Q1. Can you please tell us about “Waylay” as a company?
Waylay is a technology company that builds automation software for the Internet of Things. Our platform is used by enterprises to develop new digital solutions with IoT, IT, and OT data in the most flexible way. We have about fifty enterprise customers from Australia, Japan, Europe to the US. We are expanding to the US with a physical presence because we’ll like to get better support for our US customers. Today we are more focused on OEM technology meaning we work as an invisible layer, where other companies can buy our software that integrates our automation technology with their solutions.
Q2. In what industries Waylay is useful for? What type of customers may be interested?
In the context of IoT, one has two approaches – either go for a vertical approach or being a platform-neutral player where other customers create their own solutions based on automation technology. In this regard, we are the latter case. Our customers are either in the smart buildings or HVAC connected appliances or even B2C. Our technology is used mostly in manufacturing spaces, smart buildings as well as HVAC. The reason for customers being interested in Waylay is because we are a cloud-capable platform as well. We have built a unique set of interfaces that work on top of all other cloud technology in a way that the bigger automation players can replicate the same use case in different clouds.
Q3. Do you integrate with the existing HVAC system? What if an end customer wants to integrate into your dashboard, how do they do it? Do they need to put a specific IoT controller for this?
What we have done is to create a kind of convergence layer that integrates to other IoT clouds or IoT systems in such a way that we put in just data for a variety of different systems. In other words, we are just saying we’ll create a bridge layer that can integrate with our system. Secondly, many of these HVACs are not connected and they will never be connected. Our technology offers the opportunity to integrate with other IoT systems. We are not enforcing our connectivity on our customers; we are rather saying whatever we have already we’ll create a layer that will enable us to get data in our systems
Q4. Do you directly work with OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer)? If so, do you have a development kit for OEM? What are the types of OEM you work with?
We do actually. If you have the HVAC suppliers/manufacturers they, face a couple of different problems and none of them are actually trivial. So, basically what we offer is a sort of total automation that enables experts from both sides of the story (machine learning builders and machine learning experts) to bring them on one platform to be able to do total automation. The next thing you could do is offer new services; people are actually renting machines as a service rather than actually selling them. For instance, if you like to rent a machine as a service then your absolute interest is that the machine operates with optimum settings.
Q5. IoT awareness is so low in many countries, will Waylay contribute positively to increase awareness in the IoT space?
There are various angles to answer this question. First, IoT is something that people have been talking about for a long time. In a B2C context, if you buy any device, one or the other way, it is connected, it’s just that people are not aware of that. In smart home automation, it is already happening. In industries, things are much more complicated as there is a lot of different technology. Now, awareness also depends on the countries, some people are more eager to try things than others. In industries, the very first problem is connectivity, it not only depends on the use case vertical but also on the country. The thing with IoT is, it’s already happening but not at the same pace (compared to other technologies). What makes our company very confident is eventually, everything will be connected, it’s just that the pace of adoption in some countries is slower than others.
Q.6 Your blog talked about “Waylay’s Digital Twin Revolutionizes Provisioning in Industrial IoT.” Please tell us more about it.
When we talk about Digital Twins, we are talking about the digital representations of the objects. It can mean different things to different people. “In an ideal world, all equipment would be connected. In reality, millions of legacy machines are locked out of Industry 4.0 solutions because of the prohibitive cost of retro-fitting them.”
Q.7 How has Waylay helped to bring a change in Digital Industry?
Our goal is to bring the power of automation to everyone. Waylay believes that automation liberates human intelligence, cuts down costs, and increases value creation.
