Wendy Toth, Vice President of Marketing for Ayla Networks, answers the following industry questions prior to the 2015 CONNECTIONS Europe event taking place 10-11 November in Amsterdam:

What challenges does Europe face with rolling out new smart home & connected entertainment services?

From Ayla's experience, we are seeing that the European market is facing a lot of the same challenges as the US market when rolling out new smart home & connected entertainment services; navigating through the number of different laws & privacy regulations as well addressing the demand for complete interoperability in the smart home ecosystem and solving the problems it creates.

Manufacturers and service providers have to contend with strict regulation that continues to evolve and will continue to do so as the IoT market matures, bringing more and more awareness around the need for overall system security and data privacy. IoT is unlocking data and forcing these players to think through where and how data is stored, where and how it flows through the system, and more importantly, who owns it?

Complete interoperability, which may provide a greater and more seamless user experience for the end user, poses not only a difficult question in regards to technology and how this is achieved, but to the business models in which these organizations will compete. Giant brands are already battling to be at the center of the smart home ecosystem and interoperability could stand to level the playing field. 

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing your company in the next 12 months? 

Hiring the right people into the company and filling positions fast enough. We have grown from 25 people to over 100 in the past 15 months.  We are hiring cloud engineers and are always on the lookout for good people.

How will companies leverage the growth in the market in the next 12 months? What is the impact of the Internet Giants (Google, Amazon) getting involved in the market?

Having Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other major players enter the market validates the importance of the IoT market overall. These companies wouldn’t be jumping into the IoT pool if there weren’t huge potential there.

Wendy will be speaking at the panel session “IoT and APIs: Expanding the Role of Connected Devices” on 11 November at 15:15.

For more information on the companies participating in the 2015 CONNECTIONS Europe conference, visit www.connectionseurope.com. 

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