Swisscom to Chase the Long Tail of IoT Customers

Swisscom is soon launching a solution based on the award-winning Enea Connectivity Control Service (IoT CCS), which will make it affordable also for enterprises with smaller numbers of devices to connect through a reliable Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection. The solution will also allow selected traffic to pass directly to the Internet, protected by FortiGate, the next-generation Firewall from Fortinet.

Enterprises turn to mobile connectivity for their Internet of Things (IoT) applications since mobile systems are standardized and secure. However, most IoT applications are either quite basic, requiring only SIM management and connectivity control, or highly advanced and customized for individual customers. Stuck in the middle is the long tail of customers that need value-adding security features, such as firewalling and getting traffic through dedicated VPN connections, at a reasonable cost.

Using the Enea Aptilo IoT CCS, Swisscom will not only be able to offer customers scalable and secure IoT connectivity that is easy and fast to set up. It will also be much easier to make changes. With traditional private APNs, customers face complexity when updating each device with a new APN name to change the enterprise VPN destination. Through the Swisscom service, enabled by Enea Aptilo IoT CCS, enterprise customers gain efficiency and control by making such changes centrally in the cloud instead of in each device.

Using a single APN also has benefits for unified global connectivity. For example, service providers can offer a unified global IoT connectivity service across international partner mobile networks, where IoT devices can keep the same IP address and security policies even when their eSIM is connected to a partner network. Moreover, the fact that IoT CCS is hosted as a unique, dedicated instance for the service provider on Amazon Web Services in the cloud makes it easy to scale globally.