What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Building a Seamless Global IoT Network: FloLive's Revolutionary Approach
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
Cellular connectivity forms the backbone of the IoT revolution, but building truly global, reliable solutions has remained challenging—until now. FloLive is transforming how devices connect worldwide through a revolutionary distributed network architecture that addresses the fundamental limitations of traditional approaches.
Most IoT connectivity providers rely heavily on roaming agreements to extend coverage beyond their native footprint. FloLive has taken a fundamentally different path by building its entire technology stack in-house and distributing core network components globally. This "network of networks" approach allows devices to connect locally in different regions while providing customers with a unified management interface.
The benefits are profound and multifaceted. When devices connect to local networks, data can be processed regionally rather than traveling across continents, dramatically improving performance and addressing increasingly strict data sovereignty requirements. Network-based security provides protection for resource-constrained IoT devices by analyzing metadata in real-time to detect anomalous behavior. Meanwhile, the ability to seamlessly integrate satellite connectivity ensures devices can maintain connections even in the most remote locations.
What makes this approach particularly powerful is how it embraces rather than competes with local mobile network operators. By partnering with MNOs worldwide, FloLive augments their capabilities while ensuring compliance with local regulations. This collaborative strategy is opening doors for innovative applications across industries—from electricity meters in Europe to cleaning robots in Singapore, water irrigation systems across 120 countries, telematics solutions, video applications, and payment terminals.
The next frontier involves leveraging artificial intelligence to further enhance the platform. By combining data from multiple sources within their stack, FlowLive is building AI capabilities that will help customers optimize operations, predict network issues, and potentially reduce costs through automated recommendations.
Ready to transform your IoT connectivity strategy? FloLive primarily works through partnerships with mobile network operators, MVNOs, IoT service providers, and systems integrators, with sales teams available across Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific regions to support your global IoT initiatives.
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Hey everyone, diving into one of my favorite topics the global IoT marketplace with a real innovator in the space at FlowLive Nir, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. Good morning, even Good to see you.
Speaker 1:Yes, good to see you as well, and we met at Mobile World Congress. Seems like an eternity ago, not just a few months ago. Like an eternity ago, not just a few months ago. For the folks listening, tell us about Flow Live, how the company was founded, your services and the journey that you're on as CEO.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Flow Live basically is in the market for the last eight years almost, and Flow Live was built and created to solve one thing, and it is to allow companies from all around the world to connect their things to the network using cellular and satellite connectivity in a seamless way where we take care of everything needed to do that. In 2020, I joined FlowLive as a CEO coming from AT&T and we started to reconstruct all the components and basically for the last four years, we are helping customers to cross their IoT global journey with FlowLive.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, and talk about my favorite topic in the network your network Maybe describe the scale, the scope, the reach of the Flow Live basically cellular network, yeah.
Speaker 2:So to do that, I think we need to explain a little bit more about the approach of Flow Live to solving the global connectivity needs, because I think this is where we are coming. A little bit more about the approach of Flowlife to solving the global connectivity needs, because I think this is where we are coming, a little bit different than the traditional approach in the market. So if you look at the traditional solutions in the market coming from the big MNOs and many of the MDNOs of the IoT connectivity domain, you would typically see organizations that have very strong and very good solutions in some regions of the world. If we talk about the MNOs, it is normally where they have their own native footprint in terms of radio access and network coverage, and then they cover the rest of the world using their roaming agreements and some other capabilities added to their roaming agreements to try to serve the global connectivity needs of the customers. From the get going, we thought that doing that is OK for many use cases, but it's not enough for some use cases and definitely do not solve all the needs of our customers. If you look on customers, they look for coverage anywhere in the world. They look for sustainable service. They look for performance and compliance and security. There are many different aspects of the solution that they need to have with their IoT connectivity and we thought that only relying on these roaming agreements and with centralized operation is not enough.
Speaker 2:And what we built is something slightly different.
Speaker 2:We decided to develop the entire technology required for the IoT connectivity needs in-house.
Speaker 2:We talk about the core network, the billing system, the connectivity management platform and the SIM applet, the remote SIM provisioning capabilities To get them together as a single solution sitting in the Cloud.
