Home > Companies > Thought Leaders > Q&A with Erik Charles, Vice President and Solutions Evangelist at Xactly Corporation

Q&A with Erik Charles, Vice President and Solutions Evangelist at Xactly Corporation

Erik Charles, Vice President and Solutions Evangelist at Xactly Corporation is an accomplished professional with over two decades of experience in Marketing, Consulting, and Product Evangelization. Erik focuses on helping companies drive expansion and growth by better aligning positions, responsibilities, and incentives.

Erik serves as a subject matter expert in the area of Sales Performance Management to ensure that Xactly’s marketing, sales and product teams have the necessary strategic input for industry leading messaging, positioning, and future direction.

MEDIA 7: When did you start working and what was it?
ERIK CHARLES:  In early 1980s, I wrote software on TRS-80 model II coded in BASIC to enable for computerized quotes for a life insurance agency. I was in middle school at the time, that was a contract work. My next job was at a software store back when software used to be bundled up into a cardboard box with inserted floppy disks and then it went on from there.

M7: You have an astounding experience of over two decades with industry pioneers like Apple, Sun Microsystems, Canon and recently Xactly Corporation. What has been the driving force behind your remarkable career?
EC: There are two things: as a marketer, I don’t believe in mistakes, I only believe in experiments and what we can learn from them, that has kept me moving forward. I keep on trying new things and seeing what works. I assume that just because it worked last week doesn’t mean it’s going to work tomorrow. So, I’ve never allowed myself to get into a rut. I have always been more than willing to find people who can provide excellent advice at critical moments, even on a specific direction. Finding someone that I can speak with, that can give me a few tips, tricks, hints, ideas, direction or path on moving on. So, I have never been afraid to ask just how could I do this better.


"Sales and marketing have to be best friends, they have to be fully aligned with each other, and they have to know what each other is doing at all times so they can partner. Companies that don’t do that cause themselves a lot of heartache."

M7: As the Vice President and Solutions Evangelist at Xactly Corporation, what are some of the challenges that you face and what has helped you in overcoming them?
EC: The biggest challenge I face – it is a changing marketplace out there. As we know, from a pure marketing perspective, there’s plenty of data sources out there. 60-70% of the buyer’s journey occurs without ever talking to the sales organization which puts more pressure on the marketing team.

Over the course of this interview I’ve already received two inbound phone calls that are unmarked/unlicensed or I don’t have in my directory. I just reject them automatically, they go straight to voice mail, I later read the transcribed voicemail and decide if I want to talk to them. So, cold-calling is not necessarily dead but it does take more work. I wake up every morning and delete approximately 50 cold emails, oftentimes from people who haven’t done any research on what my company does. They’ll hunt my name and my company but they don’t even realize what we do. So, I flip that to my own role in supporting Xactly and make sure that our voice is heard in an appropriate fashion.

The biggest challenge that I work on the most is in the area of thought leadership in terms of not ‘the same old all over again’ but actually being able to talk about what is going on in any given industry/market. I provide that advice backwards and set up Xactly and myself as the thought leaders and experts in the space, so customers have someone to turn to, to know where you should be going next.


"From a pure marketing perspective, there’s plenty of data sources out there. 60-70% of the buyer’s journey occurs without ever talking to the sales organization which puts more pressure on the marketing team."

M7: You’ve been in leadership roles for both sales and marketing functions, how do you think this alliance has evolved over the years and how significant is it for upcoming organizations to align both the departments?
EC: If you don’t have sales and marketing aligned, all you’re going to do is go through a revolving door of firing your CMO or firing your CRO every 18 or so months. Sales and marketing have to be best friends, they have to be fully aligned with each other, and they have to know what each other is doing at all times so they can partner. Companies that don’t do that cause themselves a lot of heartache. I believe that everybody should work in sales at some point in their lives. Even if it’s retail sales at the shopping mall, dealing with the general public, dealing with the challenges of a sales organization at minimum just doing ride-alongs with the sales organization to see what their life is like.

How on earth can you create a presentation deck for sales to use if you’ve never delivered it yourself or at least heard it being delivered in a customer or prospect facing situation. If you haven’t done that you get yourself into trouble very fast in my opinion. In smart organizations, the CMO and the CRO should be going out for coffee and cocktails whenever possible and talking about what’s working or not working in a non-threatening, not a senior staff offsite situation but more of a “Huh, we have this challenge how can we work together better?” But too often I’ve seen companies where marketing and sales are not in partnership. One of my advantages has been because I’ve been in sales, because I’ve carried a bag, because I’ve had a quota it has helped me significantly. So, when I’m talking to sales I can say, “Here’s a different way I might present this information, see if it works for you and if it does please let me know and we can share it out with the other members of the team”.

