October 2024

Creating Global Connectivity in IoT

Posted on October 29, 2024October 21, 2024 by Tom Wilding

On Episode 24 of The Connectivity Matters Podcast, we were joined by Mart Kroodo, the Founder & CEO at 1oT, which provides global connectivity for the IoT industry, to talk about the company’s innovative solutions. From day one Mark’s goal with 1oT has been to make eating technology more accessible to companies worldwide and enable them to far more easily choose between different telecom providers. To do that, he’s had to drive more communication and collaboration in the industry. Read on for an inside look at his connectivity solutions.

“The main thing we were thinking about is that there are 2,000 telecoms worldwide, so how could we create synergy between different direct companies? Back in 2016, it was clear that easy SIM would be the next big thing, because if telecoms could collaborate, then swapping from one telecom to another using the same technology would be a no-brainer because of the value for IoT companies. Right away we thought that there needed to be a neutral, independent telecom middleman who gathers telecoms on one service, because different telecoms were not getting long, and it was very hard to find synergy there.

From day one, we have been aggregating different telecom deals on one service. In essence, we are a reseller. We negotiate with telecoms, and we resell their megabytes and gigabytes to our customers. The value we provide is that we have many telecom deals we can offer to our customers, and once they start using different telecom profiles, they still need to manage the service somehow.

We have built the connectivity management platform that enables them to control the sims, starting from switching on and off and sending SMS or setting data limits to actually getting notifications. Setting up that let me know if someone either consumes too much, too little, or goes to a blacklisted country. Also, the system learns from the behaviour of the sim, and if it detects something weird, then it notifies the customer right away.

We put a lot of effort into building the connectivity management platform from day one, which has been super important because it’s not just about getting their connectivity up and running. If you are running thousands or hundreds of thousands of devices in different countries on a daily basis, then you need to understand what’s going on. If something happens, you need to debug it, and you want to go into details. You want to see all of the sessions, minute by minute in the right network, looking at how much it consumed, what might be the issue, etc. You want to do everything on a self-service basis through a platform or by using API’s.

A few years ago, we finished developing our own ECM infrastructure as well. Now we are among the 33 companies in the world who have built the ECM infrastructure themselves. The main thing is good telecom deals, connectivity management platforms and infrastructures are owned by us developers.”

To hear more about Mark and 1oT’s solutions, tune into Episode 24 of The Connectivity Matters Podcast here.

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.

WSBW Paris 2024: The Space Industry’s Path to Expansion, Innovation, and Sustainability

Posted on October 25, 2024October 25, 2024 by Laurie Scott

This year’s World Space Business Week (WSBW) in Paris set the stage for insightful discussions and bold predictions about the future of the space industry. As the space sector accelerates its growth trajectory, several key themes emerged that highlighted the immense potential and challenges that lie ahead.

Explosive Growth of the Space Industry

One of the most exciting takeaways came from Novaspace, emphasizing the rapid expansion of commercial space activities. Satellite services, communications, and Earth observation businesses are thriving like never before, with both private enterprises and governments driving the demand for satellite data. It’s not just a matter of sending satellites into orbit anymore—it’s about harnessing their capabilities to transform industries on the ground.

Earth Observation: The Powerhouse of Data

BlackSky’s win of the 2024 Novaspace Leading Earth Observation Business Award underscored just how crucial Earth observation has become. From defense to agriculture and environmental monitoring, the value of geospatial intelligence is skyrocketing. The ability to monitor and analyze our planet in near real-time is becoming indispensable for decision-making in both public and private sectors.

Sustainability and Space’s Role in Climate Action

Another key focus was sustainability, a hot topic in every industry, and space is no exception. WSBW attendees were deeply engaged in how space technology can be a game-changer in fighting climate change. From climate monitoring to sustainable energy solutions, space assets are increasingly being leveraged to support environmental protection efforts. The synergy between space and sustainability is set to drive innovation in the years ahead.

