entire districts of schools, from a small customer that has 12 cameras all the way up to a customer that has thousands of cameras. Our sysTim scales. It’s extremely powerful, extremely fast, and extremely accurate. It even allows you to go back and search videos

Patrick: and do forensic analysis in the event that you need to find a person, a vehicle or an object as an example, and it can search through a hundred 20 h of video and provide results back in less than 2 s, fast, accurate, powerful, high performance and truly affordable because it’s sold as a solution. Hardware software services

Patrick: support all inclusive through a monthly fee which raises your earning potential as a channel. Partner.

Graeme Scott: Yeah, great stuff. And I’ve had the privilege of sitting through a couple of the demos of this of your platform, and it is phenomenal, and again opens up some opportunities that maybe we’re not. We’re not thinking of as traditional tech advisors. You know, we do also have a number of other folks that do cameras as well. So gives you the opportunity to do the full solution through our IoT. Franklin, was there anything you wanted to add there or

Franklin: yeah. Actually, you know, Patrick brings up a good point, and the keys that we’re getting a lot of traction among school.

Franklin: We’re doing a couple of proof of concepts throughout the country where they want to see the capabilities and their and their environment, and make sure that it meets all of their standards, and we’re getting tremendous amount of attention from our not only our partners, but also for customers as well.

Graeme Scott: Awesome. Thank you. And Mackenzie, what what can you tell us about what’s going on over at Epic? I/O, where are you guys seeing some opportunities? Where things where are you getting some exciting news?

McKenzie: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll talk about connectivity first. Since I know the focus is more IoT have to mention it. It’s not exciting, but pots. Replacement is huge for us. We’re seeing huge opportunities come in, that’s all I’ll say on it, cause I know you hear about it all the time. But think of us when you think of pots. We’ve been doing it a long time, and we do it really well. On the connectivity side. Another place that we win is Timporary Internet. So we have a lot of retail customers

McKenzie: and other industries as well. That have multi site location. They open a new site and they need Internet next day. Maybe their fiber is not being installed for 6 months. So what we can do is install that wireless connectivity kind of Timporarily as their primary Internet for those 6 months. And then, once your fiber is installed, we can knock that down to your backup. So you still have a backup. If your fiber does go out so that’s been really successful for us as well.

McKenzie: And then the other thing I’ll talk about. I’ll talk about the IoT side. So just a few examples. Utilities. Manufacturing is huge for us right now. So think of you know all the machines that are in there that they have to monitor. They have someone walking around with a clipboard, checking vibration, checking Timperature levels. Whatever it is safety compliance. Those are all huge in the utility manufacturing space for us. There’s tons of use cases there

McKenzie: retail is another big one site security traffic in your store. What are your busy hours, you know? If your target, if you’re Walmart, what part of your store is the most popular? The little kind of add aisles that they do at the end of the aisle which ones are working, which ones aren’t theft

McKenzie: fall detection in your store. Things like that are all huge from the retail perspective. And then the last one I’ll talk about. Healthcare has been huge for us. So again, secure access. Thank patient monitoring. Let’s say you have a patient. That’s a fall risk. What we can do is use our AI and make basically a stick figure of that person, and instead of having to have a nurse sit in that room all day long, as soon as they start to move in bed, and it seems like they

McKenzie: they may get up your nursing station will get an alert, and you can have someone in that room before they fall. But you’re also able to reallocate that resource to do other things. Timperature, monitoring of medications that have to stay at a certain Timperature level. So there’s tons of use cases, really, at the end of the day.

McKenzie: all 3 of those, it’s, you know, adding security and safety cutting costs, reallocating resources. There’s tons we can do. But those are 3 that have been really, really successful for us in the last couple of months in this year.

Graeme Scott: Yeah, thank you. I think you touched on something that really kind of resonates within the IoT space. It’s it’s automation and and reappropriating resources. Right? I think that’s a big part of the value that these solutions offer. You know, you can look at it for all of them, including the you know the solution that we just heard about from

Graeme Scott: Clara. Right, you know, instead of having somebody monitoring security feeds you can have the Clara platform. Do that for you. Right? I think there’s a lot of really really cool applications there. Alright. So our next question. And actually, I’m gonna start with Clara on this one.

Graeme Scott: Where do you guys see the most pushback, or maybe misconceptions from partners and or customers like when you engage with them? What are the some of the objections that you’re getting, and how? How are you overcoming those objections? So I’ll start off with Clara.

