IoT news of the week for June 1, 2018 – Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis
Ecobee raised more money: Ecobee, the thermostat maker you may recall from the opening story, has raised an additional $47 million Canadian dollars ($36 million) to close its C round of funding at CA$127 million. Ecobee has raised a ton of money, and unlike many of the other big names in the IoT startup boom, it hasn’t sold or shut down. Instead it’s focusing on new products, such as its Alexa-powered light switch. Along with the funding it added three new executives to the team, which should help it reach the next level — or merge with another player while trying. (Ecobee)
Is it finally time for revenue-sharing as a pricing model? The idea of making money based on taking a chunk of what a customer saves is not a new idea. But for the tech world, this model has proved elusive. In 2010, IBM proposed selling Watson to customers by taking a percentage of the money Watson would save them; the idea was not popular with customers. And now Liat Ben-Zur, an executive with Philips, is proposing the same idea, this time for IoT platform providers. In a detailed and useful post, she lays out the challenges that such platform vendors face when trying to sell into a big corporation, and explains her idea of creating corporate IoT accelerators where teams from big companies get together with IoT platform providers to create new services or business lines built on IoT. To get corporations to participate, she suggests IoT platforms give away their underlying infrastructure, not for free, but for a share of the revenue generated or saved by the new connected business. Ben-Zur has been in tech for a long time, and she demonstrates a deep understanding of the corporate perspective. If she’s willing to try this pricing model, maybe its time has come. (Medium)