Below is our recent interview with Kishore Moturi, Co-Founder & VP Sales and Marketing at Tantiv4:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Tantiv4?
A: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a trend that is changing the way we live and work and is already touching every consumer and industrial application. The core technologies enabling IoT are wireless communication and sensor developments, and ongoing advances in these technologies result in unique challenges.
These challenges include evolving communications standards, increased sensor integrations and power consumption management and to make them work seamlessly and efficiently. Tantiv4’s IoT platform is bridging this gap in the industry with a leading ThingaOS IoT Edge and Cloud SaaS Platform to enhance the growth of connected devices for the Internet of Things. ThingaOS is an industry first and unique IoT platform supporting multiple RF technologies (including Thread, Wi-Fi, BT, BT Mesh, LoRa) and multiple cloud ecosystem partners (IFTTT, Contiki, AWS, etc).Tantiv4 is providing micro services and solutions like voice ASR, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, etc.… targeting consumer and industrial use cases for Smart Lighting, Property Management for rental applications like Air BnB where Tantiv4’s ThingaOS technology controls smart key delivery, water and gas leak detection along with services for various other sensors all operated in a single easy to use App. We are taking IoT to the next level of implementation where it simplifies living for everyone by seamlessly integrating with all prevalent eco-system interfaces ( Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple).
Tantiv4 is a rapidly growing US based IoT company, with an ever-increasing footprint. We are headquartered in Milpitas, California with technical support and Core R&D development offices in Chennai & Bangalore, India. We also have sales support offices scattered across Asia including Taipei, Japan, Singapore and Shenzhen.
Q: You’ve recently announced a strategic partnership with Rakwireless; could you tell us something more?
A: Tantiv4 Inc., a leader in IoT technologies for Industrial, Enterprise and Consumer applications for device management and application enablement. One such application is controlling IoT devices and or Internet services without ever using a smart device or a PC. For e.g. one can control a single light or a set of lights (zones) in a home by pressing a button or a series of button. Similarly one can order a taxi service like Uber or Lyft by pressing a button located on a refrigerator. These are all daily use cases which consumers and or industries can use to automate by pressing a switch or a button. Tantiv4’s unique technology can control a single button, or a set of 4 or 16 switches which can be programmed by the end user. Further unlike other technologies ThingaOS ensures users can create their own rules engine and can be handled locally inside the firewall of a home or a factory, this makes IoT products more secure, reliable, intelligent and efficient to use in addition to getting a great out-of-the-box experience.
Tantiv4 is supporting expanding use cases of the Rakwireless button and interested parties should contact either Tantiv4 or Rakwireless for additional information.
Q: How is IoT going to change the way we live and work?
A: AI with human in the loop – Technology should not be added just because it is “cool”. We need to understand that human habits evolve over time rather than going through sudden changes. As such at Tantiv4 we firmly believe and do not expect human to follow.
While automation is key to success, we believe that human has to be involved in the decision-making loop in a meaningful way. As we go through our life, our values change, and no AI system can simulate our free will. No such AI system would be satisfying till it is fundamentally designed to act just as a tool and not as a master. There are far too many exceptions that we deal with on a day to day basis. We can do it because we are flexible and understand what we want at any given time.
Our IoT solutions incorporate the following basic essentials required for a truly smart IoT system in other words we bring “Simplified Living” to a reality
Privacy, Security, and Safety
Google Home and Amazon Echo are extremely popular and these devices operate on the cloud versus on the edge. These devices also have big business interests in preserving all the captured voice data and stored in the cloud. Imagine, living in a house where everything spoken is forever owned by these companies. There are ways and scenarios that this data will be mined (already seeing these happen) to promote and sell unwanted stuff, the government can have easy access, or someone can bring in a court order to get that data! Further we have not even considered hackers, which brings in the security concern and one can easily mimic and fake voice and get easy access to respective accounts.
Tantiv4’s solutions are built on the premise that a user’s data is very private and only the user should decide how to use the data. Tantiv4’s ThingaOS device and cloud agents ensure that we localize the data at the edge within the firewall to ensure maximum privacy and eliminate any chance of data breach. By applying intelligence at the edge most use cases and scenarios will not need to depend on the cloud to make decisions like when to turn on lights. There is also an added advantage that this will result in faster interactions due to almost zero latency involved.
Simplicity
The ease of adding a new device such as an appliance or a smart plug etc. to your home network and ease of operating it are two factors which are very important and yet have been consistently ignored. The out of the box experience that consumers often face today is not the best and leaves the consumer guessing in more than one way. This leads to the IoT device being returned and seriously undermines the benefits that a properly designed solution can bring to the table. This happens because these solutions are designed by device makers and not solution providers like Tantiv4 who have an agnostic view of IoT device types, standards and connectivity both on the edge and cloud. ThingaOS has built in learning engine that learns the network within a given home or factory setting and uses existing speaker devices Amazon Echo or Google Home to communicate via voice through the different options to the IoT device user. This featured solution ensures the best out-of-the box experience for consumers today by proactively helping them through their setup process.
Q: What exactly is ThingaOS? How does it work?
A: ThingaOS is a next generation IoT industrial and Home platform that is applicable to both enterprises and everyday consumers to achieve seamless automation of intended business efficiencies and life styles. Being primarily an edge platform, ThingaOS ensures proper security and data privacy, while still maintaining cloud connectivity as required by the specific solution and services such a message notifications and periodic updates.
ThingaOS™ operates on all popular ecosystems including Amazon, Google and Apple, while supporting their respective voice interfaces. Integrating several devices and ecosystems also eliminates the need for the user to operate several device related apps. The solution automatically detects all the compatible smart devices in the network and populate it in the phone app and web interface. This operation is independent of the protocols the smart devices support. User can control all the smart devices from a single interface and also set rules and automations for the devices to work with each other. Users can also use Siri, Alexa and Google Voice services to control the devices. Devices can be controlled from within the home network OR via cloud from anywhere.
Q: What can we expect from Tantiv4 in the future?
A: Tantiv4 will continue to work with industry and technology leaders to provide complete and optimized IoT solutions for several verticals such as telcos, property management for hotels, rental communities, smart home. This also involves working with and providing reference applications with several silicon vendors such as Qualcomm etc. and cloud eco-system providers. We want our software to be proliferated across IoT domains and bring advanced use cases to enhance ROI to businesses and simplify living to the consumers by solving challenges in communications standards, device integrations and making them work seamlessly and efficiently.
To summarize, Tantiv4’s IoT platform is bridging this gap in the industry with a leading ThingaOS IoT Edge and Cloud SaaS Platform to enhance the growth of connected devices for the Internet of Things.