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Below is our recent interview with Xavier Dupont, CEO at M&F Holdings:
Q: Could you provide our reader with a brief introduction to M&F Holdings?
A: Maestro and FALCOM (M&F) has been a pioneer and global leader in the M2M/IoT space for 25 years, with a strong focus on key verticals such as transport, industrial automation and energy distribution. M&F has deployed more than 2 million units across over 50 countries and in 2017 we were ranked the 3rd largest IoT gateway manufacturer by IHS Markit.
The M2M/IoT market has for years suffered from a lack of alignment between what the technology could do and the high customer expectation. The lack of standards, long business development cycle times and complex system architectures have negatively impacted the growth of the industry. Our mission is to simplify the deployment process and facilitate successful IoT projects by providing open API gateways which enable clients to leverage our expertise in the most critical elements of an IoT solution.
Q: Can you give us insights into your products?
A: M&F designs, manufactures, certifies and distributes industrial grade wireless gateways for mission critical IoT deployment.
Some of our recent product series include:
• M110 Modem Series: Compact serial/USB data to cellular communication units, with smart connection algorithms and with variants that support all the currently deployed cellular network technologies ( 2G, 3G, LTE-Cat.1, LTE-Cat.M, NBIoT).
• E210 and E220 Router Series: Small feature rich industrial grade multi-technology cellular routers with LAN/WAN ports and Wi-Fi, which support advanced routing, VPN and WAN failover as well as custom programming and edge computing capability.
• FOX3 Telematics Platform Series: Robust multi-technology cellular and GNSS based trackers, with fleet management and edge computing capability and optionally supporting CAN reading, RFID, BLE and Wi-Fi.
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All of our products can be remotely connected with our cloud based D2Sphere platform which simplifies device management and maintenance to ensure maximum uptime and optimized performance.
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Q: How much potential is there in the IoT and what are the dangers that consumers and manufacturers/developers need to be aware of?
A: Analysts predict that by 2020, there will be 50 billion connected devices and that by 2023 the market will be worth $9B. This will have a transformative impact on the business models of many industries and the way of life of communities.
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The radical increase in ‘smart’ assets, global connectivity, big data collection and analytics and the instant access by multiple parties to actionable information will provide incredibly powerful tools to businesses, governments and consumers, allowing for an ever-increasing array of customized goods and services. However, privacy and cybersecurity matters will be a significant concern and must be addressed by players at all levels. Furthermore, the share volume of choices, as well as rate of technical change, means that solutions that are not designed to evolve will become obsolete very quickly.
The challenge for many traditional industries is to understand how the technology can help solve problems, better address the preferences of their customers and the community and improve their ROI, without losing those aspects of their current business models that make them unique and valuable.
Q: What are you most excited about in the industry at the moment and what future trends are you expecting to see?
A: The increased awareness of IoT and maturity of the technology is leading to the funding of many new initiatives across industries and community functions. Users are also beginning to understand that while they initially deploy to gain certain specific short term benefits, once the assets and facilities of a company/institution are connected and more and more valuable data is available, things will really begin to get interesting. The marriage of IoT to Big Data Analytics along with the increasing power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms and machine learning is extremely exciting and we know that our lives and businesses will be irreversibly changed in areas ranging from renewable energy and smart cities to logistics and healthcare. However, this prospect can also be a bit scary, as the evolution of technology is never deterministic and there will always be some ‘bad’ actors. Everything considered, we are confident that with a reasonable level of public/private cooperation and regulation, it will be a net positive for human society and the environment.
Q: What can we expect from M&F Holdings in the future??
A: M&F has very strong expertise in the development of robust and secure IoT communication devices for mission critical applications in extreme industrial environments. Going forward we will expand our presence across the IoT value stack, getting closer to the source data with LPWAN smart sensors and also securely storing our customer data both at the edge or in the cloud.
In Q1 2019 we will be announcing the launch of new product lines and value-added services to better support our customer in their IoT projects and allow them to focus on their core expertise.
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