Providing the Powerful Tools Needed to Deploy Connected Products Globally: Ayla Networks

“Solving the Internet of Things so you don’t have to.”

Ayla Networks was founded in 2010 by a number of industry experts from Amazon, Cisco, and other companies who set out to enable the world’s manufacturers to bring Internet of Things products to market. After self-funding for the first few years and operating in stealth, Ayla formally unveiled its IoT Platform to the world in June of 2013 after raising an initial $5.4 million in Series A financing. Since then, Ayla hascontinued to gain momentum, introducing a number of products, including Ayla’s Mobile Application Platform (AMAP) and Ayla Insights, as well as establishing IoT clouds in North America, China, and Europe. This success has enabled Ayla to successfully raise an additional Series B and Series C of financing, bringing the total amount raised to $60M USD, as well as add customers that include Changhong, Dimplex, Fujitsu General, Hampton Brinks, Hunter Fan, Kidde, LockState, Ozner, TCL, and United Technologies Electronic Controls (UTEC) a long the way.

Ayla was built to be an IoT platform from day one and, as its history has shown, is dedicated to the extension of its platform technology and IoT ecosystem.

Addressing the differentiating factor, The Ayla Agile IoT Platform has been designed from the beginning to reduce the friction for manufacturers in creating secure and scalable connected products. Ayla doesn’t write new code for each customer but instead enables them to simply create a virtual representation of their product in a cloud based GUI. Many other IoT platforms require the manufacturer to assemble some, if not all of the solution themselves which in most cases is outside the engineering expertise of the manufacturer and extends the time to get the product to market.

Future Proof IoT Services
Ayla Networks, from its inception, was founded for one sole purpose, to enable the Internet of Things. Dedicated to solving the idiosyncrasies of developing and managing connected devices, Ayla provides a number of products that enable customers to quickly connect any device, to the cloud and applications, and make meaningful decisions from their data. Ayla’s Agile IoT Platform, Agile Mobile Application Platform, and Ayla Insights, provides device manufacturers with the connectivity, security, and feedback loop needed to create better products and more engaging user experiences.

Future Insights
While the Ayla platform was developed as a horizontal solution to enable connected products, its primary focus is on manufacturers that are making products for the connected home and light commercial space. As a platform provider, its continued focus is on the extension of the platform technology and IoT ecosystem.

Success Story of a Happy Customer
Colorado-based LockState is a leading provider of connected access control systems for commercial and residential markets. As early as 2011, LockState, a long-time manufacturer and importer of traditional door locks, recognized the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT)-as well as the complexity involved in implementing reliable, secure, well-performing connected products. “We are not specialists in all the technologies involved in the IoT, and we grasped the difficulty and risk of trying to implement connected door locks ourselves,” said Nolan Mondrow, CEO and founder of LockState. “We began a concerted search for IoT experts that could do the heavy lifting for us.” After contacting nearly a dozen IoT technology providers, LockState chose to build its first connected lock,RemoteLock, based on Ayla‘s Agile IoT Platform.

The Ayla Solution: LockState saw in Ayla the specialized IoT expertise that it needed to expand its business into the connected lock realm. “Before trying to sell us on how great they were and promising the world, Ayla asked the right questions and were focused on enabling us to get where we needed to be,” said Mondrow. “Also, Ayla had spent time building strong partnerships with chip manufacturers and other ecosystem partners.”

The Benefits

• Worry-free security. “We have peace of mind because Ayla relieves us of theburden of constantly worrying about people hacking into our connected locks,” said Mondrow.

• Cost savings. “Without Ayla, we would have had to spend enormous amounts of money to hire and train developers to become experts in all aspects of IoT technology-and to stay up-to-date with technology as it evolves,” said Mondrow. “Developing and maintaining the security aspect alone would have required us to spend millions of dollars. Using the Ayla platform frees up developer money wecan use to improve our user interface and create new apps for users.”

• Staying up to date. “The Ayla platform secures the data flow between our locks to their cloud and back to our servers that run our user interface, and their platform updates encryption and authentication and all the rest,” said Mondrow. “Knowing that they’re protecting our products’ data transmission takes the pressure off us to have to keep pace with the latest security nuances.”

• Ability to focus on core expertise. “Ayla takes so many of the things you must haveto get a connected product to market and just handles them,” said Mondrow. “They essentially hand us the capabilities we need, and we can get creative andfocus on doing what we do best.”

“With Ayla, Future Proof Your Global IoT Strategy.”

Meet the Executive Duo

David Friedman, Co-Founder & CEO: Prior to founding Ayla Networks, David served as Vice President, business development for ZeroG Wireless, a company providing low-power Wi-Fi products to the embedded space. In that role, David forged partnerships with leading micro-controller companies, and built relationships with OEMs serving a variety of markets including health, fitness, home controls and smart energy.

Adrian Caceres, Co-Founder, CTO & VP of Engineering: Adrian is passionate about connected products and has made connectivity the core of his professional career. Adrian came from Amazon’s Lab126 where he was the technical lead for the Kindle wireless software team and helped launch the very first Kindle with Wi-Fi. Prior to Lab126, he worked on Dell cell phones, Zing media players, Atheros wireless chipsets, Nokia routers/firewalls, and Sun workstations. He graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.