The Booming Satellite Communication Sector

The satellite communications sector is experiencing significant shifts. According to Euroconsult’s projections, this industry is poised to hit USD 123 billion by 2032. While traditional video services are declining, new data-driven verticals, such as direct-to-cell communications, offer immense opportunities—potentially unlocking a USD 100 billion market. However, despite the excitement, challenges in adoption remain a hurdle that the industry must overcome.

Changing Revenue Streams in Satellite Operations

Interestingly, the financial landscape for satellite operators is evolving as well. The mix of revenue sources is shifting, with value-added services now representing a larger slice of the pie. In contrast, wholesale capacity—a mainstay in satellite business models—has dwindled to just 20% of total revenue. This shift signals that operators are adapting to a new reality where innovation and tailored services are driving profitability.

WSBW 2024 not only showcased the rapid evolution of the space industry but also highlighted the innovative ways in which it’s intersecting with broader societal needs—from climate action to next-gen communications. The future is undeniably bright, but with it comes the challenge of navigating new frontiers. As the industry grows, so too will its role in shaping the world of tomorrow.

Transformation in Content & Media

Posted on October 25, 2024October 21, 2024 by Tegan Valeny

With so many social and technological changes happening around the world, transformation is a key skill for any content and media company that wants to stay relevant. On Episode 32 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast we spoke with Chris Pulis, the Chief Technology Officer at Globecast, who has a huge amount of experience when it comes to leading transformation projects. Read on for his insights into the process.

How do you know when to kick off a transformation project?

You have to be in tune with the business. I came into those early projects as someone who saw it as ‘this is something that management has made a decision about’, and I just became part of the overall plan. Later in life, as I ran businesses, I could see that there were changes happening in the business and identify which of those are different areas of the business needed to be addressed.

I realised that if we want to stay relevant, we have to move off of antennas, because satellites are moving into terrestrial networks like the cloud. We need to start making investments and changes so that we’re not behind. To me, one of the worst things in the world is hearing about changes for the first time from a customer. Our goal is to make sure that we’re ready for that and that we’re bringing these solutions to the customers before they even know what they are.

But, transformation efforts are difficult. Change drives anxiety, and everybody reacts a little differently to it. Some people have an easier time with it, but it bothers some people a lot. You need to be understanding of that and have a plan that keeps empathy in mind and that also includes education or training. Your plan has to enable everybody to be successful at doing this new thing. As a management team, you will be a support group for this change that’s coming. At the end of the day, it’s about people, and enabling an environment or culture that understands that it’s not going to be easy for everybody.

How do you make sure that teams and individuals are engaged in these transformation projects?

I think it’s important to be very transparent with people. In the entertainment industry, some people have a philosophy of ‘Knowledge is power, and I’m going to keep this knowledge, and I’m not going to share any of it’. I actually subscribe to the opposite philosophy, which says that the importance of power is to share it. By that I mean making sure that everybody understands what the plan is, what the goals are, and if for some reason something’s not clear, then creating an opportunity to come together and clearly define what that is. If everybody knows how things are going to evolve, there will be less anxiety.

I use town hall meetings on a frequent basis to make sure everybody understands the plan. I take pictures of everything and I share them all the time. I want everybody to feel like they have an understanding of the process. There shouldn’t be any surprises about an ongoing transformation.

How do you measure success within transformations?

It is a challenge. When you go into a transformation project, you need to put together a plan that says what we are supporting for the business, what we are enabling from an addressable market standpoint, and what new revenue streams we are enabling as a result of this transformation. Sometimes it’s strictly an efficiency play, because you’re moving from a technology that doesn’t scale to a technology that’s significantly scalable with a low incremental cost. You’ve got to sit down and look at the business plan. You can’t just say, ‘We have a new technology and we’re going to adopt it’, you have to think, ‘How is this AI going to enhance our customer experience?’ Figure out the business plan first before you implement the transformational exercise to make that change.