M7: You are a regular speaker at summits. Could you share some insights into being an industry thought leader?
EC: Yeah, don’t sell your product, provide information. Provide interesting, current, actionable information that is backed by both data but entertained with anecdotes. You have to remember things like the Ebbinghaus curve which gets into the fact that within 20 minutes how much people have forgotten and within 2 weeks how much more they have forgotten. I want people to walk out of my sessions and if somebody asks, “What did you learn in there?”, they should be able to list off almost bulletized format, three to five total things that they learned that they’re going to take away and act upon. And if they do that two weeks later, if they didn’t write it down, they’re still left with three of them and they’ll actually be able to get value out of my talk. I work very hard so that when people walk out they don’t think they’ve been sold to.


"In smart organizations, the CMO and the CRO should be going out for coffee and cocktails whenever possible and talking about what’s working or not working."

M7: According to you, what are the key marketing areas that industries will need to focus on in the coming 5 years?
EC: From a marketing perspective, one is to make sure you are adjusting your channels of communication to meet the next generation of employees. Millennials and the follow-on generation are taking over the workforce, and personally I welcome them. I think it’s magnificent, but note how they are communicating – people text as opposed to calling, they are using tools like Whatsapp to communicate. That is slowly shifting the communication medium and how people wish to absorb information on the business side as well. So, that’s going to be critical.

The other is people have gotten very good at detecting false narratives being used solely to sell product. People are looking to learn – constant learning is important for professionals but if you treat your outbound conversations also as constant learning people will respond positively. I had a customer at Xactly ask me, “Look, I’m a customer now, but can I still come to some of the talks and webinars and learn something?” And the answer is, “Of course!” That’s how they became a customer, they were interested in the education that we provided and that actually raised our profile as a company within the marketplace and it makes people want to do business with us.

M7: What have you learned from your experiences?
EC: You’re going to stumble and fall a lot, mistakes will be made, mistakes will happen. You will butt heads with opposing personality and you’ll have to learn to work with people with a variety of different interaction, styles, and skills, introverts and extroverts, people that go on the attack very quickly, etc. Understanding the personal side of the professional world is very important. People can claim that they can turn it off, I don’t think that’s true, especially now that it’s a 24/7 world.

I do international business so it’s always work time someplace on the globe for someplace that my company does business and I just have to accept that. So at the same time, I need to be able to accept that for my employees and for the people I’m talking to. They do have a personal life; unfortunately, personal life is blended into their professional life. Recognize it, accept it, work around it.

ABOUT XACTLY CORPORATION

Xactly delivers a scalable, enterprise platform for planning and incenting sales organizations, including sales quota and territory planning, incentive compensation management, and predictive analytics. Using this powerful sales performance management (SPM) portfolio, customers mitigate risk, accelerate sales performance, and increase business agility. Combined with Xactly Insights™-- the industry’s only empirical big data platform, Xactly empowers companies with real-time compensation insights and benchmarking data that maximize the bottom line. With an open, standards-based architecture, Xactly seamlessly integrates within an enterprise’s existing infrastructure, with the ability to work with any ERP, CRM, or HCM application, while meeting the highest enterprise standards in security, reliability, and privacy.

More THOUGHT LEADERS

Relayr’s Michal Kraus believes Industrial IoT will become more evident in the near future

Media 7 | December 21, 2021

Michal Kraus, Global Marketing Director, Relayr introduces us to their work culture and explains how Relayr is enabling industrial companies to stay relevant in today’s world. Read on to know more about their EaaS (Equipment-as-a-Service) model and the future of industrial IoT in this in-depth interview....

Read More

Marlab’s Mahesh RG believes, ‘Organizations who share/exchange information grow much faster than those who keep it as secret’

Media 7 | December 1, 2021

Mahesh RG, Head Data Engineering at Marlabs Canada INC, discusses the data-driven strategy and its effectiveness in today’s world. Read on as he elaborates the importance of AI and ML in data analytics to achieve business growth....

