Cellular IoT Connectivity Management that Powers Your Business

From connected cars and trucks to automated robots to lifesaving healthcare solutions, cellular IoT is transforming the way we work and live. Today, there are more than two billion cellular IoT connected devices world-wide, and the global cellular IoT market is expected to exceed $18.2 billion by 2027.

But cellular IoT at scale can overwhelm the organizations it is intended to help. The sheer scale and volume of devices can create big challenges across business operations – and operating at scale can compound the already complex processes of provisioning and managing the lifecycle of your devices. Managing devices at scale limits visibility into individual device usage and behavior, creating blind spots that can hide operational inefficiencies and service disruptions while increasing costs. Additionally, security is always paramount – deploying and connecting hundreds or thousands of devices can create myriad opportunities for security breaches

Complexity, Visibility, Security: each of these challenges reinforce one another, potentially creating costly and time-consuming barriers that choke growth, rather than enabling it.

So, how are organizations tackling the challenges of cellular IoT connectivity management? Some try to handle it with rudimentary products – or worse, they try to handle it manually, just like the average smartphone user, something that is time-intensive and error-prone – and likely near impossible to do. Having the right tools to manage your devices and deployment is critical to your success – and a Connectivity Management Platform (CMP) is the must-have tool. The right CMP is a core part of your IoT solution design and is essential for any company looking to deploy high-performing IoT projects at scale. Maintaining reliable connectivity to the network is critical to the success of any IoT project – but there is a lot more to keeping control of your connectivity.

With the right CMP, you can monitor, analyze, provision, troubleshoot, and modify your cellular IoT deployments, while also reducing complexity, as well as:

• Lower operation and maintenance costs
• Collect data to gain actionable insights
• Get fast and secure batch activation
• Detect problems in real-time
• Enhance functionality, convenience, security, and connectivity

Less sophisticated CMP solutions often lack the breadth and depth of features required to successfully manage your deployment, and they usually don’t have the intelligent automation required to handle devices across a variety of uses cases at scale. A lesser CMP may also lack the stability, flexibility, and granular control mechanisms needed to help organizations simplify complexity, gain visibility, and mitigate risks.

Here’s the thing: no matter how long your device has been deployed or will be deployed, you want to be able to maintain and manage it for its entire lifecycle. A sophisticated CMP enables organizations to lower the overhead associated with managing at-scale IoT connectivity while dramatically increasing visibility and control. It also provides access to invaluable data and insights, helping to optimize existing deployments and increase new project success rates – and it enables you to do it in a secure way.

Benefits of a Connectivity Management Platform

• Scalable and optimal connectivity management for all devices
• Future-proof solution that adapts to regulatory, commercial and/or service requirements
• Cost controls
• Automated processes and reports
• Easy integration with backend systems using APIs
• Secure data transfer
• Single interface to managed connectivity provider & single pane view of deployment

With a CMP, you can manage network profiles for each of your devices, including downloading new profiles to adapt to changing circumstances, such as changing location or addressing roaming restrictions. It also allows you to dynamically steer your devices or switch to different networks in order to achieve optimal connectivity and uptime, while also managing interconnects to Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), notifying them of services that need to be activated when a device is provisioned in their network.

There are a number of key features that are critical when choosing the right Connectivity Management Platform in order to reap the benefits outlined above:

SIM management profile

We’re on the verge of massive IoT and as the number of networked devices continues to grow, the amount of applications and data processed will also increase exponentially. This kind of growth will make scalability one of the essential elements of any competitive IoT solution. Your solution must consist of scalable elements, at least during the far ends of the connectivity parts; you need scalable solutions that cater to growth and changed business and technology shifts down the line. Also consider integration options to make sure your demands are met today, but are also scalable for the future.

A CMP should support zero-touch provisioning and activation of thousands of SIMs at the same time, and you should be able to get an overview of the status of all your deployments, regardless of location, network, or technology.

Rate plans and billing

As IoT deployments become more complex, with different kinds of devices and a range of connectivity technologies, as well as optimization for specific data volumes and throughput, let’s just say it isn’t easy to get a consistent view of your costs. Your CMP should provide a clear and transparent view of your rate plans, along with the associated network operators, contract lengths, and all relevant charges. In other words, you should have a complete overview of everything related to billing. Having this overview is vital to cost control, particularly as deployments scale.

