Digi International is the M2M expert, combining products and services as end-to-end solutions to drive business efficiencies. Digi provides the industry’s broadest range of wireless products, a cloud computing platform tailored for devices and development services to help customers get to market fast with wireless devices and applications. Digi’s entire solution set is tailored to allow any device to communicate with any application, anywhere in the world.

Network Products Guide: With the continuing demand for M2M devices, what are the biggest security issues that concern you when designing products and services for M2M communications?

Joel Young: The biggest challenge is the device or machine itself. With all the talk on security, the security around the internet and human access to the internet is really very good – as long as good security practice is followed. However, machines themselves haven’t ever really had to think about security because there was no really good way to listen to them. So now, we have been designing in security after the fact, using the existing, well defined security standards in use in the broader internet. Hence, the cloud actually makes devices more secure.

About Joel Young

Joel Young has more than 22 years of experience in developing and managing data and voice communications. Mr. Young joined Digi International as Vice President of Engineering in June 2000 and is currently the Vice President of Research and Development and Chief Technical Officer. In his current role, Mr. Young is responsible for research and development of all of Digi’s core products.

Network Products Guide: What are the recent trends you see forming in M2M among your customer base, and what are Digi’s plans to be a major player in those trends?

Joel Young: Quite simply, the marketplace around the Internet of Things and M2M is fundamentally driven by solving business problems. The drivers are improved customer service, business efficiency and new revenue streams. Our strategy is NOT connecting things for the sake of connecting them….this is fools work. Rather, our approach is fixing a pain, using a business problem to connect and gain access to the necessary data and control. Hence, I believe we are the only M2M company that has been profitable and growing for 10 straight years.

Network Products Guide: How does Digi’s cloud computing platform help customers decrease their time-to-market and increase their sufficiency of their M2M networks?

Joel Young: Time-to-market for products is always important, but our motivation, as I mentioned earlier, is to help customers solve their business problems where the key drivers are better customer service, efficiency and enabling new revenue streams. The cloud is the natural technology for this because enables access to information. Our Device Cloud platform is tailored to enable machines to plug into the extended internet and all the other clouds. We give machines a seat at the table so they can be heard. We give machines a platform from which to speak and we translate their disparate languages into the webservices based language of the internet.

Network Products Guide: What are the advantages of adopting cloud computing for any type of business? Is the cloud beneficial only to companies or non-business private individuals can gain?

Joel Yuong: Look at how you use the cloud today and you will find the answer is self-evident. When I’m out speaking, one of the questions I ask the audience is if they use cloud computing today. I usually get about a fourth of the audience to raise their hands. Then I ask them if they have a smart phone, use web email, have a Facebook account or a Google account and most everyone raises their hands. Why is this? Are they all liars? Of course not. However, if as a business you ask the question, “should we adopt cloud computing?” then you are asking the wrong question. Using the cloud is the new way we interact and exchange information. It is more efficient, more social, more scalable and I dare say more secure. It may also be lower cost. This benefits us all. Our business is the plug machines into this environment, making them social and giving them a voice.

Company: Digi International | USA