Read More

Q&A with Anne Høyer, Founder of Group Saint Honoré, Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador and Chairwoman of Advisory Board at Smart IoT London

MEDIA 7 | March 6, 2020

Anne Høyer, Founder of Group Saint Honoré, Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador and Chairwoman of Advisory Board at Smart IoT London is an expert in IoT data driven innovation, who started her technology career at SAP and quickly progressed to a global role in the industry. In 2017 Anne was named one of the top 30 inspirational women in Technology by Inc.com and in 2019 she was elected official Goodwill Ambassador for the Grater Copenhagen Region, globally representing her country’s capital in technology. Anne holds several board seats in the tech space and is a frequent keynote speaker and business advisor on the topic of innovation. Deck 7: Could you tell us about yourself and your journey to founding Group Saint Honoré? ANNE HØYER: I have always been an entrepreneur by heart and never been afraid to test new experiences. From starting associations to pioneering podcasts in Denmark, so when I switched my career from marketing to technology this opened up possibilities to use my acquired skills in a new industry. I spend my first years in several roles at SAP focusing on IoT, Product Go-To-Market and Strategic Partnerships on a global scale. Since moving on to France to start the business consulting offer for SAP Emerging Tech at a large consulting company I have gotten a good grip of the start- and scale-up ecosystem and this led me to realize the need there is to support scale-ups. Not just in France but globally. These companies can build incredible product but is not yet at the stage where they can scale on business development and sales. Yet, they are also not at the magnitude where large consulting firms dedicate too much time. So, this is where we step in. At GSH we have marketing business development and sales professionals ready to support this journey. And how fun it is for us to be part of the next big in tech!  ...

Read More

Relayr’s Michal Kraus believes Industrial IoT will become more evident in the near future

Media 7 | December 21, 2021

Michal Kraus, Global Marketing Director, Relayr introduces us to their work culture and explains how Relayr is enabling industrial companies to stay relevant in today’s world. Read on to know more about their EaaS (Equipment-as-a-Service) model and the future of industrial IoT in this in-depth interview....

Read More

Marlab’s Mahesh RG believes, ‘Organizations who share/exchange information grow much faster than those who keep it as secret’

Media 7 | December 1, 2021

Mahesh RG, Head Data Engineering at Marlabs Canada INC, discusses the data-driven strategy and its effectiveness in today’s world. Read on as he elaborates the importance of AI and ML in data analytics to achieve business growth....

Read More

Q&A with Anne Høyer, Founder of Group Saint Honoré, Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador and Chairwoman of Advisory Board at Smart IoT London

MEDIA 7 | March 6, 2020

Anne Høyer, Founder of Group Saint Honoré, Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador and Chairwoman of Advisory Board at Smart IoT London is an expert in IoT data driven innovation, who started her technology career at SAP and quickly progressed to a global role in the industry. In 2017 Anne was named one of the top 30 inspirational women in Technology by Inc.com and in 2019 she was elected official Goodwill Ambassador for the Grater Copenhagen Region, globally representing her country’s capital in technology. Anne holds several board seats in the tech space and is a frequent keynote speaker and business advisor on the topic of innovation. Deck 7: Could you tell us about yourself and your journey to founding Group Saint Honoré? ANNE HØYER: I have always been an entrepreneur by heart and never been afraid to test new experiences. From starting associations to pioneering podcasts in Denmark, so when I switched my career from marketing to technology this opened up possibilities to use my acquired skills in a new industry. I spend my first years in several roles at SAP focusing on IoT, Product Go-To-Market and Strategic Partnerships on a global scale. Since moving on to France to start the business consulting offer for SAP Emerging Tech at a large consulting company I have gotten a good grip of the start- and scale-up ecosystem and this led me to realize the need there is to support scale-ups. Not just in France but globally. These companies can build incredible product but is not yet at the stage where they can scale on business development and sales. Yet, they are also not at the magnitude where large consulting firms dedicate too much time. So, this is where we step in. At GSH we have marketing business development and sales professionals ready to support this journey. And how fun it is for us to be part of the next big in tech!  ...