Patrick: Well, first and foremost, one of the things that really concern customers that are looking to enhance their video surveillance. Infrastructure is the actual cost. Cost is a big factor having to make big investments in hardware. There’s a lot of vendors out there that have put some AI inside. The cameras, and the cameras are very expensive anywhere from 1,500 to $4,500 each.

Patrick: What we do is we use an appliance. We install it on premise in the internal network. It is full, totally secure. And we leverage, the existing video surveillance cameras. So you don’t have to buy new cameras.

Patrick: The second thing we do to mitigate that concern

Patrick: is we sell it as a solution, so we sell it as a monthly fee. We don’t charge for the hardware if we have to replace the hardware, if we have to enhance, or maybe add more hardware because they decide to add another 50 cameras. We take care of that. It’s all part of the solution cell

Patrick: which really takes away that big concern.

Patrick: And I think that’s been really the biggest thing that we’ve run into. And obviously we mitigate that through the solution model.

Graeme Scott: Alright, thank you, Mackenzie. What are you guys running into there when you’re talking to partners when you’re talking to customers? What what are you hearing? What are some of the objections you’re getting.

McKenzie: Yeah. I think, with partners a lot of the times they’ve been in this business for a long time, and they feel like a technology expert when it comes to cloud or security. Ucast whatever it is. And I think I AI and IoT is new, and it’s exciting. But it’s also kind of well, I don’t know about that. I’m not an expert on that. I’m gonna stick to what I know. And really, the the thing is is, if you have customers that you’re selling cloud, you’re selling

McKenzie: security, whatever it is. You have a perfect opportunity, because you already have an established relationship there. And the thing is that I really wanna reiterate here is you don’t have to be an AI or an IoT expert. The amazing thing about being the partner is you have Graeme. You have Jason Kaufman. You have Joshua Presto’s entire engineering team as well as we have incredible channel managers. We have amazing engineers.

McKenzie: I think the issue is is they get too caught up on focusing on the solution. And when it comes to AI and IoT, the biggest thing I can recommend is focus on the business problems. And let us figure out what solution makes sense. So I think that people are kind of hesitant cause. They’re kind of unfamiliar with that technology. And so they just kind of leave it all on the table. But I think in the next couple of years. It’s really not gonna be an option anymore. So

McKenzie: you’re much better off kind of getting ahead of the curve. Get to that 30% knowledge base enough to open the door and ask the right questions and then bring in your resources from Telarus, from Epic IO, these other amazing suppliers that are here. That’s kind of my suggestion to partners. And then, on the customer side, I think it’s kind of similar of they hear AI and IoT in the news. And they’re like, all I know about AI is, it’s gonna take over the world and

McKenzie: nobody’s gonna have jobs anymore. And all my people are gonna hate me, cause they’re gonna think that I’m firing everybody and replacing them with AI. And that’s just not the case.

McKenzie: a I and IoT. Helps you reallocate your resources. People talk all the time. They don’t have enough good help. All these things. And so what we’re doing is

McKenzie: helping businesses save money. We’re helping them use the employees that they have to do really important, useful jobs that they should be doing and let the easy jobs be left to AI and IoT but I think again the conversation. There, don’t go into your customer and say, Hey, let’s talk about? AI. Let’s talk about IoT. What sensors are you using? What do you? You’re gonna overwhelm them the way you approach it is, hey? What business problems are you facing? If you had someone walking around

McKenzie: with a clipboard 24 HA day in your business environment, what would you want to know to help you make educated business decisions. That’s the approach you have to take. And you’re gonna have much more open arm conversations with those people instead of approaching it as a solution, approach it. Of what problems can I help you solve? And let us come in over the top and figure out what that solution is the sensor that we use or the dashboard that we use in the AI

McKenzie: isn’t the important part, and it’s not the part that they care about so really, I think it just comes down to how you approach those conversations, approach it in a way that makes sense to them. If you feel hesitant about AI and IoT and your technology experts. They absolutely feel hesitant and scared. It’s the same thing we’ve seen with cloud and security. People didn’t want it. They were like, I don’t know what to do about it. So I’m just gonna ignore it till I can’t anymore. And now I’m sure you all. See you

McKenzie: people pounding on your door, asking for security, asking to go to colo data centers, whatever it is, be on the cloud. And I think you’ll see that happening in the next few years. But for now you kind of have to meet them where they’re at

McKenzie: and approach it in a business problem way, not in a solution way, which is a little bit different. But we’ve seen a lot of success with partners that approach it that way.

