Finalist | Carriots (Spain) - Enabling truly smart cities

Our Smart Cities Finalist “Carriots” from Spain is a Platform-as-a-Service designed for Internet of Things and Machine to Machine projects. Carriots allows to collect data from connected objects, store the data and easily build powerful applications. We talked to Alvaro Everlet, CTO of Carriots, about his company and the solution they are going to present at CeBIT.

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Where did your idea for the company come from?

Alvaro Everlet (Carriots): Carriots as a platform and company comes from the team’s experience in the M2M and IoT sector. From the experience acquired in successful projects in the preceding years we understood the foundations of IoT projects and where we could add value.
We are a middleware and in such a position we are able to see and understand what happens on the other ends of each IoT project: the “things” and the data consumption. There are gaps to fill and value to add to the stack. We want to carry IoT solutions: CarrIoTs!

For which kind of audience is your product or service intended and what problem is it solving?

Alvaro Everlet (Carriots): The Carriots platform is designed for developers and system integrators, for those who get their hands dirty doing IoT projects. At CODE_n15 we are presenting another kind of product: Carriots CityLife. This product is completely focused on Smart Cities and therefore has another target: local governments or companies looking for a solution ready to use.

When it comes to a solution for Smart City the main challenge to address is the heterogeneity from the traditionally separated services, new and existing ones. We have worked on integration and best practice in Smart City projects, providing a holistic and comprehensive overview for people managing those cities. This helps decision-makers in their work and ensures that the city truly deserves to be referred to as “smart”.

Tell us a bit about the company’s founders like their professional or industry background and the origins of the founding idea.

Alvaro Everlet (Carriots): The company’s founders are Miguel Castillo and Alvaro Everlet. Both have a strong technical and business background with more than 15 years of experience.
Miguel is the CEO, his solid knowledge of this industry has been proven in previous adventures, co-founding large successful companies like Ola Internet (the first VOIP-only operator in Spain, now part of Vodafone Group) and Oesia (a leading system integrator in Spain with over 3000 employees).
I am the CTO, and my technical background is also complemented with previous co-founding experiences like Hello World Solutions, a Spanish IT firm. I would call myself a technology passionate and IoT evangelist. I always defend Carriots as a fun challenge.

Your product is serving a broad variety of industry sectors. In your opinion: which businesses are the ones with the most potential concerning the introduction of IoT technology? What are the main challenges on introducing your solution in the various areas?

Alvaro Everlet (Carriots): IoT technology is broadly presented in nearly every sector. The most potential and current trend is on wearables, connected cars, smart cities and connected home. The industry is moving and IoT adoption is becoming a main concern for almost every sector. The key to success is not the technology itself, it is the service. Understanding the service and the added value of that connected “thing” must be the starting point and the main challenge.

See Carriots live on the CODE_n Stage on Monday, 16.03.2015.