Read More

Related News

IoT Security

AppViewX Digital Trust Platform Named IoT Security Product of the Year

AppViewX | January 12, 2024

AppViewX, the leader in automated machine identity management (MIM) and application infrastructure security, today announced the AppViewX Digital Trust Platform has been named IoT Security Product of the Year in the 8th annual IoT Breakthrough awards program, which showcases technologies and companies that drive innovation and exemplify the best in IoT technology solutions across the globe. IoT Breakthrough is a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global IoT market. The mission of the IoT Breakthrough Awards program is to recognize the innovators, leaders and visionaries from around the globe in a range of IoT categories, including Industrial and Enterprise IoT, Smart City technology, Connected Home and Home Automation, Connected Car, and many more. This year's program attracted nominations from companies all over the world. “Unmanaged machine identities for IoT devices can create critical security vulnerabilities, but for most organizations discovering, maintaining visibility into and controlling them has become manually unfeasible,” said Gregory Webb, CEO of AppViewX. “The AppViewX Digital Trust Platform automates IoT identity management at scale across the largest, most complex and distributed customer environments, allowing customers to achieve significantly stronger security posture and meet compliance requirements.” All IoT Breakthrough Award nominations were evaluated by an independent panel of experts within the IoT industry, with the winning products and companies selected based on a variety of criteria, including most innovative and technologically advanced products and services. About AppViewX Digital Trust Platform Out of the box, AppViewX provides instant value to customers by discovering all certificates across complex enterprise environments, building and maintaining inventories, provisioning both private and public trust certificates from any CA, alerting to expiring certificates and fully automating renewals and revocation to eliminate outages and security weaknesses across machines, applications, services, and security infrastructure. About AppViewX AppViewX is trusted by the world’s leading organizations to reduce risk, ensure compliance, and increase visibility through automated machine identity management and application infrastructure security and orchestration. The AppViewX platform provides complete certificate lifecycle management and PKI-as-a-Service using streamlined workflows to prevent outages, reduce security incidents and enable crypto-agility. Fortune 1000 companies, including six of the top ten global commercial banks, five of the top ten global media companies, and five of the top ten managed healthcare providers rely on AppViewX to automate NetOps, SecOps, and DevOps. AppViewX is headquartered in New York with offices in the U.K., Australia and three development centers of excellence in India. For more information, visit https://www.appviewx.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Read More

Industrial IoT

Ceva Extends its Connect IP Portfolio with Wi-Fi 7 Platform for High-End Consumer and Industrial IoT

Ceva, Inc. | January 05, 2024

Ceva, Inc. (NASDAQ: Ceva), the leading licensor of silicon and software IP that enables Smart Edge devices to connect, sense and infer data more reliably and efficiently, today announced the general release of its next generation RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platform, further expanding its widely-licensed portfolio of connectivity IP, targeting high-end consumer and industrial applications including gateways, TVs, set-top-boxes, streaming media devices, AR/VR headsets, personal computing and smartphones. The RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP leverages all the latest advanced features of the IEEE 802.11be standard to deliver a premium high performance, cost- and power-optimized Wi-Fi solution for integration into the next wave of Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) and Station (STA) products. According to global technology intelligence firm ABI Research, annual Wi-Fi enabled chipset shipments will exceed 5.1 billion by 2028, with more than 1.7 billion of these chipsets supporting the Wi-Fi 7 standard. As Wi-Fi enabled device shipments continue to grow, increasing numbers of semiconductor companies and OEMs are choosing to integrate Wi-Fi connectivity into their chip designs, and need access to high quality Wi-Fi IP to reduce the development costs and risks. Spanning Wi-Fi 4/5/6 over the past decade, Ceva has already established a considerable leadership position in Wi-Fi IP licensing, with more than 40 licensees for its RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 6 IP family, serving a wide range of end markets and applications, from end points to access points, across the IoT sphere. Expanding on this leadership position, Ceva's RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP provides a unique, comprehensive 802.11be MAC and PHY solution for integration into the next generation of Wi-Fi SoC products. Andrew Zignani, Senior Research Director, ABI Research, commented: "Ceva's wireless connectivity IPs play an integral role in the proliferation of connectivity standards in the broad IoT markets, as is evident from their customer's success in shipping more than 1 billion connectivity chips annually. With the introduction of their RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platforms, semiconductor companies and OEMs have a trusted partner to develop differentiated, high-performance Wi-Fi 7 chipsets for their connectivity roadmaps, with lower risk and a lower cost of ownership." Tal Shalev, Vice President and General Manager of the Wireless IoT BU at Ceva, stated: "The relentless expansion of Wi-Fi usage has pushed the Wi-Fi 7 standard to offer enhanced data throughput, improved latency and support more spectrum in the face of mounting network congestion. Achieving this requires highly complex, cutting-edge functionalities like 4K QAM modulation, Multi Link Operation and Multi Resource Unit to optimize link efficiency across the available bands. Our RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platform incorporates all the features of this latest-generation, wireless standard, dramatically simplifying development and time-to-market for companies looking to add Wi-Fi 7 connectivity to their products." Wi-Fi 7's 4K QAM modulation scheme is a substantial increase on the previous 1K QAM of Wi-Fi 6, while Multi Link Operation (MLO) introduces dynamic channel aggregation, seamlessly combining heterogenous channels from the same or different bands to navigate interference and boost throughput. Similarly, Multi Resource Units (MRU) enables the creation of larger channel bandwidths by intelligently stitching together punctured or disjointed Resource Units within the same band. The outcome is not only a remarkable up to 5 times increase in raw speeds but also significantly reduced latency, thanks to diminished contentions and retries. About Ceva, Inc. At Ceva, we are passionate about bringing new levels of innovation to the smart edge. Our wireless communications, sensing and Edge AI technologies are at the heart of some of today's most advanced smart edge products. From Bluetooth connectivity, Wi-Fi, UWB and 5G platform IP for ubiquitous, robust communications, to scalable Edge AI NPU IPs, sensor fusion processors and embedded application software that make devices smarter, we have the broadest portfolio of IP to connect, sense and infer data more reliably and efficiently. We deliver differentiated solutions that combine outstanding performance at ultra-low power within a very small silicon footprint. Our goal is simple – to deliver the silicon and software IP to enable a smarter, safer, and more interconnected world. This philosophy is in practice today, with Ceva powering more than 17 billion of the world's most innovative smart edge products from AI-infused smartwatches, IoT devices and wearables to autonomous vehicles and 5G mobile networks. Our headquarters are in Rockville, Maryland with a global customer base supported by operations worldwide. Our employees are among the leading experts in their areas of specialty, consistently solving the most complex design challenges, enabling our customers to bring innovative smart edge products to market.