Graeme Scott: Yeah, good answer. And I think a lot of great nuggets there. Vince, I know you guys have got some pretty unique solutions, right? So you guys are probably running into some some different objections than we might be hearing from other other solutions.

Vince: Yeah, just tacking on that last question. You know something that came up as I was hearing some answers, you know. Air filtration. It’s huge, you know, and it’s energy related, and something as people go back to the office. It’s a big concern. We’ve seen a lot of that activity such wanna cap back on that one. But II love the answer just now, and I think that I love that have glass full and answer on AI.

Vince: Right, it’s let’s have a positive conversation about it, and see what we can do right? That’s that’s what we look at it. And I also like that conversation about the business problem. Right? That’s where we focus what is going on in the facility. What do we need to understand about the facility? Let’s focus on the business problem. We can help address it on the other end right? So I think the the biggest, the hardest thing for advisors is the apprehension. Right? It’s like, I don’t understand this. It’s new.

Vince: What do I do. Where do I go?

Vince: And I’ve also seen. We’ve also seen an avoidance of IoT. And we just ask everyone to embrace this digital transformation is here. It’s not going to slow down. In fact, with AI, it’s going to proliferate much faster than it has in the past. So it’s time for all of us to jump in and understand the technology and be able to work with it on the customer basis. It’s you know. How do I pay for all of this

Vince: right? I mean large scale projects, you know you. You can usually tap into, see, pace, reap ppas utility on Bill financing ir incentives. We unpack all of that, we help customers with that.

Vince: So you know. And then when we talk about what we typically tell these folks we say, you know, focus on the pain point. That’s really what you need to focus on. Don’t focus on the whole, enchilada. If you look at the whole thing.

Vince: you know we all know right, a budget change

Vince: or the Pmo office saying the priorities of change, and we gotta pivot. That will kill an enterprise and IoT engagement.

Vince: So and I think also getting out of the comfort zone, right is really really important. You know, prospect for a new customer and a new vertical

Vince: and market size that you haven’t been focused on before. So you know, as an example, people always talk about IoT and mobility.

Vince: which is 40 of the tam in IoT. Guess what 30 of the tam is. Energy people don’t talk about it, and that’s why we are

Vince: so I think the last thing I would say on that would be, you know, talk to facilities, management instead of it. Right? This is a big, a common thing that people do.

Vince: and we always try to help them. Hey? Let’s go and look at the you know where you’re going with this and get you back on track.

Vince: So with that again. It’s we’re seeing a nice flow. The word out to the advisors is just bring us the issue. What’s going on in the facility. And then to the point of the panel. There’s plenty of experts to help you with that and take it to the solution for you.

Tim: You’d like to add something in there, if you don’t mind. Yeah, so, and when we talk about C paces, those of you who may not know what that is. So that’s called the commercial property assess clean energy. So what we’re looking at some of these large opportunities with sensors, and, you know, require, you know, upgrade hvac units. Putting solar under all these things to help these businesses reach these certain certain carbon rating goals.

Tim: And these are programs that can, you know, alternative to traditional loans. So somebody would normally take a loan for 3, 4 million dollars.

Tim: Well, that’s a loan. So they can go, you know, go through a C page program which puts that basically as part of the property tax. So then that can be sold, you know, to the next property owners they’re not holding a loan. So there’s programs like that that help these large scale projects get funded. Same thing is one called reap, which is raw energy for the America program. So within agriculture, there’s a lot of grant programs that are helping them to do renewable energy projects.

So the reason we talk about renewable energy a lot these days, because a lot of initiatives are coming from

Tim: cities and states. So a couple of ones to know about in New York is called local law. 97.

Tim: Awesome watching. There’s one there’s one that’s just come up. That’s gonna be due in about 2028. And then there’s one in Denver called energize energize Denver. So these are things that the buildings have to show reduction in energy

Tim: and they have to that. Otherwise they’re gonna get fined. So this is these are things that they have to deal with, so based on the square of footage of the building, they’re looking just to figure out, how do I do all of these things? And how do I pay for them? Because

Tim: it’s a requirement? So it’s no longer, you know, an option. These are requirements that are coming in with different deadline dates for different sizes of building. So we look to use all these different programs to help them take the sensors, you know, to monitor their information, the energy, the data, but also make the adjustments, you know, to the equipment that they have do the upgrades so that they can actually meet these goals. Because, you know, a lot of times we’re looking to reduce 20 to 30% of your energy usage.

