Podcasts > Ep. 210 - Hardware Meets SaaS: Transforming Devices into Subscription Models
Ep. 210
Hardware Meets SaaS: Transforming Devices into Subscription Models
Omer Brookstein, CEO & Co-founder, Xyte
Monday, November 04, 2024

In this episode, we spoke with Omer Brookstein, CEO & Co-founder of Xyte, about the transformative potential of IoT for device manufacturers and the emerging shift towards service-oriented business models. We delved into how companies can leverage connected device platforms to manage the full lifecycle of their IoT devices, monetize features, and create long-term customer value. The conversation also explored the practical and business challenges of implementing subscription and usage-based models across industries.

Key Insights:

  • Subscription Shift: IoT enables manufacturers to adopt subscription and usage-based models for sustained revenue.
  • Business Model Transformation: Moving to service-based models requires cross-functional collaboration and strategic alignment.
  • Empowering Partners: Platforms help channel partners add value, boosting recurring revenue opportunities.
  • Simplifying Complexity: Unified platforms reduce inventory and operational burdens by enabling remote feature management.
  • Future-Ready Flexibility: Modular, collaborative platforms support growth and adapt to evolving business needs.

IoT ONE database: https://www.iotone.com/case-studies

The Industrial IoT Spotlight podcast is produced by Asia Growth Partners (AGP): https://asiagrowthpartners.com/

Transcript.

Erik: Omer, thank you for joining me on the podcast today.

Omer: Thank you, Erik. It's a pleasure being here.

Erik: So, Omer, this is going to be an interesting one for me, because I think you have a technology company that is leaning very heavily into business model innovation or helping companies go through business innovation, which is actually a bit more where my core is. So looking forward to understanding, not just on the technical side but also on the business side, how you think through this set of challenges with your customers.

Omer: Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward. I think it's going to be a fascinating conversation. Exactly spot on what you just said. You'll hear in a second what Xyte is as a business platform. Eventually, you try to solve a very, very challenging business challenge.

Erik: So before we get into the details of what Xyte does, I think you also personally have an interesting background. And whenever I'm talking to a CEO and a co-founder, it's interesting to understand, out of all of the things that you could be doing with your life, how did you end up in 2019 co-founding Xyte. Can you just walk us through? Where was the origin story of this company?

Omer: Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for the question. I think it is interesting and relevant. My professional career started sometime in, I guess, 2008 when I first relocated from Israel to New York, working for a relatively large hardware manufacturer, a device manufacturing company out of New Jersey. I spent about a year there, and then I moved back to Israel to co-found the company's office in Tel Aviv in Israel. I was the CTO, but I also overlooked all the enterprises of the company in Israel and some international companies as well. I did it for about 10 years. And when I decided that it is time for me to move on to a new chapter, I looked at all the things that I've learned at this great company. What was very clear to me at the time was that, as a hardware company, there's a very strong financial force that enforced these device manufacturers, these hardware companies, industrial companies and so on, enforced them to adopt new business models. It became very clear that devices across any industries are being commoditized, prices are going down, and margin are shrinking. So, once again, the device manufacturer has no choice to move to new, let's just call it for now cloud and services kind of business models. I'll give you some examples as we move on with the conversation that we're all familiar with. So that was, I think, one thing that was very clear to me.

The other thing that was very clear is that, unlike software companies, device manufacturers, generally speaking, they do a great job at developing cutting-edge hardware, specifically the company I was working for. But developing the kind of software that is needed to power that transformation is simply another core competency. While in some cases, you might think that developing a cloud platform to support your devices is an easy task — you just take some IoT platform (AWS, Azure, others), and you connect your devices — but it actually turned out to be a very complex task to do. Once again, I don't have the right core competencies to develop this kind of business platform. So when I first started thinking about the idea behind Xyte — at the time, it wasn't even called Xyte yet — I understood that these device manufacturers, specifically B2B device manufacturers, they have a relatively complex value chain. They usually work with channel partners. It could be distributors, managed service providers, resellers, value-added resellers and so on sell to the end customers, which makes even all this transformation to subscription and cloud-based business model far more complex. But then I realized that there is a need for an infrastructure layer at the time some sort of a business platform, more than anything else, that will enable and empower these device manufacturers to make this very complex and challenging transformation. That's really how Xyte started. I think, in the early days, we had a very good understanding of the challenge. We had generally a good idea for the solution should look like. Obviously, it's evolved since significantly. But I think that's really where we came from, and that's where we got us to where we are today.