To hear more about leading transformations, tune into Episode 32 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here.

Organically Attracting Satellite Talent

Posted on October 22, 2024October 21, 2024 by Katja Schmieding

As talent shortages remain rife across the satellite industry, companies are adopting unique ways to attract talent from outside the sector. On Episode 40 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, we spoke with Mustafa Murad, the CEO of Appliot, about how he is organically building a team. Read on for his insights.

How is Appliot trying to find the best talent for its team?

The work-from-home concept has made the competition very aggressive in the talent market. Everybody understands that after COVID, there are no more geographical boundaries, so the competition is extremely high. Talent is everywhere, so our recruitment agents are hunting around different companies across the sector.

In addition, I would say that recruitment itself is a very rare skill in the market today. Understanding talent, how to deal with them, and how to hire them requires a specialist skill set. Going to professional entities who can do the headhunting and hiring for us will be a much easier and more cost-efficient approach. It also develops organic skill sets, especially in the high-tech industries and communication field. Partnering with specialists is the best way to hire talent at the moment.

What do you think companies can do to attract more talent in an organic way?

The overall company development roadmap definitely is a key component that attracts talent to join and carry on. Sometimes you can be successful in hiring but not in retaining top talent. Our company roadmap is definitely something that attracts talent, but also is a key tool for how the company develops the talents within the company.

In our part of the world – and by that I mean the Middle East and Africa – attracting talent to the company can be a challenge. The philosophy of how we deal with our employees has to evolve, and the culture has to change. People should understand incentives like they do in other countries or continents because I think that is the only way to maintain and attract talent to companies.

To hear more from Mustafa Murad, tune into Episode 40 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast.

Creating a Space Economy

Posted on October 18, 2024 by Ewan Lawrenson

As companies start establishing operations in space, a space economy is developing above us. To explain this phenomenon, and help us understand its implications for everybody on Earth, we spoke with Robert Carlisle, the Co-Founder of Argo Space, on Episode 39 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast. Robert previously had a five-year tenure at SpaceX, including a stint as their Director of Commercial Launch Sales, before founding Argo Space with his two brothers, both of whom also worked at SpaceX before venturing out on their own. Read on for Robert’s insights into the growing space economy.

When we talk about a new space economy, why is that important for humanity?

An in-space economy sounds very exciting, but most of what it means today is things like communication satellites for Earth observation. We use the Internet from a ViaSat or an Intelsat satellite, or nowadays from Starlink. Governments use Earth observation satellites for images, synthetic aperture radar, and all kinds of other observation methods to monitor specific things that are happening. There are a lot of different national security and civil space uses as well.

Most of what we call the space economy today is just serving those things by putting satellites into orbit. Those satellites are creating jobs, whether they are consumer-facing or business-facing. There are further out parts, such as the robotic exploration of the Moon, Mars, and other parts of the solar system, but those are mostly the provenance of governments.

However, over the last few years, we’ve started to see more of these private space missions, like what Axiom and SpaceX are doing by sending people who aren’t government astronauts up in Dragon capsules, and even to the space station. People are trying to create commercial space stations and commercial manufacturing in space. We’re just starting to see the potential for these new applications that aren’t a part of what we would call this base economy today.

You were featured in a great article in the Wall Street Journal, where you said we should use a rocket as the cargo ship regularly comes to port and then have a semi-truck that lives in space and takes the cargo elsewhere. Can you tell us more about that?

I love talking about the logistics side of a space economy and the differences between how space logistics work and how we view logistics on Earth. SpaceX is starting to make launches a regular thing and at a very reliable, high cadence. Now, people like me still get very excited watching a rocket launch, but we’re looking at a future where it’s commonplace, where a rocket launch is like watching a ship coming in and out of court.

