Enea IoT Solutions

Our Role in the IoT Solutions Ecosystem

An investment in Internet-of-things (IoT) should always be driven by a business decision. There are many business drivers, such as:

• Making the organization more effective
• Streamlining and rationalizing operations
• Increasing customer satisfaction
• Differentiating the business from competitors

IoT solutions are all about increasing profitability.

We divide IoT solutions into five levels (L_1-5), each with its respective sub-levels. It starts with the endpoints or all the “things” connected to the internet (L₁).

Endpoints are connected to the network level (L₂), where we mainly find different radio technologies.

The network-level connects the endpoints via the IoT connectivity level (L₃) to the IoT application enablement level – the IoT platform (L₄). Aptilo’s IoT connectivity solution works in level 3 and intelligently authenticates and authorizes endpoints in cooperation with the IoT application enablement platform.

The IoT application enablement platform (L₄) aggregates device data and creates the logic to make decisions. Actions are triggered based on the data from the endpoints or input from other systems. Analytics, monetization, and integration with other systems are also features that are usually managed at this level.

All the previously mentioned layers are needed to enable the IoT application layer (L₅).

We use a special flavor of the Aptilo Service Management Platform™ (SMP), we call it Aptilo SMP^IoT, to create our IoT connectivity solutions. The Aptilo SMP^IoT acts as a glue between level 2 (networks) and 4 (IoT application enablement). When it comes to security, you are covered. Secure connectivity in demanding environments is one of the things we do best.

Simply put, Aptilo helps you enable and secure IoT services. The Aptilo SMP, trusted by more than 100 operators, intelligently connects “things” with IoT platforms.

IoT Connectivity – Cloud or No Cloud?

Security and privacy are critical in the IoT industry. It is crucial to prevent manipulation of IoT applications and unauthorized access to your or your customers’ Big Data.

When everything is connected, it is more important for service providers to be able to put their customers in the driver’s seat so that they can manage their policies and security settings. This is one of the many reasons we go “cloud-first” with our IoT connectivity solutions delivered from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Currently, we offer two award-winning services from the cloud:

• The Enea Aptilo IoT Connectivity Control Service (IoT CCS) – a disruptor in Cellular IoT Connectivity
• The award-winning Aptilo Zero-touch Wi-Fi IoT Connectivity – a game-changer in Wi-Fi-based IoT.

But of course, if you want to run the Aptilo SMP^IoT from your own data center, we will not stop you.

Enea’s Role in IoT Security

The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Internet in October 2016 was caused by swarms of data requests from a network of hundreds of thousands of hacked IoT endpoints. IoT security is currently one of the hottest topics, as IoT introduces a wide range of new security risks and challenges. From the endpoints, via networks and platforms, and other systems to which the platforms are connected.

Aptilo offers a suite of ways to enhance IoT security across the four levels. We deliver secure authentication and policies authorizing endpoints. We control their access and what they can do and get access to. If the IoT application or endpoint is compromised, at least they cannot do much harm, with Enea Aptilo SMP^IoT covering your back.

Aptilo can further enhance the security level by integrating with 3rd party security solutions from partners in the IoT ecosystem. In some cases, such as with the Enea Aptilo IoT Connectivity Control Service™ (IoT CCS), we even include IoT security in our solution.

Why Do You Need Enea’s IoT Connectivity Solution?

Until now, in different IoT solutions, there has been a flurry of devices working independently, on their own proprietary IoT platforms. For example, you can turn the heat on in your Volvo with your smartphone. There’s a platform taking care of that and nothing else.

We must break these silos to meet the massive scale of IoT services and the multitude of different IoT applications. There is a need for a highly scalable and robust horizontal layer of reusable common IoT connectivity and application enablement functions. These functions include authentication, provisioning, data aggregation, action management, and monetization.

This horizontal approach shortens the time-to-market and lowers the deployment cost of IoT. It also enables connections and information exchange between heterogeneous IoT endpoints and connectivity networks, and various IoT applications.

This trend will also facilitate the ability of telecom operators to add value to the IoT ecosystem by offering both connectivity and those horizontal functions.

This is where Enea comes in. Our horizontal IoT connectivity solution enables a horizontal approach to IoT.

A Proven and Trusted Platform Adapted for IoT

Our award-winning Enea Aptilo Service Management Platform (SMP) has been deployed by service providers and large enterprises in over 75 countries. Some customers had used our platform for M2M communication long before the IoT term was first coined.

Although our platform is agnostic to access technology, we are mostly known as the leader in Wi-Fi service management. Through our award-winning Wi-Fi offload solution, we have gained deep knowledge of integrating with the Mobile Core. Mobile operators have deployed our flexible policy engine, with its rule set-based configurable logic, as the primary policy control function (PCRF/PCF).

Our background in Wi-Fi also serves us well in the IoT space. Wi-Fi is already an essential technology for providing backhaul for IoT devices. It is expected that the average home will have more than 50 devices connected to the Internet a few years from now. Being the dominating connectivity method for indoor coverage in homes and enterprises, Wi-Fi will become one of IoT’s most critical transport technologies. Just imagine when the installed base of millions of Wi-Fi access points has built-in specific support for IoT. Furthermore, the additional cost to add different sensors such as temperature and smoke sensors into the Wi-Fi access point is relatively low. Several vendors are already adding those sensors to their access points.

We have started with IoT connectivity management for Cellular and Wi-Fi but will add other connectivity methods on customer request, whether it be LPWAN such as LoRa and Sigfox or HaLow or mesh technologies such as Wi-SUN or something else. In addition, we have also built a multitenancy architecture so service providers can provide IoT connectivity services for many customers from the same platform.

We call this flavor of our platform Enea Aptilo SMP^IoT, a leading IoT connectivity management platform.