Erik: Yeah, it's an interesting problem space. Because, of course, you're addressing a lot of technical challenges in terms of enabling new functionality or new ways for customers to access, or end users, let's say, to access your customers' products and services. So there's the set of technical challenges. But then there's also this set of business challenges because you're also enabling companies to sell in a different way, to price in a different way. That means you are disrupting a lot of people in the organization and their roles in the business. And so you have to somehow navigate that as a technology enabler. When you are working with a new company who wants to go on this journey, who are you typically working with? Unlike a lot of technology providers that are focused on efficiency or something, you can't just be working with a technical team. There needs to be a very strong business leadership, I would imagine, with adopting this platform.

Omer: Absolutely, and I completely agree with what you said before. There are some technical aspects of the platform that we solve and make it easier for them. But the biggest challenge that we solve for our customers, the device manufacturers, are the business challenges. Because we're solving a business problem than anything else, there are some cases where we start with the product and the technical people and show them how easily and quickly they can get to the cloud. But even in these cases, in most of those cases, very quickly, it's the business people that comes in. Now, in some cases, there will be a CEO for small and medium-sized company. In some other cases, there will be a VP or a GM for very large enterprises that are using a platform, or maybe a business development, sales, marketing executives and so on.

I think one of the unique things about Xyte, and there are a few unique things that we can discuss later on. But one of the unique things is, like you said, the platform touches so many different people in the organization. Actually, it became so incredibly rich with features that we actually restructured our platform recently to have six modules, six apps. That starts to look a lot like, if you're familiar with other business platforms such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, HubSpot and others. We have a dedicated area for the product and tech people. We have a dedicated module in our platform for the sales and commerce people. We have a dedicated section of our platform for the support and operation, finance and so on people in the organization. So, to me, yeah, it makes it more a complex sale in many cases, but it also makes it into a much, much more exciting opportunity, I think, for me as a founder but also for our customers. Because we're really changing the way they do business and enabling them so many new capabilities that, until recently, they could really only dream of because it was just beyond their reach.

Erik: Maybe you can walk us through what would this look like. And let's choose a larger company. Because I feel like with a smaller company where the CEO and maybe a small group of people can set a charter direction, and they can get everybody to adopt this and potentially be using all of those modules from the beginning, with a larger company, I would imagine that you might be starting with a product category. And it might take a while to get finance on board. It might take a while to get other functions on board. Maybe I'm wrong in that assumption. But walk us through. What would it look like for a larger company to adopt the platform and to begin going through this journey?

Omer: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, particularly, it's one step backward. I believe that it will be very difficult for large companies, very large enterprises, to show interest and start working with Xyte. I just thought it's just going to be too hard to transition, to transform these companies. We initially targeted mid-market customers for this reason. But what we found out very quickly is that we get more and more interest and attention from some of the largest Fortune 500 companies out there in the Xyte platform. One unique thing about them compared to, once again, the mid-market — I'll get to your question in a second, Erik — is that with mid-market customers, their number one priority was always to first get their devices to the cloud and launch, what we support them to do, an asset management, branded asset management solution for their customers. But when we started to get interest from, once again, those large enterprises, it was never about that. The reason behind that is that these large enterprises, I always say they already hired McKinsey & Co, or Deloitte, or some other consulting agencies, and they already looked at what other device manufacturers — you can name a few. Coda in the seeding machines, John Deere in the agriculture, and obviously Apple in the PC and mobile phone, and so on — what these device manufacturers do and how they adopt more and more subscription-based business models. Then these larger device manufacturers, when they came to us, they still have to catch up very, very quickly. So when they came to us, it was usually the business owner, as you mentioned before. Their number one priority was to move to the subscription.