Speaker 2:But then doing one more thing with taking these network components really the core network and distributing the core networks all around the world and integrating with the right MNOs in different regions. Basically stitch together all these subnetworks, if you may, into one global network with a single connectivity management platform and billing on top of it and with the ability to switch and change and tune the provider on the SIM card based on the customer specific needs. So, if you want what we've done, we built many different networks around the world to get them all together to a single solution for our customers to use and this way, basically, you really solve the customer's problems Because, while the customer is getting one global solution that they can manage with a single API, single UI, et cetera. From a device perspective, devices are connected to local networks in many different regions, in many different parts of the world, and that's, I think, the different approach that we take from at least the legacy solutions in the market.
Speaker 1:Amazing. So let's unpack that, because you said a lot there and a single global frictionless network is kind of an amazing accomplishment. How do you consider you know you solve the fragmentation issue, but how do you think about performance and reliability and security and ease of you know, provisioning All the challenges that IoT has had even today?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So let's start with the last point that you mentioned the ease of operation. Customers should get a service where they do not need to dictate up front to which part of the world the device will go or should be connected. They should basically embed the connectivity capabilities, the SIM card or the virtual profile within their devices in the factory and they should be able to send the devices anywhere in the world. Devices should connect and send and receive data seamlessly. That's the first thing to start with and that's for the ease of operation. And then, no matter how many networks we use underneath and how many different IMSIs and profiles of different MNOs we use underneath, customers should have a single UI, single API, single build to manage all these things. So from an operational perspective, it should be as easy as that. This is the first thing.
Speaker 2:When we talk about performance, one of the things that impact performance most is the fact that in many solutions, data need to travel from one region to the other region, sometimes even between different continents. So, for example, the main servers of the operators are, let's say, in the US and the devices are in Europe. The data needs to go back and forth, or at least the metadata needs to go back and forth, and the fact that we are building local networks in many different regions allows devices to basically terminate the data locally and by that have improved performance on average around the world. So the de-aggregated, distributed network architecture allows better performance just by allowing devices to connect in region to local networks or to at least sub of the network in the packet gateway, as we call them. That allows the performance to be better on an average least sub of the network in the packet gateway, as we call them. That allows the performance to be better on an average case all around the world. This is number one.
Speaker 2:When you talk about compliance, basically the answer is more or less the same. We see two types of use cases for customers. If we try to do it very, very roughly. Ok, there are customers that need their data to be in region anywhere in the world. So, for example, they have medical devices in Europe. They need all the European data to stay in Europe, and the medical devices in the US need to have all the data staying in the US, et cetera. But they still want a single global operation. So you need to have a service that allows customers to many things globally on one hand, but terminate data locally, on the other hand, which is right for performance and also for compliance. So this is the second thing about compliance.
Speaker 2:And then the last thing that you mentioned is security. First of all, mobile networks or cellular networks are, definition, a little bit more secure than maybe some other methods of delivering data, which is good, but we believe that we should embed security measures within the solution that we provide. We know that many of the IoT devices are not capable of having, you know, device security with them, because not all the devices are high-end devices, not all of them enough memory, cpu on the device to maybe manage device-level security, and therefore we feel that we have the obligation to provide network-based security to our customers. And because we are the network, we own the core networks, we own the billing, we own the applet on the device. Basically, we can have a fairly wide perspective of the metadata of the customers, meaning the signaling data, the billing data, et cetera, not the payload itself, but the metadata.
Speaker 2:And by analyzing the metadata in real time, which is what we do, we can get a fairly solid view of the device from an operational standpoint, but also from a security standpoint, and provide customers with alerts if something abnormal is taking place with their specific devices or with their network. And this is how we allow some higher level of security to our customers based on the network. And this is how we allow some higher level of security to our customers based on the network. And, by the way, this is and we probably are going to touch it later on but this is one of the areas we are going to invest quite a lot in, because we believe that this is really our responsibility to protect customers' assets using Flowline.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great point. And that sort of leads into the next question around data sovereignty. It's a big topic, not just in Europe, but every country now has new data protection rules and its compliance rules. How do you address those requirements, being a global provider but also a highly local provider?
