South Africa’s IoT.nxt sets up shop in The Netherlands

Fast-growing innovator in Internet of Things technology, South African based IoT.nxt, will open its first fully-fledged office in Europe in The Netherlands in July this year.

This follows its associate office established in London in January this year and now firmly starts the company’s global expansion.

 “The Netherlands has a strong technology focus and was the logical choice,” says Dr Joe Bester, IoT.nxt Marketing Director, who will lead the Dutch office.

Techchrunch.com reported in 2015 that the early strengths of the Netherlands’ budding startup scene — software, space, smart energy, financial tech, digital health, sharing technology and 3D printing, among others — coincide with the overall direction of global innovation. “The Dutch prowess for high-tech hardware, in particular, has drawn investment interest not just from the United States and Europe, but also from China,” according to the site’s report.

Respected research and publishing company Business Insider (BI) ranked Amsterdam at number 10 in its review of the most high-tech cities in the world last year. BI noted that Amsterdam’s combination of financial technology, energy efficiency, and startup culture make it a powerhouse in Europe, despite being much smaller than its neighbours.

The Dutch legislation is very business-friendly and especially favourable towards technology start-ups.

For IoT.nxt the main reasons for positioning the business in the Netherlands included the following:

• Unlike in South Africa, there is no foreign exchange control in the Netherlands which supports the international commercialisation of software specifically, as well as other technology.
• Given the EU and Dutch legislation for the protection of intellectual property (IP), it is more efficient and practical to protect and enforce IP from The Netherlands rather than from South Africa.
• By using The Netherlands as a holding jurisdiction, that country can provide great access to well-qualified developers.
• The regulatory framework for the protection of data and data privacy is in line with the IoT.nxt methodology and philosophy.

“The company participated in large scale IoT conferences and expos in London (IoT Tech Expo in January and SMART IoT held in March) where it was evident that there is significant interest in Europe for IoT.nxt’s innovative approach to offering companies new strategic solutions to deliver efficiencies and significant cost savings through the implementation of IoT technology. The office currently being set up in The Hague will allow us easy access to the European market,” says Bester.

“The Netherlands was by far the best choice for us as a next step after our first successful international expansion with our London office.”

IoT.nxt has developed an edge to cloud IoT platform that enables rapid IoT implementation as the main underpin for enterprise digital transformation. IoT.nxt’s unique Raptor edge gateway technology and gateway management software integrated into its end to end Web-Commander software stack clearly differentiates it from its competitors.

The platform allows for a top down or bottom up digital transformation approach and is an enabling technology for all of the large IoT platform and big data players, as is evidenced through the company’s many commercial applications across many industry verticals where customers were using MS, SAP, IBM or  GE, to name a few.

IoT.nxt’s agility and ability to rapidly connect all ‘things’ from legacy analogue to latest digital devices in the edge ecosystem, to abstract-normalise-aggregate and filter data intelligently at the edge, visualise in 3D and intelligently control the ecosystem through a multi-directional rules based engine supporting a big data subscription based consumption model in one natively developed platform, is what sets it apart from competitors.

‘”We have helped companies on their digitisation journey in around 11 different industry sectors. Our clients see the IoT.nxt platform as their first step in implementing a digitisation strategy that brings their businesses into the future of business and then keeps them there no matter what happens on the edge or in the big data layer – we are the agnostic bridge,” said Bester.

IoT.nxt was co-founded by CEO Nico Steyn and partners Terje Moen, Business Development Officer and Bertus Jacobs, Chief technology Officer in 2015 and established its head office in Pretoria, South Africa.

IoT.nxt was selected by global consulting giant Gartner as one of six  African aspiring innovators ahead of Gartner’s Symposium/ITXpo held in Cape Town in September 2016. The company was also a finalist in the Da Vinci TT100 innovation index for Emerging Enterprises in 2016. At launch the company had seven employees but has now grown to a staff compliment of 45 as its strategic solutions gain traction amongst diverse South African companies.

Bester will be joined by other South Africans to establish the office in The Hague but the company will recruit Dutch citizens to develop IoT.nxt in Europe.