Alistair Fulton Of Semtech On The Future of The Internet of Things (IoT), And How It May Improve Our Health & Our Lives

An Interview With David Leichner

Talk to your customers: Remember the relationship with your customers is a partnership. Think about how you can benefit from each other by asking the right questions, sharing your knowledge and listening to their expertise.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is beginning to become more mainstream. Millions of people use Fitbit health trackers, Nest smart thermostats, and Ring doorbell cameras, which are early examples of IoT. These are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential commercial applications of IoT. IoT has the potential to change the way cities are run, the way our healthcare is managed, the way our cars communicate, and the way our supply chains and manufacturing are utilized. But how exactly will IoT improve our lives? How can it improve our health? What are the new IoT technologies that we should expect to see around the corner? How does one create a successful career in the IoT industry? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders who are incorporating IoT into their business or who are developing IoT applications, who can share stories and perspectives about the future of IoT. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Alistair Fulton.

Alistair Fulton is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Products Group. He joined Semtech in 2018 with over 25 years of experience in the Internet of Things (IoT), connected devices, machine to machine (M2M)/embedded, and analytics spaces. Before joining Semtech, Mr. Fulton led the development of Hitachi’s Lumada Industrial IoT Platform, the leading “visionary” IIoT platform in Gartner’s 2018 magic quadrant. Prior to Hitachi, he led Microsoft’s early IoT initiatives, including the development and incubation of Microsoft’s v1.0 IoT platform (the precursor to the v3.0 Azure IoT platform).

Semtech, the Semtech logo and LoRa are registered trademarks or service marks of Semtech Corporation or its affiliates. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of Semtech Corporation or its affiliates.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started in the IoT industry?

From a young age, I’ve always been interested in technologies that have the potential to change how we live. After my university studies and upon entering the professional world, my path to the IoT industry was a series of happy coincidences. I started in the mobile telecoms world, which lead me to the world of solutions that are loosely bundled under the banner of “IoT.” When I started in the world of mobile in the early 90s, it was already clear to me that the advent of affordable, mobile computing would change the world despite the limitations of platforms like the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), which were dominant at that time. I knew at that point that my path in life would be of tech innovation.

After some time in the mobile space working on building O2’s (Telefónica UK) business in Europe, I relocated permanently to the U.S. and spent some time in consulting helping clients rapidly develop mobile computing applications. Realizing firsthand that the task of building applications, whether device to human or device to device, was just too complex to support wide scale adoption, I joined Microsoft and moved into the Cloud platform space. Initially working on incubating Microsoft’s first iterations of what became the Azure IoT platform. Over time as Azure matured, I moved to focus more on building software tools to make IoT applications development accessible to developers.

A few years ago I came to the conclusion that, with the range of cloud platforms and tools available today, building IoT applications that consume data and drive insight has become dramatically easier. This leaves one remaining major barrier to widescale IoT adoption — the cost and complexity involved in connecting the massive sensor networks required in many IoT solutions — which led me into the LPWAN space and ultimately to Semtech to help more developers take advantage of the unique capabilities of Semtech’s LoRa® devices.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Many years ago when I was working as a consultant to telecoms companies helping to figure out how to grow the value of data oriented services, I spent a year or so working for a client in Stockholm. Sweden was always a place I’d wanted to visit and, to my great excitement, this project gave me a chance to rent an apartment and experience life as a resident.

Little did I know when I first arrived full of ideas and eager to get started at the clients’ offices one glorious early July day, that almost every Swedish worker takes the entire month of July as vacation. The only people in the building were one security guard and one janitor (neither of whom spoke any English nor understood my pathetic attempts at Swedish), everyone else appeared to have vanished.

This continued for several days, until eventually my client checked email and realized I had arrived. Needless to say the next few weeks were uneventful as, alone in the office, I had time to come up with all manner of ideas as to how to grow the clients business but had no one to discuss them with. I carry a few lessons from this experience, aside from “always check the calendar,” the biggest being that the value of an idea is defined by the people that it influences, if you can’t bring a team with you (or the office is empty) then nothing changes.

Can you tell our readers about the most interesting IoT projects you are working on now?