Speaker 2:Yeah, If you look at all these compliance requirements and you try to get the common requirements of all the different regulations coming in. These regulations are in place to do two things. One is to protect personal sensitive information. This is one thing, and the second thing is which is different is to make sure that critical infrastructure is in the control of, you know, or being controlled locally for different reasons, and I think this is one of the places where the distributed architecture that we are offering can provide benefits.
Speaker 2:And the more networks we deploy around the world, in more regions and in more countries, the more we are adhering with local regulation in these countries. So, for example, we now have multiple locations in Europe where we have local data centers. Obviously, we can be very compliant in Europe. If you have multiple locations in the US, same goes for the US. And then you have the special countries like Brazil and Australia and Turkey and South Africa, you know, and others where you need to have localized solutions because of data compliance and regulation, but also because some of the MNO themselves are posing some limitations on the use of roaming.
Speaker 2:And basically, we integrate with these MNOs and provide local data termination with these MNOs to allow your customers to have smooth operation over time and not be blocked by the local MNOs. I would just say one last thing about this one Working very tightly with by no mean is here to basically replace the MNOs or compete with them. We're working very closely with the MNOs. We believe that our solution basically augments the MNO solution and provides and gets getting the best out of each MNO to build a truly global solution for the customer's needs. The customers can be the enterprises, the MNOs and service providers of the market, but also the MNOs themselves. So working tightly with the MNOs basically solved the compliance issues as well.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, switching gears a bit. Everyone's excited about AI and machine learning. What's your perspective as a technologist? How are you using AI in your tech stack or your operations, or helping customers or otherwise?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so first of all, we need to differentiate between two different ways of using AI. I think that any company in the world now is using AI for improving the operations you know and different tasks for the operation. I don't think that Flowlight is different than any country in this respect. You know using AI in marketing and finance and customer support and operations and R&D and all that. This is all given. For me, the interesting angle of using AI is how do we bake AI into our solutions so our customers can get better services now and in the future. That's the main question that we're dealing with, and when you think about AI, the fundamental thing you need is the right data, as much as possible in real time in a structured way, so we can use it easily to feed the AI models, and I mentioned that before. But this is exactly the strength of the solution we are trying to build, meaning if we own the core network and we deploy the core network in many parts of the world and we fetch the information from the core networks all around the world in real time to one big data lake, and if we own the billing system and we fetch the information from our billing system in real time into the same data lake and we fetch the information from the same applet in the same time, in real time, to the same data lake and refresh the information from the same applet in the same time, in real time, to the same data lake and from the connectivity management platform to the same data lake. Now you have a data lake with information that sees the customer's operation from all different angles and perspectives in one place, structured and ready to be used, and now applying AI models to get real benefits for customers is becoming much easier, and areas where we are already starting to apply AI to help customers are basically one of them, and not everything is still in the market.
Speaker 2:Not everything is operational operational but it's coming. Uh, one of them I mentioned before is around security and the use of ai to try to better protect devices network. The second area is is operational efficiency for customers. If you need to manage 1 million sims all around the world, you must be able to not only see in real time the abnormal behaviors of your existing devices. You need to be able to try to understand what's going to happen with your devices down the stream, with changes of networks, with changes along the day, with data transmissions and all these things and have recommendations on how to manage your fleet or how to grow your fleet. So we believe that AI can really be a good way for customers to manage operation in the present, but also forecast on how you do it in the future.
Speaker 2:And the third area is how to optimize cost, not only operation, so how to optimize cost means. Can I steer the network in a different way to lower my cost? Can I use a different rule to do something different with my devices, a different package on my billing? And it's very hard for customers to really try to connect all the dots when they have so many devices, so many plans, so many networks. But if you let AI do it, get all the information, tell customers in this specific network, in this specific country, if you move to this plan, you'll save 20%. Well, that would be great. So we don't have it yet, but definitely something we can do and we are planning to have within our solution.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's exciting, particularly for a global 2000 kind of enterprise. That would be unprecedented. Speaking of global communications, it's an exciting time in telecom with all kinds of new networks coming on stream, satellite in particular. I made my first satellite call up in New Hampshire on my standard iPhone for the first time. It was almost magical, but that opens up new doors for IoT as well. What's your strategy as far as these new networks is concerned?