Now, you're absolutely right that selling to such large enterprises, first of all, every sell is unique. No sell is like other sell. There's no one framework that works exactly the same way for all of those. But in most cases, and we have a very good example we're working on now, you do start with one business unit, or you do start with one product line and one team. With a platform like Xyte, there's such a high trust factor that is needed from this device manufacturer that is only natural for them to want to first kind of try the water and see how that partnership is going on before they expand to additional brands and additional product lines and so on. We're perfectly okay with that, and that's how we start with them. What I tell my customers, and our account executive and our entire sales team tell our customers all the time, is that we're building a relationship, and this is a long-term relationship. We actually don't call them customers internally and even the interface. They are our partners. We work with them because we understand it's something that's going to be over years. We understand that they might ask for new things that they like to see that we don't have today. It is important for us as an early-stage and fast-growing startup company to keep get this treatment from them and keep developing our platform. So this is great for us as well. But more importantly, it is for them to build that kind of relationship and partnership with them.

So yes, it starts usually, you questioned, with the business owner. They usually start to ask us about the business model. They try out the platform. They see how easy it is for them. They get back to us and they tell us, "Look. If we had to build something like that, that would probably take us five, six years and several millions of dollars, of euros based on the geography. And with Xyte, we can start tomorrow." In fact, in some cases, they already tried building that. When they get to us, I say, look, we tried to build that. We know what it takes. We understand it's not something that — even if we can, it's not something that makes sense for us to build in-house as an infrastructure. Then we just start working with them. We dedicated a team, an executive team, from the sales team and our customer success team as well. We meet with them regularly. If they sign up to one of our premium enterprise team being a large customer who, obviously, they have award in helping us prioritizing our roadmap as well, we are very, very open with them. We're obviously under NDA about the new features that are coming, and we look forward for their feedback and comments. And so far, knock on wood, those customers have really been our best partners. We're very fortunate to work with them. They're usually more forward-thinking device manufacturers. They understand they have to change. They understand it's a challenge. We really, to be perfectly honest, we're very happy and appreciate the trust they put in us.

Erik: Okay. Well, that's interesting that the multinationals have this other perspective. Which, as you explained it, it makes sense that they've already reached a certain point in terms of technical readiness, but then they have maybe a higher level of complexity on the business side and that's where they need additional support. You've called this a connected device platform. I guess there's a lot of different platform configurations. There's things like thing works and so forth, which maybe also have some of the similar technical connectivity. You're extending this more into the enterprise software, right? So it's now enabling more business model innovation. Can you help us understand some of the types of business model innovation that you've seen coming out of this? Because I guess a lot of our listeners will be quite comfortable with the concept of a connected device platform or the idea of how to get an IoT device on the cloud and start to manage it. I think the business model is quite interesting. Because that's an area where there's a lot less transparency in terms of what works and what doesn't work, right? I mean, you can typically see here's the roadmap to manage device. What is the roadmap to monetize that product? That's much more difficult to determine. So what are some of the more interesting business models that you've seen come out of your partners in the past years?

Omer: I would say not to undervalue any of the other IoT platforms. But I think at the time when I and my co-founder, when we founded the company, I did not want to start an IoT company. I strongly believe that the technical aspect of connecting millions of devices in the cloud, showing some dashboard analytics, some alerts, and so on, it's not a technical challenge that is interesting for a startup to deal with even five years ago. AWS and Azure will always probably do it better than I do and Xyte does. I think what's unique about Xyte is that we are the first and only — to date, as far as I'm aware at least — business platform that has been purposely designed and built for connected devices from any industry, for any IoT. It doesn't matter if it's, once again, agriculture. It could be a truck. It could be a computer and so on. We focus on the business challenges and the aspects of these device manufacturers. We try to solve the challenge, exactly like you put it, on how you better monetize your devices, how you build more sustainable customer relationships similar to what we see in SaaS, in Software-as-a-Service, how you enable these new premium or new innovative business models. When we started with this, initially, we simplified that. At the first pitch to investors, this is the Hardware-as-a-Service platform. We quickly realized that Hardware-as-a-Service is not a good term for many reasons. We expanded that into Xyte Device Cloud because, once again, that looks at your devices 360 and your connected device business 360. It's a collaborative platform, how do you work with your system integrators, value addresses and so on.