Tim: and that’s quite as quite a bit. So whether it’s through led lighting projects through a more efficient Hvac, or adding the generation through solar and battery backup to reduce your usage during peak demand time. So those in California understand? Peak demand very expensive.

Tim: So you you combine a battery backup that can, you know, basically shave the energy usage during that time. So all these things become very expensive. And these are the mechanisms that we see in the enterprise. You know the larger business. They’re looking to find ways to do it without taking out a loan for 3, 4 million dollars. Right? So those are something we kind of put together to really bring these, you know. Bring the sensors to give the data, because that’s the big requirement

Tim: from these. You know initiatives. You have to provide the data, but you still need to do the project, and that’s the more expensive part. So sensors may cost, you know, $10,000, but the project itself to reduce the energy. That’s the 3 to 4 million dollar project. So we put them all together using these financing mechanisms.

Graeme Scott: Yeah. And I think you know, the sometimes these aren’t conversations we’re used to having as tech advisors right? And just to give you a little sneak preview of the 2024 education around this. You can hear a lot about this like, how do we engage in these types of business problems. How do we engage with people outside of our normal talk track? Right? You know, we’re used to maybe talking to the it director or the CTO.

Graeme Scott: Well, some of these problems aren’t going to be addressed by them. In fact, they might not even want to do anything about it, because it adds more work to their plate. So you’ll hear me talk a lot about that if you join us at some of our trainings that coming into 2024, so like to move into our next question here now.

Graeme Scott: So technology is constantly changing right? There’s always something new on the horizon, something cool. IoT’s been around for a while, but it is something that’s new to us. But let’s start with epic I/O on this one, Mackenzie, like what do you see as where this is going. What do you see as the next great thing that you guys are working on with an epic? I/O

McKenzie: yeah, absolutely. I think like you, said IoT, has been around for a while. I think the differentiator in the last few years that has made it kind of start to blow up is the AI component. So as a customer, your customer can go in and put a hundred 50 sensors in their entire environment. And they’re like, okay, I’m I’m on the AI train or the IoT train. But if they’re not

McKenzie: using that data and taking those hundreds and hundreds of hours of data and putting it somewhere that educates them and gives them those business decisions. It’s worthless. And so, like, I mentioned earlier, the bread and butter of what we do is our deep insights platform, and that’s our AI platform. We’ve been building it for 20 years. So it’s not necessarily new, but it’s constantly changing. And we’re constantly adding new programs, new dashboards to continue to develop it.

McKenzie: To meet partners needs one example of that I’m super excited about. It’s something we’ve been working on for like 2 years now. We are launching in December deep insights for connectivity, and that’s an AI platform to help you monitor and manage all of your connectivity. So device management checking, you know, are your sites

McKenzie: using the right? Are you using Verizon? Here should be t-mobile things like that again, and that super clean single pane of glass. AI dashboard. So that’s just an example of we’re always continuing to develop new solutions. Another example. We just came out with a vape detective detection solution. And so that is an elementary which is crazy to me, elementary school. But even all the way down to elementary school, Junior highs, high schools.

They have kids. They’re smoking in the bathrooms, and they don’t know what to do about it. So a solution we just launched is our vape detection, detection solution. So we put sensors in the bathrooms

McKenzie: it can detect. Is it a vape? Is it weed? Whatever it is, and then it’s automatically an alert is sent to your principal, your on staff security, whatever it is. And then we put cameras outside of the bathroom, so that when those kids walk in and out you can narrow down. Okay. It was either Jimmy or John smoking in the bathroom. Now we know who to go talk to about it. But those are just small examples of

McKenzie: at the end of the day. All of that IoT data has to go somewhere, and our AI platform is so extensive we have an incredible engineering team that continues to develop it. And I think what you’ll see in terms of customers is.

McKenzie: IoT has a 12% projected growth rate year over year in the next 5 years. But AI has a 39% projected growth rate in the next 5 years. So you’re gonna see.

