From January 7 to 10, i4Things joined over 170,000 international attendees for CES 2020 in Las Vegas. The company was one of the 50 selected Dutch technology leaders to showcase their latest innovations at the Dutch national Pavilion, one of the largest single-country pavilions at the show.

With a demo pod of their fully managed end-to-end, cloud-based, Consolomio® platform, the Herten-based business knew how to convince tradeshow visitors with its simple yet comprehensive “Smart Home as a Service” approach:

We were really pleased with the very positive feedback we received from both service providers and consumers during the show. This clearly showed us that our solution struck a nerve.

Rob Wolters, Managing Partner at i4Things

Reducing Complexity in the Smart Home

The topic of Smart Home has been dominating the consumer electronics industry for quite a while: From dimmable light bulbs and blind control to TV and entertainment, the number of application areas for smart technologies seems endless. However, Smart Home still has not gone beyond its status as “the next big thing coming” for a mass-market audience. This is partly due to the fact that even though there is a vast number of solutions in the market already, implementing them into a consumer’s home can still be a struggle. “In a worst case scenario, the consumer could end up with a multitude of non-integrated apps in their phones”, Wolters explained.

This is where i4Things’s Consolomio® solution steps in: The White-label platform is designed to offer service providers in a wide range of industries, such as telecoms, energy or insurance, a secure and easy way to create innovative Smart Home applications for their subscribers. This allows them to scale their business and stay one step ahead of the competition in this emerging future-proof market. At the same time, their customer base profits from a worry-free, affordable, easy-to-use and fully-managed integrated Smart Home which also caters for
security, privacy and device life cycle management.

Smart Home ecosystems for everyone

The Consolomio® cloud-based platform captures, stores, processes, translates or streams smart home device data to end-user devices in and outside the home. In addition, its cloud-based approach guarantees a fast time-to-market of smart home offerings at limited initial investments for the service provider.

The platform integrates with a wide range of Smart Home ecosystems such as Android TV, Philips Hue, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Zigbee, Sonos and (soon) IKEA smart home products. Its B2B2C business model comprises management of the whole ecosystem of devices and user interfaces aiming at avoiding fragmentation due to the fast growing number of smart home devices and thus making the smart home a fully integrated experience. 

The i4Things teams’ findings at CES:

  • Smart Home is still far too complex for a mass-market audience
  • Service Providers can resolve this challenge for their customers by offering Smart Home as a Service (SHaaS)
  • Being easy to use, affordable and fully managed, Consolomio® provides a unique solution to get service providers started quickly, cost effectively and worry-free
  • Making Smart Home finally easy for their mass-market customers

To-date, the platform supports over 20 categories of devices including smart bulbs, thermostats, cameras, doorbells, alarm systems, access control and many other products to create highly personalized solutions. Furthermore, i4Things is seeking to integrate further products to the ecosystem.

Secure and easy-to-use solutions for end users

The Consolomio® platform provides consumers with intuitive and easy-to-use user interfaces, i.e. a smart home TV dashboard bridging the world of IPTV and Smart Home as well as an Android-based control panel which is installed in the user’s home. In order to meet various use cases, i4Things established four starter packs covering security, comfort, care and energy applications for use in Smart Home and Small Office Home Office (SOHO) environments. 

The starter packs provided by i4Things comprise various sensors of the company and third-parties sensors with security built in by design. This allows easy self-installation while offering operators higher margin for additional components. It is also possible to create a fully customized starter pack.

Both end user devices as well as dedicated apps and starter packs will be individually branded with logo and coloring of the service provider. In addition, during the life-cycle of the devices, i4Things carries out any adjustments required to e.g. cope with changes to API’s and firmware or with software updates making the smart home experience worry-free for the service provider and their customers.

Achievements from the CES presence:

  • Device manufacturers approached us to become part of our ecosystem
  • Investors appreciate the recurring revenue model in combination with a very scalable SHaaS platform
  • We obtained various new leads, in Europe and the Americas

For service providers, Consolomio® offers a unique backend console that integrates with existing CRM, billing and customer care environments. What’s more, Consolomio® comes with a security mechanism including user authentication, encrypted data transfer and storage, automatic camera-password refresh every 24h to make smart home a reality without compromising on security.

CES 2020 and beyond

“For i4Things, CES 2020 was a huge success. Not only did device manufacturers approach us to become part of our SaaS ecosystem, we also obtained various new leads in and outside of Europe”

Rob Wolters, Managing Partner at i4Things

“Our highly scalable Consolomio® platform was much appreciated by service providers aiming to unlock additional income streams and increase revenues with their existing user base”, Wolters confirmed. “Especially when it seems to be a logical extension of their current services, like TV applications or in-home Wi-Fi. The market now seems to be ready to bring the Smart Home experience to the next level.”

Being part of the Holland Tech Square was a huge honor and I want to thank Techleap.NL for the highly professional organization – we hope to have the chance to be part of this great concept in the future.

Rob Wolters, Managing Partner at i4Things