MTN Business' indirect channel in South Africa has welcomed the communications giant's new pan-African Internet of things (IOT) platform, and is preparing to harness the new capabilities to grow their businesses.
Jeremy Potgieter, MTN Group Manager for M2M and IOT, says the new platform puts greater control and efficiencies into the hands of these players, empowering them to innovate and grow their businesses. South African indirect channel partners are showing great enthusiasm about the new IOT ecosystem and what it can mean for them.
"Our existing customers who play in the application space, for example those who use our SIMs to support their telemetry or M2M solutions, are now able to better control and manage these SIMs. This is particularly important where cost control or time are of the essence," he says. Potgieter explains that, for example, a vehicle tracking firm can use the platform's device management features to directly monitor and manage M2M devices in cars, so eliminating unnecessary callouts for technical support staff. Remote management also allows for more efficient SIM life cycle management, simplified maintenance and upgrades, and faster response times. "When a company has to carry out 10 000 to 12 000 SIM swaps a month, usually through a dedicated account manager, this new ability to manage these SIMs directly and automate many of the processes is very attractive."
"Empowering this indirect channel is very important to us," Potgieter says, "so from a partnership perspective, we are in talks with a number of stakeholders to see where they can become true application players on the back of our IOT platform capabilities. We have had talks with ventures ranging from smart utilities to agriculture players on how we can help them innovate and grow their businesses using M2M."
With a primary goal of helping drive M2M innovation, MTN sees the new pan-African IOT platform, software developers' kit and Mind2Machine challenge as components of an ever-growing IOT ecosystem set to catalyse growth for African businesses. "We are giving our customers the tools they need to innovate. The more they move on to the platform, the more they will see opportunities to expand their feature sets and offerings," he says. "We have almost daily requests to meet new startups now, who are looking to collaborate with us to build new IOT solutions," Potgieter adds.
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