McKenzie: it’s gonna get to a point where customers can’t ignore it anymore. They have to use AI and IoT to stay as a differentiator for them to cut costs, to stay competitive because all of their competitors are gonna start to do it like I mentioned. It’s gonna be like cloud. It’s gonna be like security. They’re going to need it. And I have a feeling in the next few years. Customers probably are going to start approaching you and asking, Hey, what could I use in my environment?

McKenzie: So, starting now, getting ahead of the curve, getting in the door before somebody else does use the relationships you already have. And start those conversations is, I think, what we’re really gonna see in the next few years. And I’m super excited because I know we have amazing engineers that are continuing to develop that program to meet those customer needs. And essentially, at the end of the day. What we wanna do is enable them to make decisions. Cut costs all those things I keep mentioning.

McKenzie: And those are the things. If you go to your customer and say, Hey, let me help you save money. Let me help you reallocate your resources. They’re gonna wanna have that conversation. And Epic IO can absolutely help you do that across the board with our different IoT solutions. But at the end of the day it’s really the AI that makes a difference. And takes that hours and hours of whether it’s camera sensors, whatever it is that you have in your environment

and tells you what you want to know, based off of all that. So

Graeme Scott: awesome. Yeah, that’s I mean, there’s a lot going on. And AI is changing everything. Right? So Vince, what do you? What do you guys? What do you see coming down the pipe? There, that’s that’s really exciting. You guys.

Vince: Yeah. So you know, solution that utilizes the the sensors and IoT combined with

Vince: energy and generation and efficiency, right? Providing that one platform that I mentioned earlier

Vince: for building owners to really meet those upcoming regulations.

Vince: Like one thing I wanted to mention also from that last one we talked about incentives is the fact that we can actually you. We know how to unpack the inflation, reduction act and other incentives for energy and and that kind of thing. But we can also help fund. IoT projects with that.

Vince: because there are so many sensors in IoT that are energy related and energy efficiency related specifically.

Vince: So again, a really nice nugget that we can tap the Inflation reduction act incentives. You know, there’s billions out there still. They tapped 130 billion in the first year, but there’s still a lot left.

Vince: And so again, with those coming up, we can help customers to manage that.

Vince: And I think also, you know, looking at the perspective of, you know, just in general, you know, long 5 services. Right? We’ve seen services like, you know, long 5, which is basically more land technology combined with blockchain services enabling you to do so much more. Think of agte and solutions like that right? The ability to transfer that data 70 miles right in a more secure way. So these are some of the things that are up and coming.

Vince: And, Tim, I’m not sure if you’d have anything to add to that or not.

Tim: Yeah, just real quick. So we also use a smart SIM that we have, which is multi carrier, you know us. And global

Tim: another addition that we have now is that we have a platform that you can manage the devices, you know, without a static. IP, so it’s it’s all cloud based through. Aws, you can manage the actual device and make any changes. Things like that using different types of you know, text codes and those other things. But instead of having to always have a static IP, which you know is very difficult to get. Ipv. 4 these days.

Tim: So different way to get all the routers get all the sensors in there. And then also Esm, which is the embedded SIM that’s becoming very popular. So without having to put a physical SIM card, a lot of oems are looking to be able to deploy globally, and they just need the module

Tim: built, you know, into the device. So Esim is starting to become very you know, very sought after

Tim: thing because it eliminates the, you know, a lot of the requirements to change some cars in and out as you go through places. So that’s some of the new things that are coming that we see, a lot of customers are are very excited about

Graeme Scott: awesome. And, Patrick, I know Clara’s always got its finger on the pulse of technology. What what do you see, coming down the pipe, what’s what’s exciting for you guys? Well, first and foremost, on the video analytics side, we introduce a new software refresh about every 3 months

Patrick: we’ve been listening to our customers. We’ve been, we have deployed at some metropolitan airports and some major international airports as an example by bringing in used cases that specifically address some of their concerns like for example, objects left behind or abandoned luggage, things like people counting so that we can measure how long it takes people from the time they get to the airline counter to the time they get to the gate

Patrick: within an international airport we have a transportation companies that are using the technology for detecting people trying to paint graffiti on the side of trains. Believe it or not so we’re introducing new technology within the video surveillance space every 3 months, more or less. And some of the new things we’re doing, and something that I see is going to be

Patrick: probably something that’s gonna come to everyone’s attention is the convergence of physical security and cyber security. As you know, we have a very strong cyber security practice, and

Patrick: what we are doing is doing correlation between a physical intrusion detection, for example, and a potential cyber security threat. And an example of that is we can detect a drone flying over a building. We can also detect if a drone causes a cyber security attack. We actually had a customer that suffered. That used case. That’s what basically made our technology evolve.

