LoRaWAN Live in Munich: Minol-ZENNER extends its lead

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The LoRaWAN Live event, which took place in Munich from 17 to 20 June, was a real industry highlight and where the Minol ZENNER Group continued its success story. In addition to several awards, the team also enjoyed top position from among the LoRaWAN network operators. ZENNER appeared as a gold sponsor this year.

The LoRaWAN Live event in Munich had just as much to offer this year for everyone who is already a fan of LoRaWAN, as it did for visitors who are just taking their first steps into the digital world and looking for economical, future-proof technology for their projects. Digitalisation is taking great strides forwards across the board.

“Digitalisation does not take breaks. But at certain moments, it provides an opportunity to take stock and check your own status,” says Boris Stöckermann, Head of Business Development, Digital Solutions & eCommerce at the Minol-ZENNER Group, describing the pace at which digitalisation is affecting almost all industries.

Stöckermann has been an expert on LoRaWAN from the very beginning. He has been working tirelessly for the Minol-ZENNER Group since 2016 to advance the company’s digital solutions while supporting the continuous development of LoRaWAN. He has been a brand ambassador for LoRa Alliance for several years, among other things.

LoRaWAN and Minol-ZENNER are driving the industry forwards

For the Minol-ZENNER Group, the event was, once again, the perfect moment to take stock and demonstrate its status in the industry. The organiser, the LoRa Alliance, now includes several hundred companies as active members across the globe, working every day on new products, solutions and technologies for LoRaWAN. They have been working together to establish the open radio standard worldwide since 2015. ZENNER, an active member of the LoRa Alliance since 2016, has made a significant contribution in this regard.

“No smart city can get by without LoRaWAN today; new systems and solutions are put into operation all over the world every day,” Stöckermann explains, adding: “We, the Minol-ZENNER Group, are proud to be able to contribute to this, because digitalisation is also an important factor when it comes to achieving international climate objectives.”

The numerous awards that ZENNER has received in recent years demonstrate just how large the Group’s contribution is. At the LoRaWAN Live event, Rich Sanders, Managing Director at ZENNER USA and Treasurer at Lora Alliance, received the LoRa Alliance Corporate Award 2023. Boris Stöckermann was also honoured with the Leadership Award for his work as Chairman of the Smart City Working Group and as a member of the Marketing Committee, as well as for his active participation in several task forces within the Alliance.

The talk given by Group Executive Zeljko Petrina at LoRaWAN Live demonstrated how the Minol-ZENNER Group has developed in direct parallel with the successful spread of LoRaWAN technology: “Pioneering digital innovation: how LoRaWAN empowers Minol-ZENNER Group’s IoT evolution”. In his talk, Petrina explained to a captivated audience how the Group has developed numerous new kinds of technology and solutions based on LoRaWAN, from digital measuring technology through to infrastructure components, software and data platforms, for areas such as the smart city, smart metering, smart building, smart utility or smart mobility.

The smart city benefits from LoRaWAN

In order to realise multiple innovative solutions and projects, the Minol-ZENNER Group currently has a team of experts working across the globe on the topics of digitalisation and LoRaWAN. This includes, for example, Jan-Philipp Exner, Senior Project Manager, Urban Planner and Smart City Expert at ZENNER. He develops new solutions for the LoRaWAN world together with the ZENNER project managers and developers, as well as with customers. Hardly anyone understands the connections between urban life and digitalisation as well as Exner. He is also a sought-after expert who is also heading up and helping shape pioneering research projects at the Saarland’s “East Side Fab” innovation centre. Exner explains: “Our strength is that we can offer everything from hardware in the form of metering instruments and sensors, to the LoRaWAN network and various data services, all the way through to finished IoT applications from a single source, and thus also finished end-to-end solutions, and we can do so in a modular manner. Many pieces of our equipment now also have the relevant certification from the LoRa Alliance.”

At the LoRaWAN Live event, Exner, who is involved at the LoRa Alliance as LoRaWAN Ambassador and Vice-Chairman of the Smart City Working Group, together with Daniel Rusch from Stromnetz Hamburg GmbH, captured the audience with their talk on the topic of “Success and Opportunities for Scaling LoRaWAN in the Smart City”. Daniel Rusch, Project Engineer Innovation Management at Stromnetz Hamburg GmbH, gave an insight into the many possibilities offered by developing a city-wide LoRaWAN ecosystem. The talk demonstrated why the LoRaWAN network of Stromnetz Hamburg, built with the support of ZENNER IoT Solutions, is one of the largest and most successful in Germany, with over 600 gateways, 99 percent coverage and over 40,000 devices since the very beginning.

ZENNER is number one when it comes to LoRaWAN network operation

The participants at the LoRaWAN Live event watched the presentation given by the Lora Alliance with particular interest, and this also revealed which companies are currently the largest, private LoRaWAN network operators. Minol-ZENNER was sure to be at the forefront and they didn’t disappoint.

“I was also surprised that our LoRaWAN network, now with around eight million integrated measuring instruments and sensors, includes about as many devices as the networks of the four largest competitors combined. This is probably due to the fact that we focus entirely on ourselves during the network rollout and really focus on going our own way,” Stöckermann explains. The infrastructure manager is ZENNER Connect GmbH, which provides a secure LoRaWAN network for the housing and real estate industries, municipalities, energy suppliers and industrial customers. ZENNER Connect is registered with the Federal Network Agency as a LoRaWAN network operator and also operates the ZENNER Datahub, an ISO 27001 certified platform for secure data exchange.

Artificial intelligence is driving digitalisation forwards

In 2019, the Minol-ZENNER Group launched Lehmann Pioneers Digital GmbH (LPDG), a start-up that has already made a name for itself internationally with topics such as business intelligence and data analytics, big data and data science, process intelligence and automation, and other topics related to AI. The company serves customers in Europe, the USA, Dubai and India, among others. Matthias Hinkelmann, Managing Director of LPDG, describes the prospects offered by AI: “Big data and AI are becoming increasingly important – including in the energy and housing industries and in the smart city. Nowadays, there are millions of smart devices that send trillions of pieces of data over the Internet of Things. By using AI, the data can be analysed, anomalies can be detected and predictions about future events can be made.” The topic was presented at the LoRaWAN Live event by Ranjith Nandiraju, Director of Big Data and Data Science at LPDG as part of his talk “Empowering Energy: AI and Data Science in the Utility Sector”. Using various practical examples, Nandiraju explained how AI can be used to successfully make energy consumption predictions, detect anomalies and perform predictive maintenance for IoT devices, and send automated customer service email responses.

After the event, the Minol-ZENNER Group has been carrying on with new projects without skipping a beat. Zeljko Petrina confirms: “Resting on our laurels is out of the question for us. In fact, we do quite the opposite. For us, the awards and the confirmation we received of our leading position give us motivation and incentive. We are already looking forward to our upcoming projects and future collaboration with the Lora Alliance.”