South African IoT.nxt is expanding globally and will open its first fully-fledged office in Europe in The Netherlands in July this year. It established an associate office in London in January this year.
“The company participated in large scale IoT conferences and expos in London (IoT Tech Expo in January and SMART IoT held in March) where it was evident that there is significant interest in Europe for IoT.nxt’s innovative approach to offering companies new strategic solutions to deliver efficiencies and significant cost savings through the implementation of IoT technology,” says Dr Joe Bester, IoT.nxt marketing director, who will lead the Dutch office. “The office currently being set up in The Hague will allow us easy access to the European market.”
“The Netherlands has a strong technology focus and was the logical choice,” he adds.
Bester notes that Dutch legislation is very business-friendly and especially favourable towards technology start-ups. “The Netherlands was by far the best choice for us as a next step after our first successful international expansion with our London office.”
For IoT.nxt the main reasons for positioning the business in the Netherlands included the following:
* Unlike in South Africa, there is no foreign exchange control in the Netherlands which supports the international commercialisation of software specifically, as well as other technology.
* Given the EU and Dutch legislation for the protection of intellectual property (IP), it is more efficient and practical to protect and enforce IP from The Netherlands rather than from South Africa.
* By using The Netherlands as a holding jurisdiction, that country can provide great access to well-qualified developers.
* The regulatory framework for the protection of data and data privacy is in line with the IoT.nxt methodology and philosophy.
IoT.nxt has developed an edge to cloud IoT platform that enables rapid IoT implementation as the main underpin for enterprise digital transformation. Its Raptor edge gateway technology and gateway management software is integrated into its end-to-end Web-Commander software stack.
The platform allows for a top down or bottom up digital transformation approach and is an enabling technology for all of the large IoT platform and big data players.
“We have helped companies on their digitisation journey in around 11 different industry sectors,” Bester says. “Our clients see the IoT.nxt platform as their first step in implementing a digitisation strategy that brings their businesses into the future of business and then keeps them there no matter what happens on the edge or in the big data layer – we are the agnostic bridge.”
IoT.nxt was co-founded by CEO Nico Steyn and partners Terje Moen, business development Oofficer and Bertus Jacobs, chief technology officer, in 2015 and established its head office in Pretoria.
IoT.nxt was selected by global consulting giant Gartner as one of six African aspiring innovators ahead of Gartner’s Symposium/ITXpo held in Cape Town in September 2016. The company was also a finalist in the Da Vinci TT100 innovation index for Emerging Enterprises in 2016. At launch the company had seven employees but has now grown to a staff complement of 45 as its strategic solutions gain traction amongst diverse South African companies.
