For this Company Spotlight, we interviewed Hivecell’s CEO (Jeffrey Ricker), COO/CFO (Gerard Miller), and VP of Energy (John Kalfayan) about how the company is redefining edge computing. Hivecell is the Edge-as-a-Service company with easy-to-deploy, future-proofed, technology agnostic solutions, empowering companies to scale infinitely and save massive amounts of resources in their management and processing of big data. Hivecell takes compute power out of the data center and places it at the true edge, enabling companies to efficiently manage thousands of remote locations without a huge IT team and at 50 percent of the cost of traditional cloud providers. For more information on Hivecell, please visit www.hivecell.com.

Background: With the shift to software-as-a-service (SaaS) in the industry, software was no longer designed to run on a single computer but rather on multiple servers, with some applications requiring a minimum of three servers. This change led to higher adoption of cloud computing in the industry, especially for businesses with centralized operations where the cost of the cloud is easily absorbed. For a business with numerous remote locations/facilities that all capture vast amounts of data from IoT sensors, the cost of cloud computing or, alternatively, purchasing and maintaining multiple servers per location is not economically feasible. Founded in 2015 to bring cloud-like computing capabilities to remote areas (“the edge”), Hivecell currently serves the energy, retail/restaurant, manufacturing, transportation/shipping, and telecommunications industries.

Value Proposition: Hivecell enables customers to economically deploy edge computing capabilities at remote locations through the following unique characteristics:

No Technicians Required: Instead of requiring highly trained IT technicians to spend multiple hours installing servers at remote locations, Hivecell’s Edge-as-a-Service solution can be installed by anyone who can plug it into a power source and connect it to a network. Further, there is no need for a technician to routinely visit the site, as all upgrades, patches, and troubleshooting are included in Hivecell’s solution, reducing the number of personnel on site and minimizing safety risks.
Easily Scalable & Adaptable: Hivecell’s solution can be deployed in a footprint as small as one node per location. Once deployed, usage is continuously monitored to ensure that there is always headroom to account for redundancy. When the usage is approaching its limit, the customer is notified that additional nodes need to be installed, which is just a click away (see video below). Likewise, if usage at a location decreases, the customer is also notified and can either relocate the node or return it to Hivecell in order to reduce costs.
Lower Cost of Ownership: Rather than spending ~$10,000 in upfront expenditures per server or incurring substantial recurring cloud costs at hundreds to thousands of locations, Hivecell’s solution costs its customer 50-80% less. Also, Hivecell enables customers with hundreds and thousands of locations to minimize the required personnel to monitor and manage them, as its operational dashboard employs a management by exception approach that allows management to spend its time fixing potential problems rather than searching for them.
Lower Latency & Bandwidth Utilization: Because vast amounts of data no longer have to be sent to the cloud to be processed, analyzed and retransmitted, Hivecell enables significantly lower latency and, therefore, the implementation of real-time analytics. Additionally, for very remote areas where there are considerable variable data costs, Hivecell’s solution only requires essential information to be sent back to the corporate office through the cloud, which greatly minimizes those costs.
High Data Reliability: In remote areas, internet connection downtime is not uncommon. Prior to the commercialization of Hivecell’s solution, any data that typically would’ve been collected during this downtime was usually lost. Hivecell’s solution automatically recognizes when the internet connection is down and continues to store the data locally. Once the connection is restored, Hivecell resumes the sending of data until the system is caught up, thereby eliminating the loss of critical information.

Closing Thoughts: Simply because IoT and the cloud started being adopted by the industry around the same timeframe does not mean they should always be deployed together. As edge computing continues to become increasingly utilized for remote locations that need to analyze vast amounts of data, we look forward to following Hivecell, as they continue to promote more efficient edge computing solutions for both its customers as well as analytics providers.

Company Spotlights

August 2021