But your question about the business model, maybe I'll get you what kind of business model we see from there that I personally agree. I think it's also interesting to discuss in just one line our business model. Because being in, once again, a business platform and not an IoT platform, we don't actually charge by number of devices. In fact, we encourage our device manufacturer — once again, unlike any other IoT platform pretty much out there, we encourage them to connect their entire fleet of devices to the cloud, so they can have full visibility to their devices and how they're being used, so they can better understand what kind of feature they need to develop for their next product and so on. Then once they connect their full devices or their full fleet of devices to the cloud, as you mentioned, we enable them to very, very easily and quickly innovate on their business models. What we see is pretty much all the way from one-time fee and then starting selling complementary features. I'm going to use Tesla, which I believe most of the listeners are familiar with, as a great example. Because essentially, we enable them to Tesla-size the business, right? So when you buy a Tesla, the first thing you can buy — let's say, you're in the US. You can buy insurance. That's a complimentary service. You buy the Tesla for one-time fee, and then Tesla sells you an additional service on top of that directly from their mobile app. So we enable that with every device manufacturers working with Xyte.

Then the next thing is usually a premium feature, and that's very similar to the Tesla full self-driving. So I bought a car, but now I want to enable some sort of a software feature that is there in the hardware but it's behind the payment wall. I need to buy additional license and entitle that license to that specific device. We enable these device manufacturers to do that. Now, the exact pricing is completely up to them. They can charge a one-time fee. They can charge a monthly or an annual fee. Or, what they can do, that gets even more interesting, they can charge a usage-based fee which becomes more and more popular in SaaS applications as well. That is slightly more advanced business model. The best example is one of our customers, a truck manufacturer. As a premier truck manufacturer brand, their trucks are, generally speaking, they're more expensive than competition. They find it very hard to penetrate very price-sensitive markets. And what Xyte enabled them to do and would enable them to do is to essentially sell their truck for a fixed monthly fee, plus a usage-based component based on miles or kilometers that a truck has been used. Now, you can take this example to pretty much anything else. It can be the number of hours you use the phone or PC. It can be how much data you consume, if it's a device with a seller application on it and so on. So that usage base is really the most, I would say, the most innovative business model.

Maybe one comment that I think is important on the premium feature enablement, such as the full self-driving of Tesla, what's great about that is that it not only enables the device manufacturers to post-sell additional services and so on to the customers in after-market sales, but it actually has a significant impact in many cases on their warehouse and inventory complexity. Because what many device manufacturers have today is few different SKUs that are almost identical with just a minor premium feature in one or two of them. What we enable them to do — we have already a few examples of customers doing that — to limit those SKUs into a single SKU that you can then basically fill up credible. You can add additional fields remotely to the cloud. So I think this is where we started, the basic. What we're starting to see now is more requests coming from customers for additional cloud premium features. So even sending more storage for their customers on our cloud platform, sending some special secured tunneling access to the devices remotely. So we enable them to do all of that, and we keep adding more capabilities and features. But I think, generally speaking, those are the kind of business models that we see. I think the usage-based one is the most innovative one. It will take some time for that to be broadly adopted, but that's definitely the direction.