Alerts, monitoring, and reporting

Your CMP should keep you fully informed of any challenges or issues related to your deployment. Custom alerts will keep you notified – either through the platform or via text or email – of any unusual or undesired activity. These alerts could include data overages or connectivity issues, which ensures any challenges are quickly addressed and managed.

Indeed, an advanced CMP should be able to notify you when it detects device behaviour that is uncharacteristic, enabling the proactive identification of connectivity issues as they unfold. Fix the problem before it becomes costly! Monitoring functionality also allows you to spot potential vulnerabilities and confirm that your devices are connecting to the right networks at the right time using the right parameters. Your CMP should allow you to see basic authentication information for every device, as well as view historical records of connection attempts and activity. Your CMP should also provide data analytics and insights and support reporting on variables such as usage, IP, device, sessions, etc. Ultimately, your CMP should provide the necessary transparency that allows you to optimize your deployment with the metrics that matter to you.

Security

A CMP doesn’t just facilitate connectivity – it protects it. Many IoT devices lack the processing power to implement advanced security features, which is why it is imperative that your CMP is able to secure your connections by providing security features at the network level. Prevent unauthorized devices from accessing your services and protect devices, customer data, and backend systems with multi-layered enterprise-grade user and application security. Block unauthorized devices by allowing only predefined devices or detecting when a SIM has been moved between devices. Identify potentially compromised devices and accelerate response times with real-time device monitoring, advanced analytics, and automation to act on devices that exhibit unusual data and connectivity behavior.

Your IoT solution will potentially connect thousands to hundreds of thousands of devices, so permitting only authorized and secure devices to join your ecosystem is crucial. Additionally, your CMP should have the possibility to bring the transmission of your data to a higher level with additional security features.

Cost

The ongoing cost of data consumption is part of your contract with your Mobile Network Operator (MNO) that states data limits and/or fees for additional data usage. And depending on the scope of your deployment and the regions or countries in which you will be deploying, you may need to consider the cost of roaming. When comparing providers, make sure that you’re getting the connectivity you need at a price that suits your budget without compromising on reliability.

Choosing the Right Connectivity Management Platform

The right Connectivity Management Platform does more than just connect and manage devices; it is an engine for growth and profitability, accelerating your IoT journey from when you deploy your first devices to operating at scale. A CMP enables you to rapidly innovate and expand your IoT business by delivering better customer experiences, while at the same time lowering costs and streamlining operations.

With a Connectivity Management Platform, you can manage your SIMs and devices in a more efficient and economical way, and do things like:

• Order SIMs and manage SIM contracts
• Define and regulate devices’ data consumption
• Control and monitor available networks
• Change data plans
• Troubleshoot connectivity challenges
• Detailed advanced diagnostics
• Examine invoice data in depth to understand your costs in detail – which devices are configured efficiently, and which devices need optimizing.

Every enterprise, though, has unique priorities. Your CMP should meet the requirements of all verticals and uses cases, from the simplest to the most complex. Let’s look at the needs of organizations just beginning their cellular IoT journey and those that are expanding their IoT business with new products and services:

Early stage IoT deployments

Early stage IoT deployments are often organizations that have an established product line addressing a specific use case/vertical. This product could be used to operate, for example, electricity meters for a utility company, or it could be a company that sells to both businesses and consumers, such as smoke alarms.

These companies build their IoT strategy based on adding SIMs to their established product. In other words, they want to add remote connectivity for things like remote testing of smoke alarms, tracking cargo containers, or maintenance of vending machines. Cellular IoT connectivity is new to them, and they need expertise and guidance from their provider. The priority is launching devices and providing reliable service to the end customer. The more sophisticated CMP capabilities – APIs, multi-stage automation combinations, deeper data analytics and reporting – are not usually important at this point in their IoT journey (although as these companies progress and mature, efficiency and optimization will become priorities.)

Companies at this stage need connectivity for the long process of tech development/testing (adding SIMs to devices), determining deployment models, and building applications in the backend, long before they ever deploy the devices.

