AT&T and IoT platform company Simetric teamed up to offer enterprises a dashboard console to manage and monitor IoT end points across multiple operator environments.
Without the console, customers that have IoT devices deployed with various operators need to manually switch connectivity management platforms (CMPs) to monitor each one.
When enterprises offer a global product with embedded IoT connectivity they need to integrate with each of the operator platforms, or manually log into different portals for the CMPs.
AT&T provides 4G or 5G connectivity to customers using Simetric’s single pane of glass console. Simetric’s platform is an application hosted in a large public cloud that sits on top of 250 global operator CMPs.
Simetric’s APIs, which number more than 1,000, aggregate the operator CMPs to enable businesses to see their end points in the console. It gives them the same look and feel regardless of the operator network accesses technology, country or SIM status.
Mike Van Horn, assistant vice president at AT&T Connected Solutions, told Mobile World Live the operator has used Simetric’s platform internally for several years to provide enhanced support for enterprise customers.
Customers can opt to use the console on their own or have AT&T manage it.
“They want the ability to set rules and rates, ensure that their rates are optimised and that they’re not paying more than they should,” he explained. “It’s a value add for customers.”
Horn stated most of AT&T’s customers are employing the user interface on the console “but we do have some more sophisticated customers using the APIs.”
Horn explained when a customer has relationships with AT&T and another European or South American operator they can make their API calls into Simetric, and then Simetric figures out who to issue it to.
“It’s really much more efficient,” Horn said.
If a customer has most of its business located in the US but wants to start a new entity in a country such as Brazil, AT&T can localise with out of country operators through remote SIM provisioning.
Previously, Horn said businesses would need two connectivity management platforms, one from AT&T and one from a local operator.
“With Simetric you can switch from AT&T to your other carrier, and you can see and manage the SIM seamlessly,” he said.
Simetric is also integrated with ServiceNow and Ericsson-owned Cradlepoint across the latter’s routers and router management platform.
If a customer has cellular-enabled routers deployed across US in branches and starts to see a problem “you can troubleshoot the connectivity in Simetric, and then you can make a disposition that triggers a ServiceNow ticket request, or you can troubleshoot the router functionality via the API calls that they have into Cradlepoint,” according to Horn.
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