Deutsche Telekom has launched its new IoT Solution Optimizer, providing a ‘virtual twin’ for IoT products and services.
The online tool provides technical consultancy and customer onboarding services for IoT solutions. It allows customers to model and optimise the performance of IoT applications in numerous vertical industries such as smart cities, security or asset tracking.
The service brings together the hardware, application and network feature elements necessary to assess IoT solution designs. Users can either model their own custom design or try a standard off-the-shelf IoT offering.
Weeks cut to seconds
Enterprises that want to deploy IoT solutions on a large scale often need to carry out costly pilots to gauge whether their designs deliver the long operating lives required by the business case. With the IoT Solution Optimizer, customers can create a virtual twin of the product they want to deploy. Take a smart parking service, for example.
The company can first pick the countries where the smart parking sensors will run, the access technology and the relevant hardware components, such as radio modules and batteries. Next, they specify the behaviour and deployment aspects of the smart parking application, including payload and protocol, power-saving features, coverage and temperature environments. The design can then be used to model the expected battery life on the selected operator networks.
The IoT Solution Optimizer also shows what aspects of the solution can be optimised to improve economic viability.
“Performance analyses that would have previously taken industry experts several man-weeks to complete can now be delivered to customers in just seconds,” Deutsche Telekom says.
Ecosystem included
The IoT Solutions Optimizer also offers a ready-made ecosystem of IoT players, including:
- IoT chipset vendors: Sequans, Altair Semiconductor, HiSilicon, MediaTek, Samsung Electronics
- IoT module OEMs: u-blox, Advantech, Fibocom, Foxconn, Gemalto, Lierda, Murata, Neoway, Quectel, Ruijie Networks, Sierra Wireless, SIMCom, Telit, Teltonika
- IoT device suppliers: CompoTEK, DIGI International, Tekmodul, LUPUS-Electronics, Nedap Mobility Solutions, Sercomm
- Battery Manufacturer: Saft, a company of TOTAL
- IoT Platform with oneM2M Service Layer: Chordant
- IoT consultancy, acceleration and prototyping: hub:raum, Detecon, ORBIT IT-Solutions
- IoT service providers: Veolia
Availability
The IoT Solution Optimizer is currently available for applications based on NB-IoT (NarrowBand IoT) mobile technology.
NB-IoT solutions can be analysed and optimised for eight markets with Deutsche Telekom networks: Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, The Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and the United States. Hungary will be included in the coming months and modelling based on LTE-M will be introduced in Q3 2019.
Deutsche Telekom says it is ready to integrate additional mobile network operators and suppliers into the service to “bridge the industry’s fragmentation” and allow for device performance modelling in numerous markets across the globe.
Ingo Hofacker, Senior Vice President, responsible for the IoT business at Deutsche Telekom, said, “Businesses investing in IoT solutions increasingly look for leadership in a fast-developing, yet still very fragmented industry.
“Deutsche Telekom’s IoT Solution Optimizer is the first service which pairs technical IoT consultancy with a comprehensive solutions shelf. It is extremely easy to use, offering reliable guidance and exceptional choice throughout the process. Our clients can now make fact-based decisions before rolling out their intended IoT solutions, significantly improving time-to-market, while minimising cost and risk.”