With the specific metaphor you mentioned, essentially, rockets are the only way that we can get to orbital velocity. But in order to do that most of the rocket mass is propellant, so to maximise efficiency, what we should do is use all the rockets’ payload mass capability to get into low earth orbit, which is the minimum place where you can reach orbital velocity and deploy some payloads. Then you want to have a space segment, which is a transport vehicle that is optimised to move things in orbit, which is different from what a rocket engine looks like on Earth. We view that as the best situation if you have a heavy-lift rocket.

It’s equivalent to the cargo ship coming across the Pacific Ocean, dropping off goods at the Port of Los Angeles. That cargo ship is maximising its payload efficiency and freight velocity by having standardised cargo containers that can be loaded onto 18-wheelers at the port. They’re designed to move things across the land, to pick up these cargo containers at the port and take them to their final destination. That’s sort of how we view kind of the future state of space transportation, where you’ve got a starship, with lower-cost reusable lifters bringing a bunch of cargo to low Earth orbit on a standardised route, and then in-space transportation vehicles like ours taking those payloads and satellites out to their operational orbits where they do their work.

What are some of the other areas of the lunar economy that really excite you?

The most exciting thing to us is the applications, and that’s what we’re trying to work on. We think that the first application for lunar resources is to use water as a propellant. There are other potential applications out there, too, and a lot of people are talking about infrastructure, which is pretty exciting. There are NASA contracts like the human landing system programme, and SpaceX and Blue Origin have been contracted to land humans on the moon, which will be awesome to see.

Right now there is the Eclipse programme, where NASA has contracted smaller commercial landers to put robotic payloads and rovers on the moon. We saw Intuitive Machines soft-land recently, which was great. It’s super exciting to see all that activity. The commercial risk approach that NASA has taken there is quite interesting, and we’re excited to see how it develops.

To hear more from Robert, tune into The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here.

Cerby’s Best Practices for Securing Cloud Native Applications

Posted on October 15, 2024 by Daisy Steel

Matthew Chiodi, the Chief Trust Officer at Cerby, joined us on Episode 37 of The Cyber Security Matters Podcast to share his insights into the industry. One of the topics that stood out to us was the best practices that he shared from Cerby’s work on securing cloud-native applications. Here are the highlights of his answers:

“When people say cloud-native application, that refers to applications that are built cloud-first. If you have a VM that’s running on-prem and you move it to run in the cloud, that’s not cloud-native – that’s just cloud transferring. Quite frankly, it’s a waste of time and money to do that. Cloud-native means that your infrastructure was not built manually, but it was built using infrastructure as code templates, defining what your infrastructure would look like in code first. Then you’re using code to bring up things like lambda functions that only work during a certain period of execution. That doesn’t use a typical VM, it’s usually a microservices-based architecture.

When it comes to cyber security, the basics still apply. Organisations have a massive data sprawl issue in the cloud because it’s so easy to upload to. If you go back 5+ years ago, if you needed a new data store, you had to open a ticket with your IT department and wait 2-3 weeks or even months, depending on the size of the organisation, before you got access to it. Data also tended to be much more centralised, and there were checks and balances. For a lot of cloud environments, that’s not a problem anymore. Developers generally have a fairly high level of access to create new services and they can create new data stores on demand by calling APIs, so you tend to get data in all different places.

You have to know where your data is and what it is because if you don’t, sensitive data, like personally identifiable information, can easily end up in the wrong place. Health information that was intended to only be in a production environment can very easily be moved to lower environments that don’t have the same level of governance. I’d advise having a good tool that can tell you what you have and who has access to it.

Knowing your code – specifically your application security code – is still highly important because you might know where your data is, and who has access to it, but if you’re writing crappy code, you’re introducing a vulnerability to your digital environment. So, you have to know who has access to your data and your code. If I get access to your data, I can do what I want with it. Or, if I get access to your code, I can inject things into your code that will then give me access to your data.