Erik: Yeah, it's an interesting case. I'm sitting here in China. I'm sure you're very aware that China is now producing a lot of goods that are competing with American and European industrial equipment and industrial products. And often, what I see the European and American company struggling with is exactly this proposition, which is, our asset has a useful life of 20 years. It has lower maintenance costs and lower downtime, et cetera, but it costs significantly more. Competing product has a useful life of eight years, going to be some maintenance issues, et cetera. But if you're just looking at it from CapEx perspective, a lot of buyers are going to go with the lower-cost product, because that's kind of the CapEx budget that they have available right now. And so if you can shift that to this OpEx model, the asset that has a longer lifetime, it might actually look like a better value proposition there. Then, of course, if they only need it for 5 years or for 10 years, I guess you have either the OEM or some third party who could reclaim that asset, that equipment, and then relicense it or rent it out to to another user, right? So I think that's something that a lot of companies will have to consider, simply because they're going to be competing against a lot of very competitively-priced Chinese products, and they need to figure out how to not just differentiate on the feature set but also differentiate on the pricing.

Omer: Absolutely. Actually, now that you bring it up, we have an exact case like that. It's a US-based company. They make some sort of a very high-end robotics. And what happened during COVID is that they start seeing growing competition, like you said, from a Chinese manufacturer that sells for about 60% less. Not as good robot. Not as reliable robot, but they sell way more. The other challenge that we start seeing in other cases is that more of these device manufacturers are starting being a B2B. Not even just B2B. But most of the device manufacturers that used to sell, is still selling, to channel partners, distributors, resellers, and so on, obviously make their product MSRP, the final price, for the customers higher. They're starting to see competition selling just online direct to the customer, direct to consumer. That obviously affects, once again, the price. So they have to compete with that as well. We see some cases where they say, on one hand, we need our channel partners. We're definitely going to cut them. But on the other hand, we have to find a way to compete with what's happening in the market. They have to move to more just call it online or e-commerce kind of sales as well. And with the competition from China and so on, and new players disrupting the market, it's a great challenge for these device manufacturers.

(break)

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(interview)

Erik: Omer, I'm curious if you have experience working with distributors. Because there's certainly this strong value proposition for the OEM. A lot of OEMs are trying to reclaim some ownership of their sales channels from distributors. On the other hand, I think there's potential room for distributors to leverage platforms like this. Because they can distribute a wider array of equipment, but then maybe they have trouble controlling the software in that equipment. But they can distribute a wider array. And there's potentially a financial role for them to play, right? So the OEM might not want to finance in this kind of OpEx model. They might not want to finance the ownership of the asset. So if there's a distributor backed by a PE firm that can say, "Okay. We're going to buy a bunch of equipment and then we'll finance the ownership, and we'll license it out," that might be kind of an investment model that would appeal to them more than it would to an OEM. But what have you seen in terms of distributors trying to react to this change in terms of how assets are managed and sold?

Omer: That's one of my favorite questions. I used to get a lot of question about that from pension investors in the company. I guess there's a few ways to answer that. First of all, I do strongly believe that channel partners will play a very important role in this transformation. There's no way to sell a complex piece of hardware. Our customers are usually not just consumer-based product, and you install it with your phone. They require professional installers and distributors or, in many cases, part of an integrated solution and so on. So those distributors, value-added new setters, and so on, they have a very important role.

However, I also strongly believe — we can take an analogy from the software world in a second — that they must transform as well. One of the greatest things about Xyte, and I'm going back to your question before about the large enterprises, what gets them very excited about Xyte is that when they work with Xyte, they're not only enabling new revenue streams for themselves, for device manufacturers, but they actually enable their channel partners to develop their own recurring revenue and transition to be more of an MSP, a managed service provider, in the value chain. One of the unique things about Xyte, from day one when we started developing the platform, is that it is not a siloed solution. Meaning that, there is not one instant of Xyte that we sell to a specific device manufacturer, and then a specific side of Xyte solution we sell to another device manufacturer, another BST and so on. Xyte is a collaborative platform. We enable the device manufacturers to invite, connect, and collaborate with their BSTs and their resellers. When they invite and connect with them, then they can start and collaborate on many things. They can start and collaborate on support tickets. They can start and share catalogs. And, exactly like you mentioned, one of the biggest benefit, other than financial, which is huge, and as in many cases, device manufacturers doesn't want to have device on a service on their documents so it's easier for them to have a BST that is a better fit for that. But other than financial, these BSTs, I believe, must transition to be, from only box movers in some cases, to add value and transition to become some sort of managed service providers.

