It was a very busy end to 2016 for Reekoh from all angles – product development, new partnerships, new staff. We had an excellent year, but as we kick off a new one there are a number of priorities that we have in front of us that will help to shape the next 2-3 years of the company.
We’ve all seen the rapid growth of vendors in the IoT space, particularly SaaS and PaaS vendors, and this year it will be vitally important for us to continue building our value proposition around integration and business enablement in IoT. Here are the top 3 areas that Reekoh will be focusing on in 2017
1. Major update to core product, enabling the Business of Things
We have been working on a number of new features that are schedule for release in the coming weeks; the main one being a new tool called Pipeline Studio™. Our current “topologies” are being renamed to Pipelines, and the Studio tool provides a visual drag’n’drop interface to create complex data workflows using installed Plugins, action triggers, device commands and data converters.
But beyond feature enhancements, we have a major update coming in Q2 that uniquely addresses one of the key opportunities within the IoT platform market; enabling IoT-based businesses. Many of our partners and customers are designing new business models and customer offerings based on connected devices. Others are creating new internal lines of business for improving their overall operation and efficiency. These new businesses rely not just on the usual device connectivity, data security and intelligence that many “IoT platforms” simply offer. They require tools that allow them to get to market, build revenue and operationalise everything in between. That’s the space Reekoh will lead – we are the Platform for the Business of Things.
2. See customers build their IoT offerings on Reekoh
Many in the IoT “industry” saw 2016 as a year where customers started to shun the hype around IoT, began to look seriously at their IoT strategy and put in place the budgets and projects (often as small POC’s) for actioning in the new year. We spoke to dozens of customers who were “evaluating their tech stack” when it came to IoT, and I’m glad to say that we have been able to become part of many of those customers’ plans.
I believe this year we will see a rapid rise in the number of enterprise customers beginning their IoT journey, and we are totally committed to supporting those customers in their endeavours. Our approach to integration, and the ecosystem that is building through our Plugin Store, means that customers are able to engage with the IoT ecosystem much more effectively and quickly. It also means that solution providers who come from their own part of the IoT value chain (hardware, network, systems) can be brought into customer conversations by being visible in our marketplace.
We also will be focusing heavily on leveraging some of the fantastic partnerships we created last year. From an IoT ecosystem perspective, we have a number of partnerships in the hardware/device and network space that will deliver tremendous benefit for our customers and value in our product. For example, becoming a certified Sigfox Global Partner, is of major importance to us and we’ve already seen the benefits of this in terms of business development opportunities. From an implementation and system integrator perspective, working with the likes of Kyocera and others (soon to be announced) to see our platform utilised in their own offerings and customer solutions is extremely exciting.
3. Growing the team
None of what we’re doing is easy (nor would we want it to be!), and requires the dedication and skills of a great team. We started in April 2015 with 3 of us and have now grown to a headcount of 14, covering predominantly product development and engineering. This year will see the customer-facing side of the business start to ramp up in terms of headcount and presence. We will be looking at adding people who can work alongside our customers and partners from a business development and technical perspective, to help get them into market and to be successful.
This is an exciting time for the company, and all of us on the team are looking forward to the successes, challenges and opportunities that this year will. If you are interested in being part of the journey, either as a customer, partner, investor or team member, feel free to drop me a note.
Onwards and upwards!