In terms of what Cerby does; I usually say that in all organisations, you have two different types of applications. A lot of times we think of cloud apps versus on-prem apps, and that’s true, but really it comes down to identity and access management. You have standard apps that you can very easily integrate with your identity provider, and your IT team can manage them centrally in terms of who should have access through that type of identity provider. The other category is what we call non-standard applications or disconnected applications. This is a massive problem space because the apps that fall into the nonstandard category can’t be managed with your central identity systems. Cerby is focused on that non-standard space.

We connect those non-standard applications back into identity platforms on trial ID. We did a little bit of research last year, and what we really wanted to understand was the scope and scale of the problem, and we found that organisations have a median of about 175 of these non-standard apps. We’ve spoken to some large healthcare companies who have 1000s of these, and we know there are hard costs associated with these applications because if you as an IT admin in one of these organisations have an employee who needs access to one of these non-standard apps, they can’t go through any kind of automated process – they can’t go into your access request system, they’re going to put a ticket in. Once you get to it, you have to manually log into this app, figure out what access they need, etc. and it’s all a lot of hassle. We make it so that you can centrally manage these non-standard disconnected apps, using your existing native tools.

To find out more about securing cloud-based applications, tune into Episode 37 of The Cyber Security Matters Podcast here.

Generative AI’s Impact on the Content & Media Industry

Posted on October 11, 2024 by Tegan Valeny

As AI continues to develop, so does its impact on the content and media industry. To help us understand the impact this phenomenon will have on the future of work in our industry, we invited Micky Edwards, the VP of Business Development EMEA & APAC at TAG Video Systems, to speak to us on The Content & Media Matters Podcast. Read on for his insights on AI.

What is generative AI, and how does it differ from other types of AI?

Generative AI is an artificial intelligence that can react to things in real time as they are going on. Artificial intelligence has been around for quite some time, but it’s all been pre-programmed, so it was looking at and understanding things that were already known. Generative AI is the next step up, and it’s looking at how it can bring that information together to start making different things. The fact that it can start to do contextual things like understand the context of what’s going on, and then produce some text is incredible.

What is the impact of AI on jobs and the future of work?

A lot of people are worried that generative AI will take jobs away, but I think it’ll allow people to go and do something different. I think it will positively impact the future of work, because it may allow people to have a better sort of work-home balance as well as do some of these more repetitive tasks that you have within the industry. These tasks that would take somebody many hours to do can now be handled by generative AI while they go and do something else, giving them more free time as well.

The whole process that we’re going through at the moment is learning about AI’s limits and how it will help us to look at our work-life balance. It may be that you’ll end up doing more job sharing, where you’re doing part of a job, but the other part of the job is being done by a machine, which means that somebody else can come in and do something else, while that’s going on. I’m not totally convinced that it’s a bad thing.

AI is also expanding the knowledge of what’s achievable with programming and operations, across not just our industry, but multiple industries. There’s always going to be a requirement for some things, like having a person stand behind a camera, and they have robotics and AI controlling it, but actually, a skilled operator can still get those shots that a computer system just can’t process. So yes, AI will come in and make things different, but I’m not sure it’ll be a bad difference. There will definitely be some upsides to not having humans do the repetitive jobs within the industry.

How do you see generative AI being used in the industry as a whole?

I think where we’ll see AI really coming to the forefront is in a new generation of FAST channels. So these are free to air, without subscription, ad-supported television. Broadcasters want to reach out to produce these as cheaply as possible because the only revenue they’re getting is through ad insertion. So, we can see a point where generative AI will have access to the content, and there’ll be some rules that it has to follow, but it’ll be able to take that content and be able to produce these FAST channels, and then self-manage them. It’s already doing ad selections and things like that, depending on the content type and by looking at the people that are watching it and being able to select the correct ads for them. That will help some of the broadcasters who are perhaps struggling a little bit to make any money out of FAST channels. I see that it as definitely a positive for them to be able to use generative AI to help do that.

To hear more from Micky, tune into Episode 31 of The Content & Media Matters Podcast here.

