1NCE is a software platform to build and manage connected products. Fabian oversees product management strategy for this global IoT connectivity and software company that was recently named to Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech list. Fabian has a strong engineering background and oversees the company’s product portfolio across 173 countries. Prior, he worked as Business Development Lead and Product Lead at an IoT company called GrandCentrix that was acquired by Vodafone.
Fabian and the group at 1NCE provide global cellular connectivity and software tools for IoT-connected devices. The company has over 22 million devices under active management and 20,000 customers worldwide. Fabian says, “Quite simply, we apply the principles extracted from smartphone technology to IoT and connected devices.” He continues to say that the company aims to become a global standard for IoT so that whenever anyone thinks about building or managing an IoT-connected product, they will think about 1NCE. He qualifies this by saying that this doesn't have to mean that 1NCE has to become “the” global standard. He further explains, “Becoming “a' global standard is enough for us because we believe in the vibrancy of competition and ecosystems.”
1NCE is most famous for its lifetime subscription, which disrupted the cellular connectivity market a couple of years back by turning existing offers by competitors onto their heads. 1NCE doesn't ask for monthly charges or recurring charges. The proposition is for the customer to pay ten €10 or $10 once for access for the lifetime of the device, which is ten years, across nearly any border. It removed the long-running headache of working with cellular connectivity on a country-by-country basis.
Now Fabian further explains that the company is trying to further disrupt that market by taking on the IoT software market, releasing their own software tools and capabilities, and leveraging ecosystem synergies with 1NCE Plugins. These applications are offered with IoT SIM card connectivity, and come from best-in-class partners within the IoT and embedded ecosystems. Fabian explains that specific radio protocols used by smartphones cannot be applied to devices designed explicitly for IoT. So new protocols such as Narrowband IoT have to be used with constrained devices that occasionally send data. This protocol can be incompatible with how the rest of the internet works in a notch because an API, for example, uses TCP HTTP and Narrowband IoT is incompatible with that. The plugin system or the member plugin translates again between those two words to ensure that critical device application services for lifecycle management are available for IoT devices using these protocols.
One of the first plugins to be offered is firmware over-the-air updates (FOTA) from Mender. Fabian contends that FOTA is a natural requirement for IoT products or connected products. “With the Mender plugin, you basically click a button and you have all of Mender's management functionalities unlocked. In the background, it automatically connects both systems. So, all of the SIM cards and devices that you manage with 1NCE are already listed in Mender in a secure way.” Furthermore, 1NCE research reveals that 95%, if not more, of the market for IoT connectivity requires FOTA functionality.
Fabian believes that it is best to offer a pre-integrated solution to bring best-in-class services together and combine them. He says “Customers can use and consume more efficiently and even unlock additional possibilities by combining two platforms such as 1NCE and Mender for FOTA. Contracts are separate for each service for the customer, but technically, it feels really like one solution. And it's one click, just like a plug-in in a web browser. If the customer wants to install additional functionality, it’s the click of a button and boom: they can use it. Plugins are extremely valuable in the device provisioning process as they ensure that as a new device comes off an OEM’s production line, it has already been announced and registered in all of the attached systems like Mender.
“The OEM doesn’t need to install device certificates in their production line which could complicate the supply and production chain. With the 1NCE SIM card, the OEM gets all the authentication and security mechanisms they need, all they have to do is solder the SIM card into the device and it does all the authentication. All of the traffic is encrypted and secured, and the devices are registered to receive OTA firmware updates over their lifecycles.”
FOTA is a critical strategic investment for OEMs with global IoT-connected device fleets. Fabian explains that over 75% of 1NCE customers deploy internationally and these OEMs have to be able to support the software on the devices over a lifecycle of 10 years, contending with different regulations in different countries. There are new rules with cyber security acts worldwide, most notable of these is the EU Cyber Resilience Act coming into force from October 2024. These regulations are being rolled out, OEMs are being forced into thinking more about after-sales software updates, and to have a plan in place to ensure that devices have automated and managed update workflows and are being patched for exploitable vulnerabilities in a timely manner to ensure that their customers are safe and that the OEM’s brand and business are also being protected in the process.
Fabian also covered a huge challenge determining the success of IoT projects: when OEMs and their customers try to build these connected products, they must marry the cloud worlds and embedded worlds together. One is unconstrained and resource-rich, the other is highly constrained and resource-light.
“IoT devices and sensors are constrained and battery-powered. They don't have so much computing power. The teams that work in the cloud and embedded think in entirely different patterns in the cloud world because in the cloud, capacity and functionality or resources are almost unlimited. If these two worlds come together, it's sometimes difficult to get both things working with each other and connectivity.” Fabian argues that 1NCE sits right in the middle, seeing both the IoT device and cloud services, and that they help by translating and bringing these two worlds together. “That is a challenge for many of our customers because they often focus on the device or the cloud part and then struggle a little bit when they come into either, like the other part.”
Other challenges to the success of IoT device projects are use case-dependent. Fabian shares the example of asset trackers being pushed through the jungle down rough dirt roads. They experience the stress of constant vibrations in humid temperature conditions. These are strains on the physical hardware. On the software level, fixes are needed for obsolete software and outdated firmware. “Sometimes, they keep on functioning, but they are compromised. Sometimes, something goes wrong during an attack, and the device stops working. Of course, it's also part of reality. Sometimes, a firmware upgrade goes wrong, even if it is an OEM-intended one. One must be prepared to roll out software safely and to roll back software versions in case something goes wrong. One must ensure that the devices keep working all over the globe.”
Fabian concludes by arguing that the impact of IoT and embedded systems is almost ubiquitous and universal for OEMs at this stage. OEMs are launching more and more software-defined and connected products. “This is the first time that they have been able to get insights into how their products are being used. This was something that was impossible before connectivity and machine data, as OEMs only sold to other businesses who then sold to the end customer. The OEMs always had to manually reach out to solicit feedback from the end customers. Now they can access that data directly from the devices and get down to the millisecond of what has been used and what is valuable or not for the end customer.”