Read More

Platforms

Quectel Expands Its IoT Antenna Portfolio With Six New 4G and 5G Antennas

Business Wire | October 26, 2023

Quectel, a global IoT solutions provider, has unveiled six new antennas designed to provide robust connectivity performance for IoT devices. The new antennas cover a wide range of use cases from 5G to non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) bringing new capabilities to customers. We’re delighted to further augment our comprehensive range of antennas with the addition of these new antennas and evaluation boards, said Norbert Muhrer, President and CSO, Quectel Wireless Solutions. “Internet of Things applications increasingly demand high-performance antennas that meet their specific needs whether that’s for competitive cost, access to specific network technologies in particular frequency bands or for robust, safe characteristics such as IP ratings and RoHS and REACH compliance. The expanded Quectel antenna range is sure to meet the needs of your device and deployment and is backed by our design support and deployment experience, alongside, of course, our widely deployed and comprehensive range of modules.” The Quectel YC0001CA is a 4G surface-mount design (SMD) antenna that is optimized for LTE, LTE-M and Narrow Band-IoT (NB-IoT) networks. This low-profile antenna, which measures just 35.0 x 8.5 x 3.0mm, operates in the 700-960MHz and 1710-2700MHz and is both RoHS and REACH compliant for use in sensitive environments. In addition, the antenna can be supplied on tape and reel for high-volume applications and is compatible with all of Quectel’s 4G, 3G, 2G and LPWA IoT modules. The Quectel YC0018CA is a 5G SMD antenna that covers 5G New Radio (NR) Sub-6GHz frequency bands. Depending on the ground plane, the antenna is designed to be mounted directly to the printed circuit board (PCB) using a conventional PCB reflow process. Measuring 40.0 x 7.0 x 3.0mm, the antenna operates between -40 °C to +85 °C and weighs 15g. The antenna can be tuned specifically for the final device environment with a simple, PI matching circuit and, when used with other 5G antennas, it can achieve multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) performance. Also available on tape and reel, the antenna can also be supplied with the YC0018CAEVB evaluation board. The Quectel YECN028AA is a 5G or NTN external antenna that supports the 410-470MHz, 617-960MHz and 1425-6000MHz frequency bands. With dimensions of 225 x 54.5 x 13.0mm, the antenna is IP66, RoHS and REACH compliant so it has wide applicability to use cases in sensitive environments. Featuring high efficiency and gain, the antenna offers omni-directional high-speed data transmission and can be used in a wide range of wireless devices such as access points, outdoor equipment, real-time monitoring devices and many others. The Quectel YEMX223J1A is a 5G x 2 combo antenna that is IP67, RoHS and REACH compliant. Measuring 186.0 x 176.0 x 100.5mm, the combo antenna supports the 410-470MHz, 617-960MHz, 1420-1520MHz, 1710-2690MHz, 3300-3800MHz and 4000-6000MHz frequency bands. The ultra-wideband antenna box is also backward compatible supporting 2G and 3G networks as well as Cat-M and NB-IoT. Designed for ease of integration with connection via two cable lengths from 450-5000mm, the pole, wall suction mount omni-directional antenna offers ease of installation and durability thanks to its IP67 and IP69K compliant enclosure. Quectel offers flexible installation option with custom cable length and connector options The Quectel YEMX425J1A is a 5G x 4 combo antenna that measures 186.0 x 176.0 x 150mm. The combo antenna supports the 410-470MHz, 617-2690 MHZ and 3300-6000MHz frequency bands and both RoHS and REACH compliant. Offering backward compatibility with 2G, 3G, Cat-M and NB-IoT, the antenna is, in common with the YEMX223J1A, compatible with Quectel’s RM520x Series of IoT modules. In addition, durability is assured thanks to the combo antenna’s IP67 and IP69K ASA enclosure. Rounding out the latest wave of Quectel antenna introductions, the Quectel YSIS001AA, metal spring antenna operates in the 412-427MHz band, the 433-435 MHz band and the 450-470MHz band which is compatible with LTE B31 plus EU433 applications. Measuring 29.0 x 7.0 x 7.90mm, the RoHS and REACH compliant antenna is mounted to the host device PCB using the conventional SMD reflow process, offering high efficiency. In common with all Quectel antennas, these new additions to the range also gain Quectel’s comprehensive antenna design support including simulation, testing and manufacturing for custom antenna solutions to meet customers’ specific application needs. About Quectel Quectel’s passion for a smarter world drives us to accelerate IoT innovation. A highly customer-centric organization, we are a global IoT solutions provider backed by outstanding support and services. Our growing global team of 5,900 professionals sets the pace for innovation in cellular, GNSS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules as well as antennas and services. With regional offices and support across the globe, our international leadership is devoted to advancing IoT and helping build a smarter world.

