Kio Cloud API & Portal Beam Helping to Define a New Era of Spatial Intelligence

Our recent webinar featuring our Portal Beam was all about how it fits into the topic of smart buildings and trends in this emerging market and how it is proving to be especially valuable for anyone responsible for managing spaces. Webinar host and Kontakt.io CRO Rom Eizenberg guided viewers through a brief history of smart buildings and how what that term means has become more clear thanks to the development of the term “spatial intelligence”.

After bringing us to date with the current understanding of how technology can be used to better utilize spaces, several Kontakt.io partners and clients shared their stories of how they have implemented our solutions to get better results.

Here are the four key takeaways from the webinar:

• The definition of what constitutes a “smart” building was never really settled until recently.This situation was the cause of some confusion in the popular mind since “smart” meant different things to different people. Rom says that until now the market has been mostly focused on driving efficiencies via building services, including everything from elevators to fire sprinklers to other systems that make building work instead of focusing on the people who use them.
  
  Our new understanding of “smart” buildings is more focused on how people use space to deliver services to make that experience better, something that was not previously part of the equation.

• A new understanding of what smart buildings are all about is taking shape and a name has emerged to capture the essence of the idea of spaces that work for people — space intelligence. Rom explains that space intelligence is better understood when broken down into three components: spatial awareness (in the form of metadata about how people interact with spaces), environmental awareness (tracking and responding to changes in environmental conditions) and object awareness (being able to locate and track objects). 
  
  With a clear definition established, the discussion then shifts to how to make it work on a practical level and how to get the data that drives the solutions that improve the visitor or employee experience in different spaces, often using existing infrastructures and technologies that you almost certainly already use.

• Portal Beam consolidates hardware solutions and simplifies space management. Rom points out during the presentation that you can walk into many offices today, take one look at the ceiling and see proof of various past efforts to implement upgrades to office life – smoke detectors, motion detectors, sensors to control lights and various other things — each with power requirements and a network. 
  
  When all these legacy solutions start to add up on the ceiling, the role and value of Portal Beam becomes clear. Using a single device to manage everything that can increase the comfort and security of people in a space just makes sense. This is especially true when that device can do so much more while powered by batteries that, thanks to Bluetooth Low Energy, can last for four years and avoid the need to wire the device for power.

• The key part is not the hardware, but the outcomes it helps to produce. The next stage of the webinar was dedicated to shifting the spotlight on some Kontakt.io partners and their stories about how they have put Portal Beam to work. They provided videos detailing how they integrated portal beam into their own solutions and what their experience with it has been. 
  
  Michael Grant of Metrikus explained how Portal Beam enabled them to expand their already impressive range of smart building functionalities to include a sensor with thermal imaging to monitor occupancy and capacity levels. He also explained how the lack of a need for supporting infrastructure also makes Portal Beam a winner among his customers, allowing them to simply supply it with a battery, mount it and let it go to work.

“We recently integrated Kontakt.io’s Portal Beam sensor into our platform. This means we can now offer a sensor with thermal-imaging to our customers to monitor occupancy capacity which is a great new option for everyone. Portal Beam has enriched our hardware pack for our customers, and it requires no infrastructure. So, the battery power sensors that are easily attached to a ceiling reduce the infrastructure cost beyond the hardware for the customer which is a great added value.”

Michael Grant, COO, Metrikus

Other clients provided videos in which they describe the various ways in which Portal Beam has made their solutions more effective and efficient, while delighting customers and putting a range of powerful tools in their hands.

“Combining Locatee’s dashboards with Portal Beam from Kontakt.io, our customers are able to track accurate conference room utilization in their offices. We integrate this data with the easy to use API from Kontakt.io. Our data agnostic workplace analytics solution now combines information from different sources with the sensor measurements from Portal Beam to get more detailed insights about the utilization in the office.” 

Dio Kollias, Marketing Manager, Locatee

Bottom line — deployments are faster and clients get more and better insights into their workspaces. 

If you’re not sure what Portal Beam is all about or how it delivers value, this webinar is a great place to start for a general orientation on what it can do and the use cases where it is particularly effective. We’ve archived the entire presentation and you can access it here.