And if you look at what happened in the software world, it's hard to believe. But I think less than 15 years ago, we all used to go to the store down the street and buy Adobe or Microsoft Office on a CD. So that was a reseller of Microsoft Office, and Exchange, and so on. Those resellers, one of two things happened with them. Either they went out of business, or they transitioned as well to be a Microsoft Office 365 or a Google G Suite, implementation companies, and support companies and so on. The same thing will happen here. Yes, there's still hardware. You still have to distribute it, but you have to find ways to add more services. These could be financial services. These can be remote support and managed services and so on. Once again, I think that's what makes Xyte so interesting to those device manufacturers that are custom and used to sell not direct, they're operational. They support direct sales, but they used to sell to channel partners. That's how they can work together with them and also make sure they see business in that and they see opportunity in that as well.

Erik: Interesting. Let's come back to this topic of your business model. I mean, it's quite complex, right? So you've already mentioned that you don't sell by number of devices. You now have these other stakeholders, these channel partners, that might be also coming on board the platform. So you have also users from multiple enterprises that could be using the platform. You have six modules. Do you have a standard approach to how you structure that? I guess it's actually, I don't know, there's a lot of room for innovation there. It's also somewhat hard, I think, with these types of platforms to find one model that makes sense for every type of customer, given the many various ways in which they could be using this and the different levels of scale. So how do you actually define your business model for your partners?

Omer: Absolutely. That's one of the biggest challenges of Xyte. Being a completely agnostic solution to the industry, the device, but also kind of agnostic to the stakeholder and the user, is definitely a challenge. Finding the right business is something that we're constantly evolving and updating. Once again, listening to our customers. We had a very open conversation with them in many cases. Understand the value they see, how much they're willing to pay and how they like to pay, and so on, especially with the early adopters and our early customers. I actually think that — I will announce it officially October 1. But I actually think that the new modular approach makes it easier. And we did it because of all those reasons that you've mentioned, that we support a small company, a medium company, and a very large enterprise. We sell to the device manufacturer. We sell to their channel partners, and so on. The reason why it makes it easier is that because it's almost like a Lego kit now, and you can custom and build exactly the modules that you need.

So I'm going to give you an example. If I'm a system integrator and I'm installing a system of an Xyte-supported device manufacturer, and I just need to remotely support these devices for some of my customers — let's say I have two support people in my team — then I'll just buy two support seat for a support mode or for a support hub. That will be about $200 a month. That's it. I can support these devices. I'm not connecting any device to the cloud. There's no reason for me to pay a lot of money, a significant amount of money, to connect plenty of devices. I also don't necessarily need my own branded commerce, because I'm not ready to sell any kind of services. But on the other hand, if I'm a device manufacturer and I do want to connect my devices to the cloud, and I want to launch my branded version of Xyte, then I'll subscribe to the product tab. I'll be able to connect unlimited number of devices. We have four different periods based on the security level that you need, a support level that you need. But all of them enable you to connect unlimited number of devices and invite unlimited number of end customers to your cloud. So I'll subscribe to the product tab, and I'll start connecting my devices. I'll launch my asset management, my brand asset management platform, to my customers. Then if I'm, in some cases, I'll have to support my customers directly as well, then I can subscribe to the support centers. See, it's exactly like my system integrator is doing. And when I'm ready to start and sell subscription, then I'll add the component or the model of the commerce hub. Using the commerce hub, I can start selling different types of cloud-based, subscription-based products to my customers. That's where Xyte charge a small fee, a small monthly fee, and a percentage of whatever you sell. It's very similar to Shopify and other e-commerce platforms. So based on the GMV, based on how much I'm selling to Xyte. As the more I sell, honestly, the percentage goes down but the overall payment they will make at Xyte will be higher. So, really, it's a usage-based model. But that kind of modularity really makes it easier for us to find the right kind of bundle, I would say, to each of these customers.

