mediola at IFA 2017: Time for smart home promises go real

German software developer mediola® is showcasing their new-released cloud platform and innovative AIO GATEWAY V5 Plus at IFA 2017. SMAhome has the chance to get the precious viewpoints of Dr. Konstantin Zoggolis, Head of Business Development of mediola, before IFA. Zoggolis is confident in the smart home industry and looking forward to even-better development on interoperability of mediola’s technologies. 

1. How do mediola’s product and solution effectively help businesses and end-users?

Our solutions enable users to simply combine incompatible techniques and devices of competitive brands and standards in a comfortable way. The USP of mediola is an open and extremely flexible platform which is system- and vendor-independent. It allows creating individual control apps for residence and office. The multiple brands and technology standards includes Homematic, EnOcean, Z-Wave, Homematic IP, Samsung, Netatmo, Sonos, Edimax, Philips hue, and much more.

As for our smart home software AIO CREATOR NEO, users can totally customize their own control app with individual graphics and functions to easily automate the entire home – even by voice commands. NEO is scalable by using optional plug-ins, so smart devices from different brands can be integrated into the system.

Further, the mediola AIO GATEWAY series is our universal smart home hub product line. The gateways can integrate all infrared devices, and currently we have more than 1500 radio components from more than 40 brands in the comprehensive ecosystem. Even the huge installed-base of proprietary radio-protocol using brands can be controlled comfortably via smartphone and tablet now.

Last but not least, our B2B solutions work as a smart home market “door opener” for producers of building and safety technology allows companies to connect their products to IoT and upgrade them with smart control apps. The products can also be integrated into mediola’s ecosystem, so companies can profit from participating one of the largest interoperable smart home product portfolio in Europe.

2. What are mediola’s highlighted features of AIO GATEWAY V5Plus? And what makes it different from the previous edition?

AIO GATEWAY V5 Plus is much more flexible and provides enhanced features compared to the V5. For example, it is equipped with an additional Homematic radio transceiver to support the new Homematic IP protocol and has two USB ports to easily add more radio protocols, such as EnOcean, Z-Wave or ZigBee. The small device also has a Z-Wave and Homematic configuration tool, a dual 868 MHz sensortrigger and includes a built-in 24/7 server functionality to execute cross-platform automation.

3. Where are mediola’s major clients located? Do you have upcoming expansion plans of the target customers?

Currently our main focus is on the so-called DACH region, including Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but we are planning to increase our activities throughout the other European countries and some more regions within the next 1-2 years.

4. What are your perspectives to the smart home market development in the future? And with the market development, how will mediola play the role in the market?

Although Smart Home is a global mega trend for a couple of years now and the market segment is growing fast, we believe that smart home is still at the beginning.

There are currently many competing communication standards in the smart home market which are mostly not interoperable, resulting in the confusion of consumers. Also, a plenty of innovative smart products have been released over the last few years, generating high user interest and rather strong sales figures. However, those smart products are often using stand-alone-solutions. This situation in households is still far from what we expected for smart home, and far from what we see as the huge benefits of smart home in the future.

The omnipresent problem for the consumer is the lack of interoperability. Clients want their home devices work together seamlessly rather than using separate control apps. As a result, our products are designed to meet this demand by connecting incompatible standards on a higher level. We believe that this is exactly the point, where the promise of smart home becomes a real experience. Based on our unique “All-In-One” concept, we are confident to play a significant role in the smart home market in the future, which will dynamically increase within the next decade.

5. Does mediola have plans to provide more smart home products in the future?

Our comprehensive “All-In-One” concept generally implies to integrate market-relevant smart home products and technology standards permanently. For example, we are planning to release new NEO Plugins to connect standards like KNX and ZigBee in the near future.

6. Please introduce the innovative specialties of the products that mediola is going to showcase at IFA 2017.

At IFA we will introduce the new option for our AIO GATEWAY V5 Plus to connect EnOcean and Z-Wave using an optional USB-stick. Thus, a wide range of EnOcean und Z-Wave devices can now be integrated to the mediola ecosystem easily.

Additionally, we just released the mediola cloud service that supports Alexa Voice Assistant, IFTTT, and Conrad Connect, so users can simply voice control all the NEO devices in their home, or use the automation platform to create simple connections between apps or to integrate features like e.g. geofencing to control home devices.