Hardware Podcasts

Moving Past the Pilot Phase in IoT and AI | HiveMQ's Barry Libert | Internet of Things Podcast

IoT For All Podcast · 16 Dec 2025 · 19m · Episode 389

What this episode covers

Barry Libert, Chairman and CEO of HiveMQ, discusses the critical challenge of moving industrial IoT projects from pilot to scale, arguing that companies must view themselves as data streaming entities rather than product manufacturers. He emphasizes that the primary hurdle is often poor data quality and a lack of alignment across technical, strategic, and economic leadership tiers, rather than the AI models themselves. Libert outlines how HiveMQ has evolved from a connectivity tool to an industrial AI platform, enabling agentic workflows that allow organizations to trade data sets for operational efficiency and predictive maintenance.

Most relevant to

large enterprises

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
HiveMQ, Amazon, Fixed Software, Rockwell, Siemens, McKinsey, Citadel
Products
Pulse

Related episodes from other shows

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • Coredump Sessions · 57m

    #014: Why Your IoT Project Still Hasn’t Taken Off — And How to Fix It

    Chris Coleman and Tyler from Memfault host Afzal Saleem, an IoT entrepreneur and former T-Mobile Netherlands startup lead, to discuss why IoT projects stall despite technical viability. They analyze organizational resistance, such as the Dutch railway case where internal job security fears blocked adoption, and the '500K SIM card' phenomenon where pilots fail to scale due to slow enterprise processes. The conversation highlights how giants like Google, Ericsson, and Cisco waste millions by skipping niche validation, contrasting this with successful niche strategies from companies like Golioth and Nordic Semiconductor. They argue that IoT must learn from AI's community-driven, fast-iteration go-to-market playbook to overcome fragmentation and e-waste risks from deprecated cloud services.

    Validation & product-market fitScaling production
    12 chapters

  • Manufacturing Happy Hour · 35m

    155: Down to Earth Digital Transformation Advice with Vatsal Shah

    Vatsal Shah, Founder and CEO of Litmus, explains how his unified Industrial IoT platform helps manufacturers contextualize data from legacy systems to solve specific plant floor problems like yield loss and scrap reduction. He details his journey from an automation engineer at Rockwell Automation to founding Litmus, emphasizing that feedback-driven development and direct customer engagement are critical for survival in industrial innovation. Shah argues that scalability and cloud-native architecture are no longer optional, as manufacturers now require centralized management to handle heterogeneous environments across multiple sites. He advises leaders to cut through market noise by finding trusted partners who prioritize customer outcomes over proprietary vendor architectures.

    Connected products & IoTManufacturing partners & offshoring
    10 chapters

  • Over the Air · 31m

    Unlocking the Potential of Industrial IoT: Insights from Jeremy Frank, CEO of KCF Technologies

    Jeremy Frank, CEO of KCF Technologies, explains how his bootstrapped company scaled industrial IoT by focusing on 'elevating people' rather than just deploying technology, a lesson learned from early government contracts and the oil and gas sector. He critiques the industry's 'pilot purgatory' as a result of ignoring frontline workers, advocating for a lean, Kaizen-inspired approach to predictive maintenance. Frank also shares his perspective on Toyota's strategic bet on internal combustion engines versus electric vehicles and predicts the rapid, widespread adoption of EVs in 2024.

    Scaling productionConnected products & IoT
    7 chapters

  • Over the Air · 19m

    Building Customer-Focused IoT Applications Easier with Charlie Key, Co-founder and CEO of Losant

    Charlie Key, Co-founder and CEO of Losant, explains how his company simplifies enterprise IoT development through a visual workflow engine and edge computing capabilities. He details Losant's strategic pivot from a developer-centric model to an enterprise-focused sales approach, emphasizing the importance of compliance, security, and building trust with large organizations. Key also outlines the company's future roadmap, which prioritizes integrating AI and machine learning for anomaly detection and enhancing data usability for customers.

    Connected products & IoTMarketing & brand
    6 chapters

  • The Manufacturing Executive

    Industrial DataOps and Rise of AI Agents w/ Aron Semle

    Aron Semle, Chief Technology Officer of HighByte, explains Industrial DataOps as the engineering discipline required to contextualize heterogeneous data from factory floor equipment for IT systems. He discusses the challenges of scaling solutions across facilities with different machinery, using autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) as a key example of where standardized data models prevent redundant integration work. Semle also details the rise of AI agents in manufacturing, describing how they can automate monitoring tasks and capture tribal knowledge to assist operators with aging workforces.

    Connected products & IoTAI & machine learning
    7 chapters

The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by IoT For All Podcast. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.