Patrick: And we’re gonna come up with some tools. We’re actually actively working on some tools that will do correlation of cyber security and physical security to alert both camps, to be able to address a potential cyber security threat.

Patrick: In addition to that.

Patrick: we have a platform that does asset tracking, you know, valuable asset tracking and shipment tracking globally. We’re currently tracking, for example, glass shipments for the largest glass manufacturer in the world in the Us. And Europe, and also in Asia

Patrick: our operation in Europe is doing rail tracking. We’re gonna be introducing rail tracking in the Us. up and coming. That’s something that we see in the near future that will benefit the small to medium sized railroads. We are also tracking very dangerous materials like gases things that are potentially explosive. Excuse me.

Patrick: So we’re progressing on that side of the house as well, and we’ll be introducing not only that some generative AI based AI that that will complement using large language models and using some of the new generative AI technologies will complement some of the existing

Patrick: infrastructures that customers have their websites, for example, adding intelligence to their bots adding intelligence to their customer service departments all kinds of different initiatives. we have over 50 dedicated AI developers. So we we see new products coming to market, new capabilities coming to market. We’re constantly enhancing enlarging and and reaching out

Patrick: to more markets. Our video analytics is not just for education. It’s commercial, it’s industrial. It’s all different segments. We’ve got all kinds of different customers. So don’t think just about education. Just think about anybody that has video surveillance.

Patrick: We can bring these things to bear, and we do vaping as well. Just curiously. We can do the vaping and the camera correlation. You know, we are both thinking the same way in some respects, because we have some of the same customers. So that’s what I foresee is that next great thing, cyber and physical, coming together, and the evolution of the products to leverage more. AI,

Graeme Scott: yeah, who would have thought vaping would be such a big deal right? We’d all be talking about vaping on one of these calls. But it is a it is huge for schools, and it’s huge everywhere. And I think, Patrick, you raised a really good point. I mean, none of these technologies exist in a vacuum right. They all have to work together to talk, and Jason Stein and I talk quite often about that convergence of the physical security which has traditionally fallen in in my portal.

Graeme Scott: and then, of course, the cyber security which is big part of his, so expect to see some more of that from us next year as well. So we’ve got about 8 8 min or so left here. So I’d love to kinda just one last question around the horn here. And I’ll start off with Abundant IoT on this vince. What are some quick questions that our partners can ask their customers to get the conversation started.

What! What are some things that they can bring to their attention? And how do? How do you think they can start to engage with some of these solutions we’re talking about today.

Vince: Love this question. And you know, it’s a really important one to understand. Right? I think that you know, the question is key, because, again, if the customer doesn’t understand the question or feel comfortable with it.

Vince: it’s gonna be a problem, you know. They’re already looking at being confused. You know the advisors may be a little confused.

Vince: It’s on it getting started. And then the customer. There’s that confusion so very important. Going back to one of the questions I mentioned earlier is, it’s a very simple question. You know, what are the pain points in the facility?

Vince: What are the pain points in the enterprise. So it’s actually a compound question.

Vince: So what we’d like to do is say, let’s talk about the pain point in the facility, because typically we’ll get engaged with a specific problem. And this is getting to be too much of an issue for us. We have to address it now.

Vince: you know, it may be something. We’re pivoting away from our strategy a little bit to deal with this problem.

Vince: So we look at the facility itself right? But we also look at the enterprise. How does this facility issue that we’re addressing right now relate to the Enterprise conversation that we’re having with the overall IoT strategy. Right? So there’s 2 questions there once again, facility and enterprise as a whole right cause. They’re related. There’s no question about it.

Vince: II think probably my favorite question, though, is one and it’s actually.

Vince: you know, it really gets into kind of understanding what’s behind everything. And that is, you know if the devices could talk, what would they say?

Vince: And we love this one? Because when we ask this question. not only do the customers enjoy it. the question because it’s oh, it’s interesting. I haven’t been asked that before.

Vince: They all point. They they love to talk about it, and it’s an opportunity to capture the real issues in the, in the conversation. Right? Find out what the problems are in the facility and in the enterprise. So again, those those questions are probably the 2 top ones. That we find.

