Over the past 8 years with AVEVA, I got to work with and learn from many colleagues and clients across all industrial segments. I could not be more grateful and happy about my time, learnings, and experience, but as time passed, I felt an itch and desire to take a leap and find an adventure to progress in the space even further.
The pandemic, enhancements in technology, and experience in the field opened my eyes to a range of possibilities and changes in future that could come. I wanted to be part of this change and part of a company and brand that would be a thought-leader and influencer in this continuous industrial revolution.
I also wanted to evolve as a thought leader myself, which for me meant leaving AVEVA to tackle that next journey outside what I’d become comfortable with.
That is what brought me to Reekoh!
Reekoh stood out to me as a pioneer in the industrial iPaaS, and IIoT space. After just 10 minutes on the phone with their CEO Dale, and CTO Aaron, I was jumping out of my seat and ready to get on board their ship. They had a vision, a product and culture that I know will not only lead, but change the space!
So … why Reekoh?
I have had the honor to serve the industrial software market for nearly a decade, and while it has been constantly evolving, major shifts such as greater access to internet, cloud-first approaches and subscription business models have caused a spike of innovation.
There seems to be a new company in the space by the day, and there is now more systems and data out there than ever before. The average fortune company subscribes or owns over 100 different software applications. Jobs and education programs focused on data science have been the fastest growing space since 2017 and continue to climb.
IoT is something most folks have become familiar with, and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) has been expanding into all industries for the past ten years. This expanding network of industrial devices connected by communications technologies that collect, exchange, analyze, and prescribe insights has caused a strong need to merge IT and OT strategies.
IT systems are common and often known by name, but OT systems may be less recognized. Gartner defines OT as, “Hardware and software that detects or causes a change through the direct monitoring and/or control of physical devices, processes and events in the enterprise”. These tools have played an enormous role in supply chain, maintenance, production, and more over the years, but now thanks to IIoT, 5G, and Cloud Service providers, the vast amounts of data collected are becoming a vital part of folks, ‘Big Data,’ ’AI,’ ‘Digital Transformation,’ or ‘Connected Worker,’ strategies.
You can find a challenge using AI or ML, but if you cannot respond to act to that challenge, what are you really solving? The goal is aligning people, process, and technology to evolve the workspace, and use technology as a catalyst to see that through.
The main challenge is linking up the vast SaaS, IT, and On Prem applications around a common data infrastructure.
Let’s think of it as a brand-new home with state-of-the-art sinks, toilets, tubs and showers- those products are useless without the plumbing and infrastructure that allows them to function. In the Industrial markets there certainly is a need for that highway or plumbing to link information.
That is where iPaaS (Integration Platform-as-a-Service) companies come into play – like Reekoh.
Reekoh Accelerate™ is a powerful Hybrid iPaaS that allows fast integration between physical assets (IoT, IIoT, OT) and enterprise applications through an extendable and flexible plugin architecture. With hundreds of pretty-built integrations available, Edge to Cloud deployment options, and an agile low-code approach to integration design, Reekoh is leading the industrial data integration charge with global partnerships with the likes of AVEVA and others.
Eliminating the need for tedious and costly manual workarounds, Reekoh moves data between your operational and information systems to connect your physical and digital assets, ensuring data integrity and operational transparency for rapid decision making.
And I couldn’t be more excited about being part of what Reekoh is building.
Colin McElligott is Reekoh’s Sales Director for the Americas.