Read More

IoT Security

AppViewX Digital Trust Platform Named IoT Security Product of the Year

AppViewX | January 12, 2024

AppViewX, the leader in automated machine identity management (MIM) and application infrastructure security, today announced the AppViewX Digital Trust Platform has been named IoT Security Product of the Year in the 8th annual IoT Breakthrough awards program, which showcases technologies and companies that drive innovation and exemplify the best in IoT technology solutions across the globe. IoT Breakthrough is a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global IoT market. The mission of the IoT Breakthrough Awards program is to recognize the innovators, leaders and visionaries from around the globe in a range of IoT categories, including Industrial and Enterprise IoT, Smart City technology, Connected Home and Home Automation, Connected Car, and many more. This year's program attracted nominations from companies all over the world. “Unmanaged machine identities for IoT devices can create critical security vulnerabilities, but for most organizations discovering, maintaining visibility into and controlling them has become manually unfeasible,” said Gregory Webb, CEO of AppViewX. “The AppViewX Digital Trust Platform automates IoT identity management at scale across the largest, most complex and distributed customer environments, allowing customers to achieve significantly stronger security posture and meet compliance requirements.” All IoT Breakthrough Award nominations were evaluated by an independent panel of experts within the IoT industry, with the winning products and companies selected based on a variety of criteria, including most innovative and technologically advanced products and services. About AppViewX Digital Trust Platform Out of the box, AppViewX provides instant value to customers by discovering all certificates across complex enterprise environments, building and maintaining inventories, provisioning both private and public trust certificates from any CA, alerting to expiring certificates and fully automating renewals and revocation to eliminate outages and security weaknesses across machines, applications, services, and security infrastructure. About AppViewX AppViewX is trusted by the world’s leading organizations to reduce risk, ensure compliance, and increase visibility through automated machine identity management and application infrastructure security and orchestration. The AppViewX platform provides complete certificate lifecycle management and PKI-as-a-Service using streamlined workflows to prevent outages, reduce security incidents and enable crypto-agility. Fortune 1000 companies, including six of the top ten global commercial banks, five of the top ten global media companies, and five of the top ten managed healthcare providers rely on AppViewX to automate NetOps, SecOps, and DevOps. AppViewX is headquartered in New York with offices in the U.K., Australia and three development centers of excellence in India. For more information, visit https://www.appviewx.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Read More

Industrial IoT

Ceva Extends its Connect IP Portfolio with Wi-Fi 7 Platform for High-End Consumer and Industrial IoT