Vince: and I think one other that we like to ask as well as you know. When do you want to achieve full automation. Overlay. Right? What? What are your goals?

Vince: When are you trying to get to X point

Vince: where you have that automation? And what phases. Are you at? Right? So

Vince: think of this as a long-term journey.

Vince: you know this is not a Oh, let’s go. Do IoT right? This is a conversation that goes over a long period of time. And so we wanna understand. You know, what are your goals? When do you wanna get to that goal?

Vince: And I think those are the best. 3 questions that we have found.

Graeme Scott: That’s great, I think. There’s some really good tips there. I love that one about the machines like. If your machine could talk, what would it say? Right? I love that. It’s a good one. Clara, Patrick, what do you think, what are some great questions to get the conversation started with your with you guys?

Patrick: Generally, what we do is we focus on the business unit that’s actually trying to achieve some sort of benefit from technology. In particular, we talked to security personnel. As an example, we’re talking. We actually

Patrick: wanna deal with a very, very large customer. I can’t disclose what it is, but it was a a deal brought by channels, and it is

Patrick: major network who was concerned about their employee security in the facility. And the question is, which part of security concerns you the most.

Patrick: and one of the examples that was brought up, which was like quite curious, was, you know, if we have a fire alarm, how do we know everybody’s out of the building. Right? So here, video surveillance people counting, people coming in, people going out, and all the different sentences and exits

Patrick: can give you a level of occupancy. It can give you a sense of comfort if there is a fire alarm that everybody got out of the building. This is one example of leveraging the technology in a way that you probably wouldn’t even have thought about. I mean, what’s the value of people counting in retail? It’s great, but

Patrick: from a security perspective. So my, my biggest questions are typically surrounding business problems. Forget about the technology. Don’t talk about acronyms. I have to echo what Mackenzie said earlier, you know. Talking about IoT is is complicated enough we don’t need to complicate a business users. You know, head with all these kinds of terms and acronyms that they probably don’t know and don’t want to know anything about what we really want to focus on our business issues.

Patrick: So even though we are across all kinds of different industries. We focus on security. What’s your concern around security? What’s your concern? Around the security of the facility, the security of your employees. Right? Are they wearing their safety equipment like in a foundry or in a construction site? Are they wearing their helmets? Are they wearing their vests. If it’s in a hospital, are they wearing their masks when they go into the Icu or the Ccu?

Patrick: You know these are important questions related to the everyday business rather than you know a vision, and it’s harder to clamp down when you get too big in scope. You need really focus on the little details. I think that’s our have spent our approach and has shown us to to some successes as a result. So that that’s where I would focus.

Graeme Scott: Yeah, I know great point. I mean, I think obviously risk to your people is risk to your business right? And if you can count people coming out of the building. Know everybody’s out, I mean, traditionally. What else would you have to do? Do you have to send people in to look right? And so now, all of a sudden, you know. Okay, we’re good. So, or if you do have to send people in, at least you know where the people are to get them so good stuff. I like that. Bring us home here, Mackenzie, what do you think? What are a few great questions that you know, you can ask customers to get the conversation started.

McKenzie: Yeah, absolutely. I think we’re really all on the same page of approaching it as solving their business problems. Similar to what Abundant IoT, said. My favorite question to always ask is.

McKenzie: if you had someone walking around with a clipboard 24 HA day in your hospital, in your utility center, wherever it is in your retail store. What would you want to know? And then, based off of their answers, you know. Maybe it’s security of their site. Maybe it’s safety compliance. Maybe it’s as simple as making sure that they’re within FDA regulations or whatever regulations it is for their medications, for their machines, whatever it is.

McKenzie: And I think really honing in onto those specific problems, whether it’s security and compliance, or whatever it is, and something else I want to reiterate is the it person that you typically talk to may not be the only person that you want to have that conversation with. So once you ask those questions to them, hey? To the best of your knowledge, if you could have someone walking around with a clipboard. What would your organization want to know?