Addressing Common Hiring Challenges in Cyber Security

Posted on October 8, 2024October 8, 2024 by Daisy Steel

As the Cyber Security industry expands, growing your team has become more difficult than ever. On Episode 36 of The Cyber Security Matters Podcast we spoke with Julia Doronina, the Co-founder and CMO at G-71 Security, about the challenges she’s faced when it comes to scaling her team. Julia is also a passionate advocate and mentor for women in tech, giving her some valuable insights into diversifying the sector’s talent pool and making it more accessible.

What are the key talent topics that need addressing the most?

I believe that it’s important to focus on employee development and to provide opportunities for career growth. With the rise of artificial intelligence, there are many new solutions and projects on the market, so companies and executive teams need to encourage their employees to learn new things and understand these new approaches because they can help optimise processes. The main thing is to support your employees and help them to grow themselves.

Do you struggle to hire based on talent shortages?

We’re a startup and we don’t have a big team right now. We were dealing with different outsourced people who can help us with different activities, like design, copywriting, analysis, and so on. I think that it’s very important when you’re talking with people who you want to attract to your company, to talk to them about the use cases for their skills, not just their CV, to understand how they think and how they can implement their skills into your business. Figure out how they can expand your current situation or activities.

Early in my career, my skill set was straightforward. I knew the general and traditional channels, and I implemented them. Now I’m trying to use AI. I use Chat GPT, about 20, 30 or even 40 times per day for different tasks because it can help me optimise my processes. My worldview and approach to problem-solving are changing as the world evolves, and I think that we need to encourage people to develop themselves in the same way.

There’s a lack of diversity at a grassroots level, so what can we do to address this?

We need to create an inclusive culture in companies, even in startups. We need to include different inclusivity training and actively attract candidates from diverse demographic groups because they have a lot of insights and skills. It can be great to create programmes to support the development of underrepresented people. It’s important for companies to actively support these initiatives, mostly from the executive point of view, because they are the drivers of the company, so they need to support it.

To hear more from Julia, tune into Episode 36 of The Cyber Security Matters Podcast here.

Inside Apex’s Next-Generation Satellite Bus Solutions

Posted on October 4, 2024October 8, 2024 by Katja Schmieding

As the industry works to make access to space more widely available, innovative launch solutions and shared rockets are becoming increasingly popular. On Episode 38 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast we spoke with Ian Cinnamon, the Co-Founder and CEO of Apex, about the company’s unique solution to this phenomenon. Established in 2022, Apex aims to address a growing opportunity in spacecraft manufacturing thanks to its standardised product offering and rapid manufacturing techniques. Read on for an inside look at the founding story of this innovative company.

It all really started through customer conversation. I’m a big believer that you start with the problem, not the solution. From over 100 customer conversations, my Co-Founder Max and I very quickly realised that the bottleneck in the industry used to be the launch site. So how do you get something from Earth up into space more quickly? That bottleneck has effectively been alleviated thanks to all of the brilliant launch companies and investment dollars that have gone into the space. However, with any systems equation, when you alleviate one bottleneck, another one will appear in the system. The bottleneck has now shifted to satellite buses.

If you don’t know what a satellite bus is, the way to think about it is that a rocket or launch vehicle will take something from Earth and deposit it onto a platform in space. The thing you’re depositing into space could be a fancy new camera that looks at climate change or monitors the movement of troops. Maybe it’s a communications dish that helps us talk to each other all around the world, et cetera, et cetera. It could be anything, really. Whatever it is, we call it the payload.

There are brilliant companies out there who are amazing at making payloads, but those payloads cannot survive on their own in space. So take a camera, for example. Let’s say you make a new fancy camera that can take amazing high-resolution photos of the Earth. If you just stick a camera up in space, it doesn’t work because it needs power. It needs to be able to move around, communicate with the Earth, deal with thermal issues, etc. In order for the payload to function in space, you have to attach it to what’s called in the industry a satellite bus or satellite platform.

