SCC opens up on IoT 'lockdown project' Unify
Birmingham-based IT group claims pandemic accelerated the development of its new AI and IoT platform
The development of SCC's new Unify platform was accelerated by the pandemic as the firm realised the opportunities IoT and AI offer in a post-pandemic world, according to two of its execs.
Unify officially launched in August and provides a single location platform that arranges different types of data into a "more consumable" insight, allowing the user to visualise it and take actions based on those insights, explained Tyrran Ferguson, head of IoT and AI at SCC.
"We were talking about Unify and the idea of having the single solution before the pandemic, but when COVID hit it became the lockdown project we were working on a lot because the world was in disarray," Ferguson told CRN.
"The pandemic definitely accelerated [the development of Unify] and seeing how our customers and how the market was reacting to the lockdown encouraged us and proved the point that it would be a very good solution to have in a post-COVID world."
The rationale for the IoT and AI platform was based on the limitations of third party vendor dashboards that SCC had been using, he continued.
"In the early days, we were using third-party vendor dashboards - which involved a lot of dragging and dropping," he said.
"We just kept hitting a wall because we felt like there were certain limitations and that we couldn't scale the way that we needed to; If someone came to us and said ‘We need 5,000 to 10,000 devices for a project' I was always worried scalability was going to be an issue."
Unify will focus on asset tracking and contact-tracing, which Ferguson predicted will be the next big thing in IoT in the enterprise over the next few years. Asset tracking is the process of capturing key data information about an organisation's assets, which can range from plant machinery to office equipment and personnel.
SCC professional services director Andrew Carr added that Unify also allows the MSP to develop its own intellectual property and concepts rather than relying on its vendor partners.
"[It will help us] drive some of our own innovation ideas and concepts forward so that we're not wholly reliant on innovation coming from some of our technology partners," Carr stated.
"That will allow us to have different conversations with customers and partners and creates intellectual property that clearly has value to the group as well."
Talks with NHS trusts and local authorities have given SCC "direction" in what verticals they want to target with the offering.
"We're working on a social distancing and proximity solution that we've developed on the Unify platform, using some asset tracking technologies that we have, and that can touch any industry, including the NHS," explained IoT boss Ferguson.
"Because of the nature of IoT and AI and the wide plethora of use cases and deployments, you have to put your flag in the ground and stick to certain verticals and just concentrate on them, and we've been concentrating a lot on asset tracking."
As the pandemic continues and the requirement to ensure social distancing and contact tracing remain a priority for public and private sector organisations, this brings opportunities for Unify, Ferguson added.
"We'll look at deployments that maybe a year ago it wouldn't have been as easy to deploy because there was a certain bespoke element that we couldn't have gotten done because we didn't control as much as we do now," he said.
"Contact tracing and social distancing is going to be big in the world because of everything that's happened. We're also going to focus on asset tracking and smart cities - those are the types of avenues we're focusing on."