$21.5 million round<\/a> that London-based FloLive raised last year, bringing the total for the Series B to $37 million. From what we understand, the startup is also now working on its Series C.<\/p>\nAs we move towards more ubiquitous 5G networks and services that use them, the challenge in the market that FloLive is addressing is a critical one to get right.<\/p>\n
In a nutshell, enterprises and carriers that are building networks for managing IoT and other connected devices face a scaling issue. Typically, IoT networks to cover services like these are built on national or even more localized footprints, making it a challenge \u2014 if not completely impossible \u2014 to control or monitor devices in a global network in a centralized way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look on high level at tier one networks, you see two main things,\u201d Nir Shalom, FloLive\u2019s CEO, said in an interview. \u201cThese networks are built for local footprints, and they are mainly built for consumers. What we do is different in that we think about the global, not local, footprint; and our data networks are for IoT, not only people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course there are some carriers that might look at building their own networks to rival this, but they will often lack the scaled use cases to do so, and may in any case work with providers like FloLive to build these anyway. The bigger picture is that there are 900 larger mobile network operators globally, Shalom said, and the majority of that group is far from being able to do this themselves.<\/p>\n
FloLive\u2019s approach to fixing this is not to build completely new infrastructure, but to stitch together networks from different localities and to run them as a single network. It does this by way of its software-defined connectivity built and implemented in the cloud, which stitches together not just 5G networks but whatever cellular technology happens to be in use (eg 4G, 3G or even 2G) in a particular locale.<\/p>\n
FloLive\u2019s tech lives in the core network, where it builds a private radio access network that it can integrate with carriers and their capacity in different markets, while then managing the network for customers as a single service.<\/p>\n
This is somewhat similar to what you might get with a enterprise virtual private network except that this is focused specifically on the kinds of use cases that might use connected objects \u2014 FloLive cites manufacturing, logistics, healthcare and utilities as four areas \u2014 rather than laptops for employees.<\/p>\n
The resulting network, however, also becomes a viable alternative for companies that might otherwise use a VPN for connectivity, too, as well as carriers themselves needing to extend their network for a customer. In addition to its IoT focused core network, it also provides business support systems for IoT, device management, and solutions targeted for specific verticals.\u00a0FloLive supports devices that use SIM or eSIM or \u201csoftSIM\u201d technology to connect to networks. That\u2019s one part that likely interested those strategic investors as it allows for significantly easier integration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are truly excited about\u00a0floLIVE\u2019s unique cloud-native approach to IoT connectivity,\u201d\u00a0said David Johnson, MD at Intel Capital, in a statement.\u00a0\u201cCloud-native architectures bring efficiency, scalability and flexibility which are important for IoT services. In addition,\u00a0floLIVE\u2019s cloud-based core can provide consistency of features across many independent private and public networks. We look forward to the expansion of\u00a0floLIVE\u2019s products and services enabled by this investment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Updated to note the round is $15.5 million, not $15 million.<\/em><\/p>\nArticle source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/j7e1SUUzOpU\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As enterprises and carriers gear up for operating and scaling IoT services and monitoring the activity of their devices, machines and more globally, a startup that is building technology to <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-25137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t