POST Luxembourg, the public provider of postal services and of telecommunications in Luxembourg has selected Cumulocity IoT to fulfill its plans to offer a comprehensive range of smart Internet of Things services in Luxembourg. POST Luxembourg has also joined the DHL Parcel network.
Since several years POST Luxembourg customers can use the M2M services of the company. IoT device management/connectivity and SIM card management and services were always key in this approach (also given the telecommunications leadership of the company) with the POST M2M Control Center, powered by Cisco’s Jasper IoT platform.
On the solutions level, on top of the automated connectivity and device management, POST Luxembourg also works with partners offering consulting services, end-to-end solutions for various IoT use cases and tailored solutions.
Vertical offers and use cases include automotive telematics (including fleet management, asset tracking and vehicle telematics) eHealth solutions (e.g. patient monitoring) and, how else could it be, a variety of solutions for smart cities, ranging from smart metering, public transport and smart waste and parking management to security, traffic management and lighting management.
The POST Luxembourg smart IoT services offering and new solution – now powered by Cumulocity IoT
The IoT and M2M platform of choice as mentioned has been Jasper as you can see when visiting the page where Luxembourg companies can order their IoT Starter Kit.
Cisco’s Jasper and POST Luxembourg announced their collaboration to launch IoT services across Europe at Mobile World Congress in 2016. One of the first companies to utilize POST IoT Control Center, powered by Jasper, on the network of POST Luxembourg was a major European car manufacturer whereby 1.1 million vehicles were moved to the IoT Control Center platform. The automotive M2M managed connectivity offering today connects over 1.3 million cars across Europe with a broad range of IoT Telematics services that provide accurate control and monitoring of cars and trucks.
Those updated numbers are mentioned in an announcement from Software AG regarding the selection of its Cumulocity IoT platform by POST Luxembourg (end May 2018) with the purpose to ‘offer a comprehensive range of smart IoT services’ in the country. So, another IoT platform steps in. That offering of smart IoT services partially overlaps with what already existed. Yet, with Cumulocity IoT one can expect more pre-packaged solutions enabling a relatively fast time to market and, perhaps more importantly, capabilities that fit changing needs of organizations across several use cases and industries.
Cumulocity IoT, among others, is often mentioned for its analytical capabilities (whereby Software AG’s Apama Streaming Analytics Platform replaced the streaming analytics engine of Cumulocity, which was acquired by Software AG in 2017), application enablement features (ranking four years in a row in the MachNation IoT Application Enablement Platform scorecard as a leader) and more (e.g. also ranked among the prominent platforms regarding security, edge platform capabilities and, since its latest release, coming with more edge extensions, an open, enhanced Microservices SDK and industrialized lifecycle support for Microservices and DevOps, IoT Platform-as-a-Service capabilities and enhanced LPWAN device integration).
It is also strong in the context of native IoT device management, fast onboarding and configuration and sustains Industry 4.0 type of applications with easy integrations with prevalent fieldbus protocols like Modbus, CAN bus and OPC-UA via its Cloud Fieldbus and real-time SCADA process and system visualizations.
Why all these (and other) features and capabilities, further including ample integration possibilities, which you can explore all here. Essentially because several of them reflect in the use cases and smart services enhancement of the POST Luxembourg IoT offering, among others the analytical capabilities enabling specific enhancements and/or use cases in the scope of a modular IoT growth path.
Rapid deployment, pre-packaged solutions and a modular IoT approach with focus on key verticals and use cases
However, the focus of the announcement on the selection of Cumulocity to power the POST Luxembourg IoT solution is mostly on pre-packaged solutions and on the ability for organizations to deploy fast and leverage what they need as their projects and demands become more sophisticated.
That’s also where the roots of Cumulocity are: the community of makers and an easy, quick and modular approach that serves both small and medium businesses (of which there are quite some in Luxembourg) and larger organizations (with also quite some actors in well-known industries).