Mature IoT initiatives

Mature IoT initiatives refers to organizations who have already begun their IoT journey and mature IoT initiatives may be innovating their original product or service or adding connectivity to entirely new product lines. Companies at this more mature stage have a good understanding of IoT cellular connectivity and of connectivity management platforms and have already overcome the initial challenges of launching and managing connected devices. They are now looking to drive greater operational efficiencies and cost optimization.

To reach these objectives, companies at this stage require more sophisticated CMP functionality, such as API integrations, multi-stage automation combinations, and deeper analytics and reporting, which were not necessarily important at the early stages of their IoT initiative. They now need flexibility in their CMP to accommodate the different or new product and/or service devices, processes, and data requirements.

Strategy

Connectivity is a strategic choice, and many companies – particularly start-ups – are increasingly basing their business models on IoT, or they’re changing their business models to incorporate IoT. These include companies that use the ‘access over ownership’ model, such as e-scooters. And because connectivity is a strategic choice, it is important to choose the CMP that will support your growth, because a CMP with a limited bag of tricks – functionalities – can hinder that growth.

So, what if a CMP could do more than just connect and manage your devices? What if it could help you:

• Accelerate your business?
• Streamline your operations?
• Enrich your customer experiences?

Cisco IoT Control Center (2CONTROL)

Cisco IoT Control Center (2CONTROL) is the world’s leading Connectivity Management Platform. It does more than just connect and manage devices – it is an engine for growth and profitability. It accelerates your IoT journey from deploying your first devices to operating at scale. It enables you to rapidly innovate and expand your IoT business by delivering better customer experiences, while at the same time lowering costs and streamlining operations.

Transferred 600,000+ units over the air to Control Center with no service disruptions.

At its core, Cisco IoT Control Center (2CONTROL) enables you to move faster, operate smarter, and scale safer with a broad set of capabilities designed to meet any business scenario, from the simplest to the most complex.

Leveraging the Control Center platform enabled us to more quickly penetrate major markets.

Move Faster	Operate Smarter	Scale Safer
Accelerate innovation and time to-market to drive and expand market leadership.	Deliver better customer experiences while increasing profitability.	Protect devices, data, and systems while responding quickly to suspicious device behavior.
– Speed time-to-market – Simplify expansion – Drive innovation	– Improve service quality – Reduce costs – Maximize operational efficiency	– Mitigate risk – Block threats – Speed response

Move Faster

Quickly and accurately connect, provision, and deploy devices at scale with rules-based automation designed for your unique business scenario. Easily add additional use cases and expand across geographies without additional platform integration. Leverage data-driven insights to unlock new opportunities, spur innovation, and capitalize on emerging technologies with ongoing platform innovations.

Configured thousands of devices in minutes, it would have taken several weeks manually.

Operate smarter

Increase service reliability and reduce mean-time-to-resolution with real-time, automated diagnostics that allow you to quickly identify and respond to device and connectivity issues. Reduce operational costs with sophisticated process automation and eliminate unexpected connectivity costs with tools that automatically select the most suitable rate, virtually eliminating overage fees. Automate workflows and optimize labor productivity with a comprehensive library of APIs to integrate directly into your existing applications and systems.

Optimized our data plans and achieved cost savings of up to 20%.

Scale safer

Cisco IoT Control Center (2CONTROL) offers secure platform access with 2-factor authentication, customizable password policies, IP allow list, and single sign-on integration. It has multi-layered user security and includes role-based access and application audit trails built from comprehensive logging, and it blocks unauthorized devices with IMEI ‘Allow & Deny’ lists.

Cisco IoT Control Center (2CONTROL) is a SaaS Connectivity Management Platform offered as a service to enterprises. Cisco pioneered the cellular IoT CMP category fifteen years ago and is today the global market leader in IoT cellular connectivity management. IoT Control Center’s differentiating capabilities include 3000 automation-rule combinations, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) analytics, device behaviour characterisation, and cost optimization capabilities. It is the only commercial platform designed for all IoT use cases, from the simplest to the most complex.

If you would like to learn more about Cisco IoT Control Center (2CONTROL) and how it can help you better manage your cellular IoT deployment, please get in touch.