Speaker 2:We see ourselves, we see our responsibility in bringing to our customers the best solution that serves their needs, and I spoke before about the fact that we are deploying core networks all around the world and integrating with many different mobile network operators to get the best coverage to our customers under a single solution. For us, bringing satellite connectivity is very, very natural to this approach as well. In some areas satellite is the right solution, and satellite for me is just like another mobile network operator bringing their physical asset. In the case of the mobile network operators it's their radio access network. In the case of satellite it's the satellite itself, but it's another mean for allowing a proper, secure, high-performing coverage in areas for customers on the same route.
Speaker 2:So you can find a sync of the flowline with you know the first profile would be operator A with his or their roaming agreement. The first profile would be operator A with his or their roaming agreement and profile B would be operator B with their roaming agreement and profile C would be a satellite. And when a device cannot find coverage with the first and the second operators, which are regular operators, it will flip to the satellite coverage and use a satellite exactly in the same way it could have used another operator. So, very, very natural to our approach, we very much encourage the use of satellite as part of the solution. We've already embedded one satellite provider within our solution and we'll definitely add more customers.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So there are so many use cases and applications for IoT, I mean so many great ones that are making a real difference. Agriculture and farming, and on and on. But do you have any favorite stories or anecdotes around what your customers are doing? They must be quite diverse.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think we have enough time, but let me give you some examples, some nice stories from all around the world. So, for example, in Europe now we have a project with one of the mobile network operators helping the MNO and one of the local companies there to connect hundreds of thousands of electricity meters to the network across the entire country. Out of Singapore we have a customer that is connecting cleaning robots to the network all around the world. Out of the Middle East we have a customer that is delivering water irrigation systems in more than 120 countries around the world. We have customers that are doing asset tracking with Flowlight In almost every country we can find there.
Speaker 2:And two more use cases that are very, very common here with Flowlight. One is telematics. We are seeing a lot of telematics companies coming in and using our assets because of the stability and the coverage and everything to basically get let's call it, smart. Mobility use cases onboarded on 4Live Video is becoming quite big. We're seeing different types of video use cases onboarded on the platform Surveillance video cameras, dashboard cameras, hunting cameras, traversing a lot of data to the network, to the customer's cloud, and maybe the last one that I would mention that is now emerging to be quite big for us is all the point of sale, vending machines, charging use cases. All these use cases that are very sensitive to stability and security are also becoming very popular on the platform. So you can see, it's really coming from different parts of the world and different types of industries, and I think this is what is fascinating about this business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's amazing. It's so uplifting to hear how tech is being used for good in so many different ways and for business and profitability. So how can I engage with Flowline? Maybe I'm an enterprise in the US or a systems integrator, maybe I have a project. What's the process? How do I deploy your technology?
Speaker 2:It's a great question. First of all, we are working across the board, and the primary way in which we are going to the market is working with the MNOs, mvnos, iot service providers. Sometimes, in specific cases, we may find ourselves selling to enterprises, but the vast majority and the main line of our strategy is to work with our partners. Again, the partners are our mobile network operators, mvnos, iot service providers. These are the direct customers of Flowline and, first of all, I encourage any of these types of customers MNOs, mvnos, iot service providers, system integrators, anyone that considers connectivity to be part of their portfolio to get in touch with us, and we have a sales team basically in already a few places around the world European team, american team in the US.
Speaker 2:We have people in APAC as well, with partners in many other parts of the world. So please reach out and we'll let you know how quickly we can serve you and get your services up and running. In some cases, bigger enterprises are looking to work directly with Flowline and then, in this case, they can refer to us. If we can find a partner of Flowline that can support their needs, then that's great, and if, for specific reasons, they need to work directly with us, we'll find a way to do it, but we are working mainly with our partners again MNOs, mdnos, iot Service Provider, system Integrators. They are great partners of Flowlight and we are looking to expand with them.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, congratulations on all the success and, onwards and upwards, look forward to catching up soon.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, Ivan. Appreciate the time today and looking forward to speak again soon.
Speaker 1:Have a nice day, thanks Likewise. Thanks everyone for listening and watching. Take care.