In the announcement of the collaboration between POST Luxembourg and Cumulocity IoT, Software AG emphasizes that it took POST Luxembourg less than six weeks to build a fully customized and secure IoT offering using its IoT platform.
The Cumulocity–based solution POST Luxembourg offers should be able to connect and register millions of devices quickly and securely the announcement further says.
The Smart City IoT offering of POST Luxembourg is mentioned first. The solution promises the possibility to connect all parts of a city or enterprise property, providing the ability to monitor what and where anything is happening – which makes it more secure and potentially more energy efficient.
In the words of Laurent Rapin, IoT Solution Advisor, Enterprise Sales Department at POST Luxembourg: “Our Smart City service can give our customers deep insights into what’s happening across their properties or across the city. With Cumulocity IoT, our customers will be able to better manage their resources, parking, water, environment, efficiently control energy usage, manage traffic, and take advantage of numerous other applications. This ensures that our business and public service customers are better equipped to control or solve any potential threat or opportunity, as it arises.”
Given the importance of its mentioned automotive offering, this area is mentioned second with applications and use cases such as fleet management, crash detection, insurance telematics and eco-driving.
In the context of the pre-packaged solutions that come with Cumulocity (remember the analytics, among others) condition monitoring, predictive maintenance and track & trace solutions are mentioned on top of quick and easy device and sensor management, bringing the worlds of IT and OT together.
And for those needing more there is of course the pitch for Software AG’s Digital Business Platform for “industry-leading integration, business process management, advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities”, in the context of which Cumulocity IoT is to be seen as well.
More about the collaboration between POST Luxembourg and Cumulocity IoT in the Software AG press release.
POST Luxembourg joins DHL Parcel cross-border parcel delivery network
The POST Luxembourg group isn’t just upping the ante regarding its IoT services offering. Early June 2018 POST Luxembourg and DHL Parcel signed a strategic partnership in the competitive and still growing parcel shipping space in these days of online shopping.
This essentially means that POST Luxembourg becomes the partner of DHL’s Parcel Connect service in the country where it is a leading provider of several services to begin with. Initially the cross-border parcel delivery services are import-related: from Europe to Luxembourg. According to the announcement the cooperation with POST Luxembourg will allow the DHL Parcel Europe network to benefit from improved transit times to Luxembourg and to gain access to the country’s largest network of service points and parcel stations.
Later, POST Luxembourg will also offer export services from Luxembourg (Parcel Connect Export).
In European countries such as Luxembourg, Belgium and others there is quite some cross-border parcel shipping since e-commerce is a cross-border given. Many global online players are based in a select number of countries while local leading e-commerce players in countries such as The Netherlands, France and so on have quite some customers in the mentioned, smaller countries.
For the e-commerce players in these smaller countries that’s been a challenge for years as it isn’t that easy to thrive in this highly competitive and crowded but relatively small market from the bigger perspective of e-commerce in these small countries. Ample initiatives to boost national e-commerce markets exist, yet in the end king customer of course chooses.
Distances are often very short and the services provided by leaders with regards to speed of delivery and track and trace services (indeed, here as well we meet IoT again) require a highly optimized logistics chain with a key role for parcel delivery leaders who serve as the “face” of the e-commerce shop in the delivery of ordered products. Cost pressure is high, as is the need for collaboration with those logistics players offering additional services which in some countries aren’t or for various reasons can’t be offered yet on the terms of demanding consumers. As a consequence of the collaboration, e-commerce customers of POST Luxembourg can leverage various services such as parcel notification by e-mail/SMS, the option to change the delivery date, a collection service for returns and simplified returns without additional costs for recipients.
Parcel Connect was launched by Deutsche Post DHL in 2014 and the network today is present in 26 European countries (either because Deutsche Post DHL has a local presence or because there is a partner as in this case). The aim: “to significantly simplify, extend, and accelerate the shipping of parcels in Europe”.
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