But the bottom line is, that is a framework. Because when we find the customer, that happens — especially, once again, with startup companies, and especially with a complex platform like we have, when we find the customer that has some unique needs and say, "This is too much for me. However, I'd like to do that," so we always get into a conversation with them. We always hear them out. And in, I would say, 9 out of 10 cases, we find something that will justify their need. And if that's a good idea, we actually edit, adapt, change our pricing as well for other customers. But that, to me, is the best way to find the right balance between charging what we believe the value is. — because eventually, we need to grow and we need to raise more funds and build the company — but also deliver the best value to our customers. It goes back, I think, to the partnership discussion we had before. We see that as a long-term partnership, so we're not looking to squeeze as much revenue out of you as soon as we work together. But actually, we're way more interested to see how much value we can give to you and, I guess for lack of better term, what'll be a fair price for us to work with together.

Erik: Yeah, fascinating. I mean, I think that's one of the more interesting things about any type of IoT platform business model. Not necessarily that it's easy, but you're able to build relationships where you can map financial flows more closely to the flow of value, right? And you have some degree of visibility into the flow of value that you really lack in a traditional business. So I think it's a fascinating part of the business. Omer, last question. There might be some other things that you'd like to discuss. But last question from my side is your future roadmap. I think you're going into, what, maybe year five now. You already have a good, established business. I'm sure that you have a heavy roadmap taking you into the next 12, 24 months. So what are some of the things that you can already announce about projects that you're planning to launch in the near future?

Omer: Yeah, I think the hardest part, probably about every software company, specifically in our case is prioritizing. Because the opportunities out there are just enormous. They're unlimited, right? But for the next 12 to 18 months, some of the biggest things that are coming out in the near term, actually, in a couple of weeks, we're announcing and releasing a new version or a new iteration of our collaboration capabilities. Once again, the platform will just be more collaborative, enable new and more innovative ways for end customers to collaborate with their channel partners, with their device manufacturers, the device manufacturers to collaborate with their system integrators, managed service providers and so on. I think that's one thing coming in the near term. Another exciting thing that's coming in the next couple of quarters is more, I will say I'll just call it more openness. We call it Xyte universal gateway. Generally, we understand that, as an infrastructure, we will never be able and it's not a goal to develop custom application layers. So if you make trucks, you can benefit a lot from Xyte. But there's probably some unique fleet management for trucks application that you'll need to use. And if you're a display or digital signage company, there are some content management systems that you need to integrate with in the DNA of a company that we believe that our customers and their customers should have the option to choose and should be able to integrate and connect their devices to Xyte to any other third platform. One of the things that we do is, we're working on opening more and more APIs and more and more capabilities to integrate with third-party applications next on top with the Xyte platform. So it's coming as well.

Additional thing will be on the commerce side. So there's constantly new capabilities related to the collaboration of — you briefly mentioned that, Erik, before. Well, this is my product. Some of them, I'd like to sell maybe directly. Some others, I'd like to sell to system integrators and resellers. Some others, I'd like to share online with my distributor, and maybe that distributor will bundle them with some other product instead of bundle them with their services and so on. So all the what we call catalog sharing and some very advanced and new capabilities to the commerce will be added in 2025 as well. I think those are the main items. Obviously, being a SaaS company, there's constant innovation all the time. We just dramatically upgraded just our user experience to the customers, and we already see a higher adoption and higher engagement from our customers and their customers. So this is great. So there's constant incoming call all the time. But I think those three main things, we'll be working on and investing a lot of resources and adding in end of 2024 and I would say the first two quarters of 2025

Erik: Awesome. Omer, it seems like you will be busier. The engineering team will be busy.

Omer: Yeah.

Erik: What is the best way for our listeners to reach out to you if they want to follow up on this conversation?

Omer: I think I'm very accessible, and I'm always happy to talk to IoT fans and device manufacturer. The best way, I guess, is through my email at omer@xyte.io or directly to my LinkedIn. I'm always happy to pick people's ideas, get their feedback, show them a quick demo. Always happy to talk.

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