Today, I work on a technology called LoRa (low power, long range). LoRa is a critical enabling technology for the IoT because it provides the simplest, cost effective and power efficient way of connecting the wide area sensor networks that IoT solutions rely upon to generate data. LoRa is used worldwide to support public, private and satellite networks that are used to connect sensors in fields as diverse as smart agriculture, supply chain management, industrial automation, utility grid management and asset tracking. The central goal of every one of these applications is, in one way or another, to enable users to produce “more from less” either by optimizing the resources or power required to produce a product or to reduce wastage through inefficiency. As well as obviously enabling enterprises to operate in more profitable or efficient ways these solutions also reduce the impact of these processes on the environment, helping to address the causes of climate change head on.

How do you think this might change the world?

One of the biggest opportunities for IoT technology is to serve as a catalyst for social and environmental initiatives that’ll help curb the acceleration of human-caused climate change. The goal of IoT solutions is to use data driven insights to increase the efficiency of the complex manufacturing and distribution processes humans have developed over time to support the needs of earth’s growing population. These solutions have direct impact on the profitability of participants in these processes by enabling them to produce “more from less” but also drive significant indirect benefits in the form of reduced energy and raw material consumption and reduced waste and pollution, reducing the environmental damage caused by human activity.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks of this technology that people should think more deeply about?

IoT solutions require easy to deploy sensor networks, gathering data across processes as varied as the performance of specific machines, the consumption of resources or the location of assets or people. Of course, talking about sensor networks triggers some “big brother” fears, what happens to the data? Who can access it? What if a bad actor accesses the system? Just as with any other form of system level data, some of these concerns are legitimate, particularly for mission critical applications like power grid management. This is why ensuring that every IoT application is secure by design using (i) secure radio technologies like LoRa and the LoRaWAN® standard and (ii) modern, secure cloud platforms is so key.

What are the three things that most excite you about the IoT industry? Why?

Excitement may be the wrong word, but to me the IoT industry represents a critical tool in addressing the drivers of human-caused climate change. I think this is the greatest challenge humanity faces today given the many impacts climate change is having on global food production, water consumption, temperature and sea level increases. If we don’t move aggressively to address the disconnect between the economic drivers behind increased greenhouse gas emissions and the imperative to reduce the environmental impact of those same drivers, we’re in trouble. The IoT to me is the key to aligning economic goals (more profit, products, happy customers, etc.) with environmental goals (fewer emissions, less power consumption, less resource depletion, less inefficiency) because it enables enterprises and the customers they serve to make data driven decisions on how to improve.

To make that improvement possible, IoT solutions need to be easy to implement, easy to use and cost effective to drive economic and environmental ROI. What I’m truly excited about is how far we have come to reaching that goal over the last few years. What’s exciting to me is how far the IoT has come in the following ways:

1. Ease of data ingestion: IoT applications used to be custom developments with customers having to do the heavy lift of figuring out how to ingest and process data at scale. This restricted access to those enterprises with the deepest pockets. With the advent of cloud platforms like AWS, Azure and many others ingesting data at massive scale, integrating with other data sets (e.g. ERP data) is now easier and more cost effective than ever.
2. Ease of application development: Similarly IoT applications used to be largely tailor-made for each customer with little reuse of code or common tools, with a similar effect of restricting access. With the emergence of IoT cloud platforms (AWS IoT, Azure IoT, etc.) there are now commonly available tools and reusable code and applications that abstract much of the complexity that used to be involved in developing applications, democratizing access to IoT solutions, and enabling the massive cloud developer ecosystem to engage.
3. Ease of data generation: The root of all IoT solutions is sensor-generated data and developing those sensors and connecting them using either traditional wired, cellular or satellite connections used to be complex, power hungry and expensive. With the growth in IoT-focused network solutions like LoRaWAN, supported by an open business model under which customers can pick from any number of public LoRaWAN operators (both terrestrial and now satellite) or easily deploy their own network for minimal cost, it’s now possible to connect low power, cost effective sensors anywhere they are needed.

What are the three things that concern you about the IoT industry? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

Now more than ever, tech innovation needs to enable communities and companies to adopt simple solutions that can aid in supporting their mission and reduce their environmental impact. In legacy industries, there has been a slower adoption of IoT solutions and adherence to the safe operations of these solutions. With each application, we need to think about how it creates a better place for future generations to live, work and grow.

Can you share with our readers a few of the exciting future applications of IoT that you have seen?