Ceva, Inc. | January 05, 2024

Ceva, Inc. (NASDAQ: Ceva), the leading licensor of silicon and software IP that enables Smart Edge devices to connect, sense and infer data more reliably and efficiently, today announced the general release of its next generation RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platform, further expanding its widely-licensed portfolio of connectivity IP, targeting high-end consumer and industrial applications including gateways, TVs, set-top-boxes, streaming media devices, AR/VR headsets, personal computing and smartphones. The RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP leverages all the latest advanced features of the IEEE 802.11be standard to deliver a premium high performance, cost- and power-optimized Wi-Fi solution for integration into the next wave of Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) and Station (STA) products. According to global technology intelligence firm ABI Research, annual Wi-Fi enabled chipset shipments will exceed 5.1 billion by 2028, with more than 1.7 billion of these chipsets supporting the Wi-Fi 7 standard. As Wi-Fi enabled device shipments continue to grow, increasing numbers of semiconductor companies and OEMs are choosing to integrate Wi-Fi connectivity into their chip designs, and need access to high quality Wi-Fi IP to reduce the development costs and risks. Spanning Wi-Fi 4/5/6 over the past decade, Ceva has already established a considerable leadership position in Wi-Fi IP licensing, with more than 40 licensees for its RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 6 IP family, serving a wide range of end markets and applications, from end points to access points, across the IoT sphere. Expanding on this leadership position, Ceva's RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP provides a unique, comprehensive 802.11be MAC and PHY solution for integration into the next generation of Wi-Fi SoC products. Andrew Zignani, Senior Research Director, ABI Research, commented: "Ceva's wireless connectivity IPs play an integral role in the proliferation of connectivity standards in the broad IoT markets, as is evident from their customer's success in shipping more than 1 billion connectivity chips annually. With the introduction of their RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platforms, semiconductor companies and OEMs have a trusted partner to develop differentiated, high-performance Wi-Fi 7 chipsets for their connectivity roadmaps, with lower risk and a lower cost of ownership." Tal Shalev, Vice President and General Manager of the Wireless IoT BU at Ceva, stated: "The relentless expansion of Wi-Fi usage has pushed the Wi-Fi 7 standard to offer enhanced data throughput, improved latency and support more spectrum in the face of mounting network congestion. Achieving this requires highly complex, cutting-edge functionalities like 4K QAM modulation, Multi Link Operation and Multi Resource Unit to optimize link efficiency across the available bands. Our RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platform incorporates all the features of this latest-generation, wireless standard, dramatically simplifying development and time-to-market for companies looking to add Wi-Fi 7 connectivity to their products." Wi-Fi 7's 4K QAM modulation scheme is a substantial increase on the previous 1K QAM of Wi-Fi 6, while Multi Link Operation (MLO) introduces dynamic channel aggregation, seamlessly combining heterogenous channels from the same or different bands to navigate interference and boost throughput. Similarly, Multi Resource Units (MRU) enables the creation of larger channel bandwidths by intelligently stitching together punctured or disjointed Resource Units within the same band. The outcome is not only a remarkable up to 5 times increase in raw speeds but also significantly reduced latency, thanks to diminished contentions and retries. About Ceva, Inc. At Ceva, we are passionate about bringing new levels of innovation to the smart edge. Our wireless communications, sensing and Edge AI technologies are at the heart of some of today's most advanced smart edge products. From Bluetooth connectivity, Wi-Fi, UWB and 5G platform IP for ubiquitous, robust communications, to scalable Edge AI NPU IPs, sensor fusion processors and embedded application software that make devices smarter, we have the broadest portfolio of IP to connect, sense and infer data more reliably and efficiently. We deliver differentiated solutions that combine outstanding performance at ultra-low power within a very small silicon footprint. Our goal is simple – to deliver the silicon and software IP to enable a smarter, safer, and more interconnected world. This philosophy is in practice today, with Ceva powering more than 17 billion of the world's most innovative smart edge products from AI-infused smartwatches, IoT devices and wearables to autonomous vehicles and 5G mobile networks. Our headquarters are in Rockville, Maryland with a global customer base supported by operations worldwide. Our employees are among the leading experts in their areas of specialty, consistently solving the most complex design challenges, enabling our customers to bring innovative smart edge products to market.

