Chief Technology Officer | Radix IoT | Nashville, TN USA

I am a product design, marketing, and business development professional; well established in the analytics and IoT space, with a strong history in product development.

I have a passion for interconnected solution products with a focus on the software analytics potential they can bring to sustainability and efficiency within the built environment. I have a strong specialty in electrical power control pertaining to lighting, HVAC, BMS, within larger building or enterprise ecosystems. I was developing embedded devices that communicated with each other long before the ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’ was a buzz phrase.

I have filled many shoes in my career. Engineer, product designer, product manager, project manager, marketer, trainer, business developer, salesperson, product developer, programmer, and even the occasional copyrighter.

Specialties: IoT, channel management, strategic mapping, training, sales development, product marketing, electrical product design, product management, market development, consultative selling, technology evangelist.

Michael Skurla on Mango OS

What is this product/service called? 
Mango OS from Radix IoT offers limitless monitoring and management rooted in intelligence. This browser-based software/hardware platform empowers users to access, collect, decipher and store limitless data variety and volume, from multiple sources and portfolio sizes. The customizable data visualization and analytics tools offer concise information at a glance on dynamic dashboards, expediting data-driven business decisions. Mango connects to existing devices and subsystems and simultaneously collects data, normalizing it into one pane of glass–out of the box–removing the need for extra drivers, gateways, custom programming or software tools.

What makes the product/service/solution special?
Open connectivity to all standard protocols allowing consolidation and utilization of existing and new equipment under one toolset. The customizable visualization and analytics tools provide mission-critical facility owners and operators with concise, actionable information at a glance on dynamic dashboards, through internal alarming and analytics, as well as the ability to use external analytics tools with ease.

Who is it for?
For mission-critical facility owners/operators managing geographically distributed facilities across various markets, including edge data centers, utilities, carrier edge/telecom infrastructure, industrial, and property management.

With which organizations does this product/service best compete with?
What Radix offers is unique within the market as we do not strive to displace existing infrastructure. Though Mango OS can easily displace SCADA solutions, the power in the technology is to allow consolidation of all communicating infrastructure components into a single organized data pool that can then expose problems and solutions that wouldn’t otherwise be noticed within the traditional silos of separate systems.

How did you come up with the idea for the product/service/solution?
To eliminate the challenges faced by multi-site critical-facility owners/operators who could not harness data across all their geographically distributed sites to make sound business decisions. And to enable remote monitoring of critical assets which proved to be most valuable amidst Covid-19 pandemic as it allowed enterprises to maintain uptime and business continuity, while remote monitoring and managing their facilities, adhering to the social distancing rules without jeopardizing the safety of their employees.

What makes the product/service/solution special?
It eliminates multi-layered software installments to achieve monitoring. Instead it simplifies unprecedented efficiency of data-driven business decisions for critical facilities, edge data centers, utilities, carrier edge/telecom infrastructure, industrial facilities and property management.   

Michael Skurla on Radix IoT

Describe what your company-organization does.
Radix IoT, offering limitless monitoring and management rooted in intelligence, is the market’s most transformative and disruptive commercial IoT platform for remote monitoring, process management, and data aggregation intelligence for operational excellence and efficiency of multi-site critical facilities

What would be one most important thing you would want everyone to know about your company-organization?
Radix IoT is disrupting the IoT sector by offering a simple to deploy and manage IoT Platform that frees distributed enterprises from the often complex and expensive process of multi-site monitoring and management while allowing deep data insight and analytics capabilities. 

When was your organization founded, and where? What is the story behind how your organization began?
Radix IoT was founded in September 2020 – it combines the market’s leading solution for edge monitoring, Mango IoT Platform, with the award-winning BitBox USA IoT Platform for distributed facilities’ operational intelligence, to offer unprecedented efficiency of data-driven business decisions for critical facilities, edge data centers, utilities, carrier edge/telecom infrastructure, industrial facilities and property management.   

What is your favorite story to tell about this organization and how it has come to succeed?
Though I have worked for multi-national companies, what I have found fascinating, is that Radix and the companies it acquired are truly geographically diverse. We are a remote organization from the foundation and had perfected the art of remote collaboration and excellence far before COVID. In previous lives I had worked remotely but always had a central office that everything revolved out of. Radix, through careful growth and the use of technology perfected this collaborative art globally for a successful company well before working from home became a necessity.

Michael Skurla on Company Culture

What leadership habits and cultural values have led to your company-organization’s success and recognitions
Making sure that we are all operating in respectful, dignified culture with no room for destructive criticism and insults – but rather a nurturing, fun, productive environment where all members thrive without hierarchal power plays. We foster exploration and education collectively.