These buses have been made since the dawn of the space era, but from all of the conversations that we had in the early days with customers, what we realised was that companies were able to secure a ride to space fairly quickly, but the problem was the satellite bus that would let the payload function was the slowest part of the process.

That problem was universal across government, commercial, and everything in between. Almost every single customer we interviewed said the biggest pain point they had was the speed at which they could get one of these satellite buses. That is what we set out to solve at Apex: how can we alleviate the bottleneck and deliver satellite buses as quickly as possible to customers?

To hear more about Apex’s unique service offering, tune into Episode 38 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here.

Using AI in Connectivity

Posted on October 1, 2024 by Tom Wilding

Generative AI has already become part of the workforce. To help us understand its role in the connectivity industry, we spoke with Bruno Santos, the Global Business Development Director at Celfocus, on Episode 23 of The Connectivity Matters Podcast. He explained the impact that AI has already had on the industry and shared his opinion on the opportunities it offers. Read on for the highlights of the conversation.

AI has come into the public eye much more significantly more recently. Do you see that as a positive or a negative?

I tend to see it as positive. If it’s a new technology and it’s disruptive, it will change our behaviour. I’m not sure if it will be equivalent to the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century, but it is something that will change our lives forever. We are also seeing a lot of impact not only with our clients but with our own internal processes too. Our teams are using AI to accelerate their performance and delivery, like generating new test data without waiting for the client to provide us with it or having ChatGPT generate code. We then take that output and take it to the next level by fine-tuning the requirements and wording in order to build and deliver the solution.

AI has been changing a lot of our ways of working internally. We even have a mandate from our board to start using more ChatGPT engineering in our daily tasks. If we can use it to build a presentation, we should do that as much as we can in order to become more efficient. We are also challenging some of the assets AI produces, but I think it’s changing our ways of working and will keep changing more.

What impact has AI had on Celfocus so far?

We’ve been leveraging AI to increase advanced data analytics since 2018. When it comes to the clear benefits to our clients, it’s always very hard to demonstrate and explain what we do with the data, but you can predict things based on historical data, so while it’s always very hard to convince our clients, adopting AI is the right move. We have an extensive set of AI use cases to share with our clients, the most important of which is the very good positioning in the industry we have thanks to these insights.

Over the last two years, especially with all the ChatGPT hype, it was very easy for us to change because we were already using AI. Now we’re extending our capabilities and solutions to use generic AI. Our team was already fluent in this kind of technology; now we’re just using a different flavour. We’re working closely with our clients to demonstrate the benefits of using AI.

What would you say are the biggest opportunities AI presents for the industry?

There are a few of them, and we are already seeing efficiency and cost savings. We are currently assigning people to different tasks that are more beneficial for our clients. We are also rescaling our clients’ workforces based on our solutions. Going beyond that, AI is changing things around operations and automating things in order to be cost-effective. That’s where you have the key decision points for our clients, like “What is the business case? What is the financial benefit I can get from the solution?” Those are key drivers for applying those generative AI and machine learning use cases to our clients. There is a huge set of opportunities, but they all go in the direction of making processes more effective.

What are the biggest challenges around AI in connectivity?

The biggest challenge is confidence in the solution and the technology. The privacy and ethics of what we are delivering are some of the key topics because everything involves a huge set of data from everywhere, not only from public information but sometimes from critical and confidential information from our clients. There’s always the problem of trust. Data and regulation is one of the key topics that we need to address. How trustworthy is the solution that we are bringing? Sometimes it’s it’s not straightforward.

What we have is a first step called human-assisted AI. We provide insights and a way to automate without human intervention, but in between there is always a human validating that information. They can apply the recommendation that the engine is providing and certify its validity. Our end-user solutions are based on AI algorithms that work by themselves.

To learn more about AI’s role in connectivity, listen to Episode 23 of The Connectivity Matters Podcast here.