While the industry continues to evolve the opportunities continue expanding and in some cases make strategic acquisitions important. The impact of the hype on long- term players is that growth has become important to show in the market.
However, scale for scale’s sake is not a formula for success, according to Alec Brisbourne, CEO, Kore. Talking with Brisbourne on Kore’s acquisition of Wyless (News - Alert) in an all-cash transaction, it was clear that Kore is focused on strategic value.
While Kore is global player and MVNO of note to many, the addition of Wyless provides a richer footprint in Brazil and Europe (specifically the UK and Netherlands). It also expands their services to the enterprise with Wyless business connectivity services.
Alex pointed out that while the industry is still in its infancy, enterprises have three requirements that are driving their choice in partners. The first is the need to be global with teams available to support them in country. Roaming agreements without feet on the street are not enough as most Enterprises need multinational services even if they are not global.
The second requirement is to have flexibility in partner selection. The choice of sensors, modules and devices is essential given the diversity of applications in the market so the MVNO has to honor those requirements. The third requirement is for the customer to maintain ownership of the data and to have tools that allow them to manage it. Enterprises understand that their implementations and the data collected today, will probably expand tomorrow so the goal needs to be agile adaptability.
Adding Wyless to Kore makes a powerhouse with over 170 million dollars of revenue, a team of 350 people , 7 data centers globally; that manage 6M devices for over 3000 customers.
Wyless and Kore have been involved back in the days of “M2M 1.0.” Now they are at the center of IoT enterprise opportunity.