Are there any interesting activities that your staff does as a group that are reflective of your company-organization’s culture?
Being all remote offers unique challenges as well as opportunities. To avoid meeting culture, we do often meet up (in a pre-Covid and post Covid) world in small groups to tackle projects as a team. Additionally, even with meetings we mix in fun ways to learn and collaborate using tools such as Kahoot!

What roles does diversity play in your organization?
Very critical role. Our team members hail from different continents and countries – from U.S., Australia, Africa to Latin America — and bring their special insights to make the company a well-diversified culture ready to learn and teach about cultural norms and traditions that are beyond IT.

What role does technology play in your company-organization’s growth?
We are a technology company – so tech plays a pivotal role in our growth as we innovate new, better, simpler ways to help large enterprises reap the benefits of their IoT data for improved business decisions. Saying this we do not lose touch with the human side of the equation both internally and with clients and vendors. Communications has been the key to our success.

Michael Skurla on Company and the Industry

What is the current state of the industry?
IoT is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide. The global IoT market is expected to reach a value of USD 1256.1 billion by 2025 from USD 690 billion in 2019

What changes in the industry does your team find interesting and why?
Simply it’s the speed of the growth in the IoT industry – and the proliferation of “smart devices” that must be tapped into and monitored. Human expectations have changed quiet dramatically, and data is no longer just the answer. People expect data to translate into outcomes and answers that impact their job role as well as the business. Data simply is a means to the end to perform this, which makes close understanding of the outcomes possible from the data.

How many worldwide locations does your company-organization have and where are they?
We are headquartered in Nashville, (TN) with offices in Mountain View (CA) and Chicago (IL) – and representatives in Europe, Africa, Australia and Latin America.

How is your company-organization better prepared to compete?
Unlike other IoT companies we focus on coexisting with existing systems. This has been the root of our success. Instead of customers having to make the difficult and often compromising choice to work with one technology vendor, we have focused on open connections to industry standards. This allows massive flexibility for solutions that otherwise would not have been possible.

“Trust of a technology or solution is a marketable term, but an organization’s trust is what makes a technology company thrive.”

Fred Dirla, CEO

Michael Skurla on Company and Customers

What is your organization’s greatest customer challenge in the global marke
Ensuring that our customers with multi-site, geographically distributed facilities are able to harness the value of their data for improved and data-driven business decisions.

What makes your company-organization’s products-services-solutions special?
From one location to multiple, the Radix IoT portfolio of products solves the inherent complexity of managing geographically distributed facilities across various markets, including edge data centers, utilities, carrier edge/telecom infrastructure, industrial, and property management.

What changes or growth do you predict for your organization in the coming years?
More, improved product launches.

Michael Skurla on Company & IT World Awards

How did your organization first become acquainted with the Network PG’s IT World Awards?
Through our PR firm, Global Cadence

What has winning a IT World Award been like for you, your organization, and/or employees?
It’s been a rewarding way to be recognized as we launch our company and encourages our employees to strive for the best.

How has the win affected your business? Has your organization realized results with the IT World Awards?
We have shared the win across our social sites and received good responses.

What other achievements have paved the way to success as an IT World Award winner?
Being recognized among other industry experts.

Michael Skurla | Profile of Achievers

Most influential book read
I’ve always been exceptionally fond of ‘Our Iceberg is Melting’ by John Kotter. Written as a fable about a penguin colony, this book offers exceptional reflection on managing problems and conflict that seen insurmountable. It’s an easy read for anyone.

How do you manage social media?
Our company social sites are managed by our PR firm.

Favorite quote
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

Countries you would like to visit
I’ve been exceptionally lucky in my life to be able to travel the world extensively. I’ve been to some of the most fascinating, and often difficult places in the world. Travel in it-self is an education in perspectives that I have found vital in business but has also made me who I am as an individual. My hope is to not just travel to more countries (I do want to go to Thailand and Egypt), but to bring my daughters to some of these same places to gain this insight.

Favorite airline
United. I live in Chicago which leaves you with two viable global alternatives for direct global access. I’ve been a member of mileage plus since 1986 when my father enrolled me before a trip to China. I’ve had some form of status since 2003. In 2018 I became a million miler with United. Though favorite airline is a debatable topic for many, United offers me consistency that I have grown accustomed to over my life. I’ve had good and bad experiences, but like any family, you adapt with change. (So yes, United is my loved; and sometime dysfunctional extended family).

Favorite hotel (brand)
Marriott. Consistency and quality are all I ask. And their program is also exceptionally good.