SCC makes 'big bet' on IoT with new practice

Birmingham-based IT group builds own intellectual property as it targets verticals including healthcare and manufacturing

SCC is making a major play in the Internet of Things space with a dedicated practice targeting deals in verticals including healthcare and manufacturing.

SCC's IoT and AI practice represents a "big bet" for the Birmingham-based IT group as it looks to grow its professional services business under recently installed professional services boss Andrew Carr.

Talking to CRN after SCC unveiled annual revenues of £2.3bn, Carr said customer conversations around IoT had reached sufficient maturity to justify productising its offering in this area.

"Ultimately my remit is to grow the professional services business and look at the next big bets," he said.

"I've very much got an eye on the future to say how can we differentiate and not just be a me-too provider."

Carr said that SCC is already in talks with the healthcare clients around asset tracking, stressing that the NHS loses £1.1bn of assets such as defibrillators each year.

"The second thing we're looking at doing is almost contact tracing. We're using some light-touch wearables in manufacturing plants, so that factories can open up in a COVID-secure way," he added.

"What we've tried to do is build a platform that is 80 per cent reusable, regardless of the market in which we apply it - and 20 per cent is customisable."

SCC has developed its own IP in the form of a portal, Carr explained (see video above, for more).

"The IoT is difficult for resellers to grasp because it's not a product with features and benefits," he said.

"It's a device that you deploy somewhere, and it's data that gets transferred over 2G, 3G, 4G, WiFi, LP-WAN. It's the transfer of that data security and it's the ingestion of that data and interpretation of that data. It's not something where you can say, ‘hey, sales guy, try and sell this now'. It takes a deep relationship with the customer.

"But the application of it is so wide and varied that we see it as a real opportunity for our customers do drive value."