Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Sanjay Brahmawar, CEO of Software AG (Part 3)

Sanjay Brahmawar: In terms of the competitive landscape, we would say that one of our prime competitors is PTC. We also have a great relationship with the hyperscalers. Sometimes we do compete with them, but more often we are collaborating for joint solutions to our clients. We offer the IoT layer and the hybrid integration layer; and our hyperscaler partners offer capabilities like Azure data lake and SQL.

This combination becomes a unique capability for customers. The other thing that is unique about us is the fact that we are independent. We integrate across multiple clouds and operate across both the Eastern hemisphere cloud (Alibaba and Baidu) and the western cloud (Azure, AWS, and Google).

Many global companies have to navigate both markets effectively. China and the US are the big markets. We are able to offer this independent IoT and hybrid integration layer for customers to manage across multiple clouds. The other thing that is interesting in our capability is the whole philosophy of edge to core to cloud. Our Cumulocity IoT has a footprint that can be maintained in the cloud. This is what we do as we operate as a SaaS service.

We are also able to offer it as a subscription which can be put on a private cloud for our clients. The footprint is agile enough to be on an edge device like a Dell edge server. We have a partnership with them. They use our software on their edge servers. This edge server can be at a manufacturer location or at a windmill. It’s the edge to code cloud capability that becomes essential for organizations to deliver these capabilities in a distributed way. I believe that the world is moving towards a lot more distributed architecture. We will see a lot more compute and analytics power at the edge. That is a big differentiator for us. 

Sramana Mitra: How do you go to market? Do you sell the platform and systems integrators or are other ISVs developing products on your platform? How do you go to market?

Sanjay Brahmawar: We are quite horizontal because we are able to provide a lot of the capabilities across sectors. There are industries on which we focus on. Our primary verticals for IoT are manufacturing, retail, supply chain, logistics, MedTech, and smart cities. These are our main verticals where we offer our IoT and hybrid integration capabilities. We go to market in three ways.

First, we are partner and sell with key customers directly whether they are customers like Siemens, Bosch, or Stanley. We support several customers in building IoT solutions directly. They buy our platform and other capabilities like trend minor. That is the first way.

The second way is through OEM relationships. Telco is a great example where many of the telcos are taking our platform as a service and then white labeling it and adding on their capabilities on it. Examples of this are Deutsche Telekom and DU telecom. There are almost 15 to 17 telcos that use our platform and then they build solutions on top of that like water management or energy management solutions.

The third model is with SIs who are taking our capabilities in building solutions on that whether that is TCS, Infosys, or Capgemini. These SIs are building solutions and implementing these solutions for our customers. Sometimes they will develop unique solutions for customers. They would do custom builds with customers using our platform. Sometimes they offer it as a service to their customers, leveraging our platform. These are the three main ways that we go to market. 

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Sanjay Brahmawar, CEO of Software AG
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