You shall not pass: Schneider Electric stands firm at the gateway of industrial IoT

Yesterday we heard from Vodafone (see video) on its global strategy to provide higher value IoT services to enterprises and verticals. Today it's the turn of Schneider Electric, which is already equipping and supporting enterprises with IoT devices and services. Between them lies the gateway to the cloud and network connectivity. It's here we have the problem: telcos want in past the gateway, but companies like Schneider want to keep them at bay, happy to offload connectivity and obviously not prepared to give up their valuable customer relationships. Why should they?

Schneider Electric is a €27 billion company in the energy management and operation space. The four key verticals in which the company operates are buildings, data centres, discrete industries and utilities/smart grids. In terms of IoT, the company looks to innovate at three levels: connected products; edge control (local control rather than cloud); and apps, analytics and services. Despite Schneider Electric being experts at installing and operating IoT devices within companies, their involvement ends at the gateway. It believes partnerships with telcos are essential for end-to-end connectivity for IoT and smart industry.

Filmed at: IoT Solutions World Congress, Barcelona, Spain