Read More

Platforms

Quectel Expands Its IoT Antenna Portfolio With Six New 4G and 5G Antennas

Business Wire | October 26, 2023

Quectel, a global IoT solutions provider, has unveiled six new antennas designed to provide robust connectivity performance for IoT devices. The new antennas cover a wide range of use cases from 5G to non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) bringing new capabilities to customers. We’re delighted to further augment our comprehensive range of antennas with the addition of these new antennas and evaluation boards, said Norbert Muhrer, President and CSO, Quectel Wireless Solutions. “Internet of Things applications increasingly demand high-performance antennas that meet their specific needs whether that’s for competitive cost, access to specific network technologies in particular frequency bands or for robust, safe characteristics such as IP ratings and RoHS and REACH compliance. The expanded Quectel antenna range is sure to meet the needs of your device and deployment and is backed by our design support and deployment experience, alongside, of course, our widely deployed and comprehensive range of modules.” The Quectel YC0001CA is a 4G surface-mount design (SMD) antenna that is optimized for LTE, LTE-M and Narrow Band-IoT (NB-IoT) networks. This low-profile antenna, which measures just 35.0 x 8.5 x 3.0mm, operates in the 700-960MHz and 1710-2700MHz and is both RoHS and REACH compliant for use in sensitive environments. In addition, the antenna can be supplied on tape and reel for high-volume applications and is compatible with all of Quectel’s 4G, 3G, 2G and LPWA IoT modules. The Quectel YC0018CA is a 5G SMD antenna that covers 5G New Radio (NR) Sub-6GHz frequency bands. Depending on the ground plane, the antenna is designed to be mounted directly to the printed circuit board (PCB) using a conventional PCB reflow process. Measuring 40.0 x 7.0 x 3.0mm, the antenna operates between -40 °C to +85 °C and weighs 15g. The antenna can be tuned specifically for the final device environment with a simple, PI matching circuit and, when used with other 5G antennas, it can achieve multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) performance. Also available on tape and reel, the antenna can also be supplied with the YC0018CAEVB evaluation board. The Quectel YECN028AA is a 5G or NTN external antenna that supports the 410-470MHz, 617-960MHz and 1425-6000MHz frequency bands. With dimensions of 225 x 54.5 x 13.0mm, the antenna is IP66, RoHS and REACH compliant so it has wide applicability to use cases in sensitive environments. Featuring high efficiency and gain, the antenna offers omni-directional high-speed data transmission and can be used in a wide range of wireless devices such as access points, outdoor equipment, real-time monitoring devices and many others. The Quectel YEMX223J1A is a 5G x 2 combo antenna that is IP67, RoHS and REACH compliant. Measuring 186.0 x 176.0 x 100.5mm, the combo antenna supports the 410-470MHz, 617-960MHz, 1420-1520MHz, 1710-2690MHz, 3300-3800MHz and 4000-6000MHz frequency bands. The ultra-wideband antenna box is also backward compatible supporting 2G and 3G networks as well as Cat-M and NB-IoT. Designed for ease of integration with connection via two cable lengths from 450-5000mm, the pole, wall suction mount omni-directional antenna offers ease of installation and durability thanks to its IP67 and IP69K compliant enclosure. Quectel offers flexible installation option with custom cable length and connector options The Quectel YEMX425J1A is a 5G x 4 combo antenna that measures 186.0 x 176.0 x 150mm. The combo antenna supports the 410-470MHz, 617-2690 MHZ and 3300-6000MHz frequency bands and both RoHS and REACH compliant. Offering backward compatibility with 2G, 3G, Cat-M and NB-IoT, the antenna is, in common with the YEMX223J1A, compatible with Quectel’s RM520x Series of IoT modules. In addition, durability is assured thanks to the combo antenna’s IP67 and IP69K ASA enclosure. Rounding out the latest wave of Quectel antenna introductions, the Quectel YSIS001AA, metal spring antenna operates in the 412-427MHz band, the 433-435 MHz band and the 450-470MHz band which is compatible with LTE B31 plus EU433 applications. Measuring 29.0 x 7.0 x 7.90mm, the RoHS and REACH compliant antenna is mounted to the host device PCB using the conventional SMD reflow process, offering high efficiency. In common with all Quectel antennas, these new additions to the range also gain Quectel’s comprehensive antenna design support including simulation, testing and manufacturing for custom antenna solutions to meet customers’ specific application needs. About Quectel Quectel’s passion for a smarter world drives us to accelerate IoT innovation. A highly customer-centric organization, we are a global IoT solutions provider backed by outstanding support and services. Our growing global team of 5,900 professionals sets the pace for innovation in cellular, GNSS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules as well as antennas and services. With regional offices and support across the globe, our international leadership is devoted to advancing IoT and helping build a smarter world.

Read More

Spotlight

Xactly Corp

Xactly delivers a scalable, enterprise platform for planning and incenting sales organizations, including sales quota and territory planning, incentive compensation management, and predictive analytics. Using this powerful sales performance management (SPM) portfolio, customers mitigate risk, accele...

Events

Resources

resource image

Xactly Sales Performance Management Software | Extend the Power of NetSuite

Video

resource image

How to Increase Sales Forecasting Accuracy with Automation

Article

resource image

Spreadsheets vs. Automation: What's Best for Sales Compensation Management?

Article

Events