"WebNMS aims to empower its customers with data driven operations"

Karen Ravindranath, Director, WebNMS - (IoT division of Zoho Corp) in a chat with VARINDIA explains what potential does WebNMS sees in the IoT space and how will industrial IoT along with AI, ML, RPA going to accelerate digital transformation

How WebNMS has been contributing to making available an enterprise ready IoT ecosystem for its customers?

Today businesses are global and dynamic. The requirements of running an efficient enterprise are far more complex than what it was in the past. Enterprise decision makers are mostly unaware of operational discrepencies, cost overshoots and root cause of inefficiencies. Having said that, it also could appear daunting to adopt new digital transformational software due lack of knowledge or expertise in the field. It takes robust and features rich software to address all the challenges and offer befitting solutions to optimize costs and improve overall efficiency.

WebNMS IoT platform and solutions for enterprise were built ground up to address these operational as well as implementation challenges. The platform is highly advanced in terms of functionalities and simple in terms of usability. The platform is device agnostic and compatible to foster the new generation of IoT System Integrators, solution providers, IoT device and smart device manufacturers. It is packaged with operational capabilities for 'Energy Management, Remote Asset Monitoring and Fleet Monitoring and Management' into a single stack framework. The platform is highly customizable and has pre-built modules that offers the solution providers the advantage of quick adoption, POC and time to market. Apart from the platform, WebNMS has a set of plug and play IoT solutions engineered around these core capabilities.

The platform offers complete set of tools for data acquisition, processing, storage, security, data visualization and insights. Being a customizable and extensible platform lets the user replicate first cut implementation on a larger scale, in future.

WebNMS aims to empower the customers with data driven operations and System Integrators with ability to offer Value Added Services to their customers.

How is industrial IoT shaping up and how does WebNMS look at this space?

IIoT is the subset of IoT and is gaining impetus across industries. Proactively monitored and automated industrial production belts will considerably reduce unwanted downtime and improve overall efficiency. For enterprises to realize true cost optimization and operational efficiency, it is functionally and economically viable to integrate IIoT data with rest of the enterprise IoT data. For instance, data from the production belts and instrumentation devices will be synchronized with energy consumption data from other assets spread across the facility. This will paint a vivid picture of the consumption patterns, load balance data and useful analytics for future consumption. This will help in proactive scheduling of production and maintenance. WebNMS will be a facilitator in enabling holistic enterprise operations by actively integrating IIoT, enterprise operations and third party software integrations. This will empower businesses to go from being reactive to proactive and enjoy a connected environment.

How is IoT along with AI, ML, RPA going to accelerate the digital transformation?

The Internet of Things is the fulcrum holding all other branches of digital transformation like AI, ML, DL and RPA. With the high volumes of data obtained from IoT and ML, in hand, it is only natural for enterprises to exploit the possibilities of AI and RPA. Intelligent automation would be the future of business and industrial IoT.

To begin with, there is tons of data that is being analysed in an enterprise and business processes are no longer guesswork. ML and AI offer optimal value of the data by applying automation through acquired intelligence. Everything is validated by numbers and insights, implying that far more intelligent business decisions can be made now. Enterprises have started becoming more efficient in terms of production, supply chain and customer relations. Study of repeated patterns can help improve processes and open up new, contemporary revenue streams. These technologies will propel safe, energy efficient, economically viable, sustainable, and customer friendly enterprise environments.

What is going to be WebNMS's roadmap for 2019 in terms of delivering IoT?

WebNMS had been ranked among top IoT platform players by a leading IoT Analyst firm MachNation, early this year. In terms of product features, the platform has been upgraded with SDKs that allow the SIs and solution providers to jumpstart their deployments by integrating with any device/ asset/ things. WebNMS is working to enhance the end to end security of the platform to ensure safe and efficient data exchange across the network. Customizable AI and ML capabilities are being added to further upgrade the platform.

In terms of business strategy, WebNMS looks to widen the partner network in India and abroad. There is huge potential for Channel players to adopt and implement disruptive technologies like IoT to stay ahead of competition and add value to their customers. However, there is a gap between the potential market and actual adoptions. WebNMS aims to bridge this gap by being the most accessible, uncomplicated and features rich platform for the SIs to kick-start their IoT implementations for enterprises.

Besides, WebNMS is actively partnering with gateway and sensor manufacturers and hardware manufacturers wanting to go smart. Being device and protocol agnostic platform, it offers great advantage for these hardware players to adopt and build smart bundled solutions quickly and go to market in a concise turnaround time. This year we aim to partner with many more hardware and device manufacturers from India.

What will be some of the defining trends for IoT in the coming years?

Edge computing will be a major IoT trend for 2019. The need to have things done faster on the IoT network calls for a provision to achieve actions with minimum latency and bandwidth and this will achieved through Edge computing. WebNMS has its in-built Edge computing agent EdgeX that catalyses brownfield deployments and promotes local data processing and rule based automation.

The next is IoT Security. It will be a major concern in 2019 and the years to come. Solution providers should understand the criticality of data security and should choose solution platforms accordingly. CIOs and technology leaders in business will make IoT security an important part of their strategy.

Next is the advent of Digital Twins in enterprise operations. DT will be a virtual extension of physical assets enabling interactive models that make sense of data and offer proactive and predictive analytics.

Another crucial trend for IoT would be the development of 'Connected Business'. IoT data will no longer remain behind the doors of operations teams. It will make sense to connect the data to rest of the enterprise operations applications like ERP, CRM, customer desk etc to have a harmonious data sharing and connected operations across the enterprise.

How is your partner ecosystem empowered to deliver an IoT ecosystem to your customers? What role do they play in helping WebNMS grow?

IoT for enterprise connotes an ecosystem of multiple IoT players, right from device manufacturers to software platform providers to end solution providers. IoT solutions for enterprises are crafted from a consultative model driven by a collaborative partner ecosystem.

WebNMS facilitates a broad ecosystem of IoT players by partnering with hardware/ device manufacturers and turnkey solution providers facing the customers. Being a home-grown brand has its own advantage of being highly accessible and customer driven. Our partners are given hands-on training and technical literature for seamless POCs and deployment apart from conducting workshops and co-hosted exhibition at events. As far as Asia is concerned, WebNMS is looking to widen its horizon in terms of hardware partners wanting to go smart and promote the new league of IoT and engineering solution providers looking to adopt new, disruptive technologies.

Karen Ravindranath
Director, WebNMS