Farah Khan, Director – Business Development at CSS Corp, answers the following questions for the 2015 CONNECTIONS Europe conference in Amsterdam: 

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

Europe is certainly the fastest growing region for IoT connections and is paying close attention to IoT and M2M development. Based on the recent statement by Erik Brenneis, global director at Vodafone, Europe has registered a "48% growth in the number of connections year on year."

This sounds amazing, especially when the recent studies suggest that Europe's success in the M2M and IoT market is mainly driven by big operators, thereby a lot of focus and investment by the industry leaders. However this also focuses your attention to the challenges faced by these players. Overall if you analyze the IoT space, it revolves around M2M communication, Big Data analytics and Artificial intelligence especially within the smart home and connected entertainment arena. Since the most innovative and progressive aspect of IOT is the processing power and connectivity being very ubiquitous. This has led to the explosion of devices in the market, with inconsequential emphasis on the security aspects of IoT connections & interactions. One of the biggest challenges encountered by the IoT industry players is the lack of stringent security measures to secure the smart home and connected private networks.

The other aspect I would like to highlight is the Command versus Conversation characteristic of smart home devices. There is immense focus on inventing and marketing new devices with a limited functionality based on individual consumer needs. Devices are still limited in how they interact and connect to peripheral technology. We understand that smart communication devices are fairly recent however the entertainment devices like televisions, music systems are in existence for centuries but still there is lot of focus on high quality tele-media transmission rather than individually tailored experiences for end consumers. A great deal of innovation is required around consumer use-cases and resulting consumer experience rather than new devices for limited and repetitive purposes.

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

CSS Corp as one of the key players in the IOT and smart home arena; we are ensuring a high quality and fast response to technical support requirements for a growing dealer ecosystem – the key link between the end consumer and a leading connected home and security company. From a perspective of a service and support provider, disruptions in the technology landscape and the changing dynamics of customer behaviour are challenges that we foresee in the near future. As a leader in technical support landscape, it is imperative for SPs like CSS Corp to stay ahead of the curve and be cognizant of the changes taking place. We need to rapidly acquire and build knowledge of latest technologies and devices, and ensure that we can provide support to customers through various diverse channels. In fact, we foresee these challenges as future opportunities - to scale up and provide tailored delivery mechanisms that can drive customer experience several notches higher than the current norm.

Another vital area that can be viewed as a challenge is ‘Security’. With the proliferation of diverse technologies and disparate devices, cyber threats and security issues are bound to grow. We have adopted methodologies and have our own IP that will enable us to facilitate our customers to predict and thwart security risks within their IoT business.

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?

Industry players such as Google and Amazon are driving major revolution within the IOT domain. They have fabricated a different level of consumer engagement by constantly innovating the ways consumers interact with technology and each other. These giants’ are infusing transformative technology into the overall economy. This provides companies like CSS Corp immense opportunity to support this growing economy of technology-aware consumers. We have been providing support to the end consumers adopting technology innovations by these key players. Our commitment to provide superlative customer experience has helped our clients differentiate themselves in the market. Players like CSS Corp should focus on developing IoT support as a Center of Excellence. Invest on infrastructure by partnering with key IoT players / leaders in the market and develop a service model that does not restrict capability to a specific domain, technology or a platform. Early adoption and integration of platforms into the support solution with an added security layer will be a key differentiator.

At CSS Corp we keep our customers at the core of what we do, by adding substantial value in their daily lives, simplifying their lives and delivering the superior service experience. This fosters customer loyalty and also open up new avenues in the field of analytics and automation. This will help us understand our customer’s ever changing behavioural patterns in order to further simplify and enhance the service interactions.

Farah Khan will be speaking on the CONNECTIONS Europe panel "Supporting the IoT & New Consumer Experiences," on November 11 at 10:15, alongside speakers from AirTies Wireless Networks, ROC-Connect, and Alcatel-Lucent.

For more information on the CONNECTIONS Europe agenda, visit www.connectionsuerope.com.

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