By implementing a network of LoRa-enabled sensors and gateways embedded across a region, environmental indicators can be measured and reported for data analysis in real time, detecting issues before they become crises. This is helping multiple IoT applications better address specific challenges to monitor and safe guard communities. The impact of these are going to be tremendously beneficial.

1. Water Conservation: Water management systems with smart sensors incorporated into them enable real-time monitoring of water usage to detect leaks and limit water waste.
2. Sustainable Farming: Farmers and ranchers can measure environmental conditions that influence crop production, track the health of livestock and create efficiencies that reduce environmental impact.
3. Flood Monitoring: In coastal regions with a high risk of flooding, communities can incorporate smart sensors into IoT devices to monitor rising sea level.

Can you help articulate to our readers a few of the ways that IoT can improve our health and improve our lives?

At Semtech, we take pride in our ability to create sustainable, green technologies that provide insights into how our actions have an environmental impact and can better take control of the changes needed to meet sustainability goals. With our low power and long range IoT solutions, we are contributing to reducing carbon, water preservation, energy conservation, air quality monitoring and species protection.

In today’s environment, hackers break into the software running IoT devices, for ransomware, to damage brands, or for other malicious purposes. Based on your experience, what should IoT manufacturing companies do to uncover vulnerabilities in the development process to safeguard their IoT products?

In the IoT, much of the vulnerability that hackers try to exploit is the same as any other application by targeting the application / cloud layer. Here, again just like any other application, security is a critical component in any solution design from initial concept through to production. Applications must be “secure by design,” it can’t be an afterthought. The difference with IoT solutions is the wide sensor networks that the IoT relies on, creating many points of potential vulnerability. While many exploits target single sensors and the extent of damage may be limited to making an individual sensor “go rogue” security is also critical when it comes to how you connect sensors. This is one of the strengths of LoRaWAN because of the double layer encryption (encrypting data at both the network layer and application layer) that’s part of the LoRaWAN standard. This means that in the unlikely event a hacker is able to penetrate the network layer the data each sensor is sending is still encrypted with an encryption key that is specific to each application. Coupled with a secure by design approach and analytics to identify and protect against attacks, the security model of LoRaWAN significantly reduces the risk of bad actors compromising an IoT applications security.

What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The IoT Industry?

1. Surround yourself with the right people: Technology is not an IT function. With the vast range of options available in the IoT space it’s vital to stay focused on the problem that you are trying to solve as a business. To do this you need the right stakeholders across the business at the table, you need to make sure you have a very clear understanding of the problem and of your organization’s operational realities and business goals when it comes to solving it.
2. Talk to your customers: Remember the relationship with your customers is a partnership. Think about how you can benefit from each other by asking the right questions, sharing your knowledge and listening to their expertise.
3. Embrace continuous learning: I’ve learned throughout my career to say “yes” and take on challenges outside of my day-today work. I encourage my peers to do the same. When training and learning opportunities are encouraged at your job, teams can better operate with an open mind, share their ideas and embrace feedback.
4. Always assume you’re wrong: The technology industry is extremely fast-paced. It is intimidating to do something wrong or feel like you’ve failed. On the flip side, when you do something right it’s easy to stick with old habits that can get in your way. With a curious mindset, you are more open to new perspectives.
5. If you do something wrong, you feel at risk or you’re told to fail forward, and fail fast. And, when you get something right, it’s easy to clutch it too tight and feel it affirms what you’ve known all along — that you’re right. This is a trap: you develop tunnel vision, you become unreceptive to the information around you, and you seek only the information that feeds confirmation bias.
6. Have a strong work life balance: This is one of the most important lessons that everyone should learn early on in their career. At the end of the day, it’s important to never lose focus on what matters in life. For me, it’s spending time with my family and taking the time out of my day to read to my kids.

If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

The movement to address climate change already exists, I think the most amount of good we can all do is to get behind that movement and support it in whatever way we can. Technologies like LoRa have a role to play for sure, but solving this challenge will come down to motivating more people to take action. Every journey starts with a small step and in the case of climate change that step is for each of us to examine the choices we make to reduce our personal impact first.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can follow me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/alistairfulton and on Twitter (@alistairfulton).

Thank you so much for the time you spent doing this interview. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success.

About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is the Chairman of the Friends of Israel and Member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.