McKenzie: Maybe it’s, you know, making sure employees are doing what they’re supposed to do. Maybe it’s security compliance. Then my next question I would recommend is, who else do we need to bring into this conversation to make the right decisions? Because they may not be the decision maker. It may be the C level, it may be the CEO or the person that runs operations, security and compliance, whoever it is, but likely

McKenzie: for these sort of implementations. It’s going to take other departments. So make sure you’re asking that question, hey? Cause you could convince it, Guy, all day long, but he may not even have the ability to make those decisions for the organization. So ask, who can you introduce me to? That? Would probably have to be involved in this conversation to see if there’s a way that we can add value or solve those problems for you. And that’s gonna get your foot in the door again.

McKenzie: Use the relationships with the customers you have. If you sell security, if you sell Cloud C. Cast Ucast, open the door, say, Hey, I’m checking in. I’m so glad that we were able to solve your C cast issues and concerns. So glad to hear everything’s going well. What else can I solve for you what else is going on? Even if you think it may not be in my wheelhouse, let’s talk about it. And then bringing in those other departments to help drive those decisions home, because a lot of times it’s gonna take some other departments.

McKenzie: maybe all the way up to the sea level. To get those decisions made to get the budget and all those things. So that’s my encouragement as well. Don’t stick within your typical kind of Telco closet, as we call it, bring in those other decision makers, build relationships with them again. It helps you establish yourself as that trusted advisor outside of just this one area. Which helps you in the long run, build those relationships with those customers. And it also just helps drive

McKenzie: closing whatever that opportunity is. So that would be my recommendation to add kind of on top of what everyone else has said is, make sure you have the right people in the room when you’re having those conversations. Once those business problems have been identified.

Graeme Scott: Yeah, I mean great point. I think you know, fleet tracking right? The It team may not care about that, but the logistics team certainly will. Right or facilities energy usage. I mean the It team might not care about that. But the facilities team definitely will. Right? So I think great points there.

Graeme Scott: I think that wraps up our questions from the panel here. Doug, anything in the chat that you we should address here or talk about?

Doug Miller: You know I have to compliment everybody who’s been filling in answers on the chat, because, as questions come in, most of them have been dealt with in real time, we’ve talked a lot about security issues. We’ve talked a lot about equipment issues and the solutions that include not only the the IoT portion of it, but the equipment that goes along with it. We’ve talked about connectivity issues and how that affects the decision making.

Doug Miller: I just want to give a shout out to the panel because the responses both live and in the chat have been excellent.

Doug Miller: and I’ve got 3 new pages of notes here that I’ve been taking on my side, and I sit through a lot of these discussions, Graeme, as do you. But the part that I found most fascinating was the security discussion in terms of both connectivity. And then what we do with the data that are gathered by through the use of all this equipment. And then, Mackenzie, to your point at the end to how this leads into so many other discussions

sessions that our partners can have.

Doug Miller: II think sometimes folks may dismiss a little bit the the IoT and the AI topics, because they may not think it’s going to lead to a big sale or solve the worst problem or the biggest problem that they have. But it leads into everything else. So I wanna thank the panel for really opening my eyes.

Doug Miller: And the biggest thing I got out of this today was, you know, don’t just talk to the it, manager, you know. Talk to the facilities manager and all those who are involved with it. So no specific questions for anyone on the panel that we haven’t already dealt with. But I do wanna thank everybody for being willing to go into those other areas. We completely filled up this hour, Graeme. Great job in moderating the panel as well. Anything that you want to say to sort of sum this up.

Graeme Scott: Yeah. So just last thoughts here, folks, thank you so much for joining, obviously. I think Vince said it perfectly when he said, IoT is a longer conversation. Right? We’re just getting into this. There’s a lot of stuff that’s going on. We want to be the ones that you trust to help you address those questions with your customers.

Graeme Scott: Jason Kaufman is a genius. He’s our subject matter. Expert on this stuff. Really, really sharp, Guy. Please engage him. Please engage me as you run into these. We will help bring the right people to the table to help you solve your customers problems. We’ll see you guys at an education event coming near you in 2024.

Doug Miller: Thank you, Graeme Franklin, Patrick, Tim Mackenzie Vince. Thank you all for being here today. Incredible. Tuesday call. We appreciate it. Our thanks to each of you and our thanks to each of you who attended today. If you need to replay this call and get those insights again. It will be posted in Telarus University later today or tomorrow. You’re welcome to revisit this information at any time, and we expect to be seeing lots of success stories from each of you.

Doug Miller: Thanks for participating. Today. I’m Doug Miller. The voice of Telarus have a great selling week. Everyone.

Vince: Thanks all.

Patrick: Thank you.