Startup Davra's New Platform Helps VARs Capture Internet Of Things Opportunities

Startup Davra Networks emerged from stealth mode this week, touting a new platform it says will help solution providers capitalize on the burgeoning Internet of Things market.

The new cloud-based platform, called RuBAN, takes the raw data being generated by a growing group of connected "things" -- be it a car, an oil rig or any Internet-connected object -- and presents it in a way that it is easy to visualize and consume. It's almost like a business intelligence or analytics platform purpose-built for the Internet of Things.

Paul Glynn, Davra Networks CEO, said RuBAN was built from the ground up with networking VARs and systems integrators in mind. The idea, he said, is that solution providers will use RuBAN to help customers make sense of the data being generated from their Internet of Things-enabled devices.

[Related: Cisco Launches 'Fog Computing' Platform For Internet Of Things ]

"The networking piece becomes important but what's very relevant to the customer is managing the data that is generated within these environments," Glynn told CRN. "There is a huge emphasis on data collection, storage, data analysis and presentation. And that’s something that network integrators and resellers aren’t used to doing.

"They are coming from the good old days when management was just managing the network device and making sure it was working and then managing the connectivity to make sure that’s working," Glynn continued. "You didn’t really dig down into the clients' business. But [Internet of Things] and this whole evolution of networking is driving that, and that’s basically what we are looking to address."

Glynn said the idea is that networking-focused solution providers -- Davra's target customers -- will use RuBAN to capture new managed services opportunities around the Internet of Things.

Presidio, a New York-based infrastructure solution provider ranked No. 22 on CRN's 2014 Solution Provider 500 list, is one of the early adopters of Davra's RuBAN platform.

Greg Wilburn, business development manager at Presidio, said Presidio already is leveraging the RuBAN platform to drive more efficient fleet management for a school district outside Houston. After Presidio helped install Cisco routers into district school buses to provide W-iFi to students traveling to and from school, the RuBAN platform is now leveraging data from those routers to provide a whole lot more.

Wilburn said RuBAN helps Presidio keep tabs on those buses' idling times and whether they are staying in line with local speed limits. The platform is also being used, Wilburn said, to trace buses' routes to and from school and to generate alerts when the bus strays from its usual path.

"If there is an infraction where the bus either goes over the speed limit or goes over some internal threshold for idle time or the engine RPM is going over, we are able to show that in real time and provide real-time alerts to the client," Wilburn said.

The Internet of Things -- a growing network of physical objects that use sensors and an Internet connection to communicate with each other and the people around them -- will significantly shake up the networking and data center markets over the coming years, according to research firm Gartner.

Gartner last year said it expects the Internet of Things to include 26 billion objects -- excluding PCs, tablets and smartphones -- by 2020, representing a 30-fold increase from 0.9 billion in 2009. Gartner also said it expects Internet of Things product and services suppliers to generate incremental revenue of more than $300 billion by 2020.

Networking giant Cisco has emerged as a major proponent of Internet of Things with some bullish predictions of its own. The company earlier this year said the market represents a massive $19 trillion opportunity across the public and private sectors combined.

Glynn said Davra's platform can be used out of the gate to visualize data from Cisco Internet of Things devices such as its Integrated Services Routers. Davra won't, however, exclusively partner with Cisco, he said.

"Technically, we are pretty platform-independent and can work with anyone. But we made a commercial decision that Cisco was one of the biggest players in this industry," Glynn said. "We decided if anyone is going to make a play for [the Internet of Things], it's Cisco."

Wilburn, for his part, said Presidio hopes to use the RuBAN platform to provide further managing, measuring and monitoring capabilities for industries including first responders, utilities, mining and oil and gas.

"There are fleets and there are disparate systems that need to be monitored and measured and managed, and that's something that a lot of traditional network management systems aren’t designed to do," Wilburn said. "They are not designed to take disparate data and make business decisions around those things. That’s been the one strength of Davra's that really shines."

Wilburn said Presidio expects the installation and services opportunities around the Internet of Things to be in the "tens of millions."

Davra, formed in 2011, has its headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, and has offices in California, New Jersey, the UK, Germany and Australia. Its RuBAN platform is generally available now.

Glynn said Davra has already sold RuBAN to roughly 10 solution providers, many of them being larger Cisco solution providers such as Presidio.

"Our view is that we put the network VAR or the Cisco VAR in a prime position to take on that [Internet of Things] business," Glynn said.

PUBLISHED JUNE 18, 2014