Kerlink: Spearheading the IoT Innovation

“Exploding.” That is precisely how the sheer scale of the Internet of Things (IoT) can be described today. From data center monitoring to connected refrigerators, IoT initiatives are inching their way into IT departments, helping businesses embrace the strategic value of implementing IoT to solve complex problems. Meanwhile, as the quest for servitization and the ability to deliver anything as a service grows by the day, despite realizing the huge potential of the IoT, organizations lack the knowledge and expertise to deploy IoT solutions specifically tailored to their key business needs, in a simple, quick and cost-efficient fashion. Besides, deploying IoT-dedicated connectivity require mastering network essentials — such as scalability and reliability, automation, powerful monitoring and management tools, along with a network platform robustness — for seizing the IoT opportunity.

Enter Kerlink — an IoT infrastructure and solutions provider that assists cities and businesses of all sizes to design, launch, and operate IoT networks. “In an ambitious bid to simplify industrial-grade and future-proof IoT dedicated connectivity and make it affordable and reachable, Kerlink offers both hardware and software infrastructure, applications and solutions to large corporations and SMEs, enabling them to enjoy the benefits of collecting data for improved decision making,” says Stephane Dejean, CMO, Kerlink. Having started in 2004, Kerlink has come a long way to position itself as an IoT connectivity network and management software company.

From the infrastructure standpoint, Kerlink draws on its 15-year long, extensive experience gathered from multiple IoT use cases in critical applications, and a proven record of deployments to offer robust and performant IoT network design, deployment and operation. In doing so, the company believes that LoRaWAN^® technology is the ideal solution to enable and manage IoT networks that deliver high service reliability, security access and management, backhaul, and device management. “Currently, one of the most promising LPWA solutions to cover the service team, LoRa^® is lauded for its technical features and benefits such as long range, low power, fully bidirectional communications, end-to-end security, free unlicensed band and more. It presents an attractive opportunity for both cities and companies to deploy it on their private network,” explains Dejean.

A typical client onboarding at Kerlink begins with understanding the client’s use case and business model, to bring a solution that meets the requirements, improves the operational efficiency, reduces costs and also generates new business opportunities and revenue streams for the client.

“It all starts with grasping the challenges of the clients and demonstrating the ROI. The beauty of our job lies in working in the core of the customer business, helping them improve the architecture, processes, data collection and IT performance through our connectivity,” he adds. Moving ahead, Kerlink aims to take a technology-agnostic approach to deploy IoT infrastructure, which will further enhance their capability to make choices depending on the customer requirements.

At the core, Kerlink’s offerings include four major components: reference design, indoor and outdoor infrastructure, remote orchestration of network, and value-added applications and professional services. The company’s primary contribution is LoRaWAN gateways as they connect thousands of sensors and processes millions of messages daily. This wide range of network gateways coupled with the company’s operations management center is used to operate, monitor and orchestrate the connectivity and the network. Besides its local IoT reference design, Kerlink’s expertise is shared with device manufacturers and sensor makers to ensure that they can connect the network appropriately and efficiently. Kerlink’s value-added applications include geolocation services, for logistics and track-and-trace purposes, and remote device management.

Kerlink is a proactive and flexible technology provider in the IoT ecosystem and delivers its solution in an adequately packaged way. As a turnkey global solution provider for innovative IoT network, Kerlink assists business models to be sustainable and brings them up to speed with the latest developments. The company works in close partnership with sensors manufacturers, and application providers, to integrate and strengthen the efforts to roll out end-to-end solutions that could solve specific business challenges and needs of customers. This strong network of partners is driven by a common goal of delivering IoT solutions focused on vertical markets. Highlighting Kerlink’s efficiency, Dejean cites a case scenario wherein it partnered with a France headquartered electrical appliances international company and launched connected security lights that were installed in the buildings for emergency exit displays. The purpose of this collaboration was to be able to run regular tests to prove that the emergency signals are live and working and can be upgraded when necessary; while also troubleshooting issues remotely through the network. Besides, Kerlink has recently joined forces with IoT America — a US company dedicated to deploying IoT solutions across rural America — to quickly and easily transform the way rural cities and businesses work by maximizing the power, ease-of-use, and security the Kerlink platform brings to these businesses through Kerlink Network-as-a-Service offering.

Fostering such partnerships, Kerlink has emerged as a game-changer in the IoT landscape, especially for the LPWA connectivity solutions. That’s not all; “We recently announced a partnership with Orange Business Services to help us to use flexible deployment options for our customers, especially on the IT side. Therefore, we’re now able to leverage Amazon Web Services to deploy public or private cloud solutions for our customers,” explains Dejean.

Kerlink, the global pioneer in delivering solutions dedicated to IoT, also introduced a new series of their end-to-end IoT solutions - like smart building & facilities, smart tracking & logistics, smart asset monitoring and smart parking — at the Mobile World Congress, 2019. They are currently investing in Latin America, Japan, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. The company also plans to foray into the Indian and the US markets, where they had started their activities 2 years ago.