Over the past years, the number of IoT devices and technologies has grown rapidly. As a result, more and more tools need to connect and interact with other applications. Unfortunately, most hardware in the IoT chain is not that well-secured. Devices get hacked or used for Ddos attacks, important business data gets intercepted and is manipulated to influence decision-making, … Stories like this have almost become daily routine in the media. Yet, many users are still unaware of the risks related to their IoT devices. Therefore, IoT Unlimited took responsibility by adding security to their service portfolio.

Coming from the world of mobile telecom, IoT Unlimited had plenty of experience with the challenges and requirements of a secure IoT connectivity solution. However, they needed assistance in finding the right technologies and implementing the whole solution as a flexible, scalable and accessible service for their customers, regardless of their business size or industry. For this technical support, Floris Van Amerongen decided to approach Colibri Consulting. “My history with the people from Colibri goes way back, as we once worked together for the same customer. So I knew what they could bring to the table as we sat together to brainstorm and work out a concept”, says Van Amerongen.

“Colibri Consulting was already familiar with the network components we needed for our solution. However, what made things more complex was the requirement for versatility and wide applicability across the multiple customers using our platform. We aimed for a shared hosted multi-tenant platform where each customer has a dedicated partition with their own configuration”, explains Van Amerongen. “Some customers route all traffic through the public internet, while others send it through a secluded VPN tunnel to ensure secure communication. Some combine both approaches in a hybrid variant. For each of these clients, we need to be able to adjust the configuration.”

Another essential requisite of the platform was fast time-to-market. While it often takes a long time for telecom operators to set up a solution, IoT Unlimited wants to ensure their clients are fully operational within ten days. With this in mind, Colibri Consulting provided an analysis of vendors who could offer the appropriate components to build the solution. “What I really appreciate about Colibri Consulting is their ability to think from an entrepreneur’s perspective. They understood that we could not make huge up-front investments and helped us find vendors that were best suited in terms of costs and functionality. Their vendor-agnostic approach is a significant advantage”, says Van Amerongen.

Once the design of the secure access management platform was completed, Colibri Consulting also handled the implementation and played a key role in automating the solution. “At IoT Unlimited, we always say: if it can’t be automated, we will not do it. We call that Zero-Touch Provisioning. In an ideal scenario, no one on our side should be involved in setting up a service. The people from Colibri have thought this through and helped us come up with creative solutions.”

“We consider Colibri Consulting as an extension of our organization. They are always available to solve a problem and can assess the urgency of each challenge. As the world of IoT continues to evolve, and as we need to adjust our own services, it reassures me that we can rely on the technical knowledge and skills of Colibri. Moreover, we now even generate business for each other by referring customers who need a specific service. That’s what I call a true long-term partnership: having so much confidence that you entrust your own existing relationships to each other”, concludes Floris Van Amerongen.