Kinéis and Altyor are working together to design terminals with global ambitions. Claire Mignonat, Product Marketing Manager at Kinéis, shares her experience with Altyor.
Altyor, a partner for innovation
Kinéis and Altyor collaborate on the creation of demonstration terminals to track and connect infrastructure and equipment in all regions of the world, thanks to Kinéis IoT satellite connectivity. Based on the functional needs expressed by Kinéis, Altyor has designed a robust and versatile terminal. This demonstration terminal meets the expectations of users who want to use Kinéis technology in a wide range of specific applications (infrastructure, transport and logistics, etc.).
ALTYOR: Can you tell us about your company and your business in one or two sentences?
CLAIRE: Kinéis is a satellite operator and global connectivity provider dedicated to the IoT, the Internet of Things. What exactly does that mean? It means that Kinéis operates satellites, a constellation of satellites. Today, we have 8 satellites in orbit and soon, in 2023, we are launching a constellation of 25 nano-satellites, dedicated to the IoT, which will provide a near-real time connectivity service, as well as satellite location services.
ALTYOR: How long has Kinéis existed, how many people does the company employ and what is your current location?
CLAIRE: Kinéis was created in 2018 and now it has about fifty employees. We are based in Toulouse, the nerve centre of space activity in France and therefore, close to the players in this sector in Toulouse.
ALTYOR: What product or solution have you decided to develop and what need does this product meet?
CLAIRE: We decided to develop a multi-sensor device that would integrate Kinéis connectivity. Why? Because in fact, we had customers who had expressed the need to have a turnkey device to be able to test the Kinéis connectivity service.
ALTYOR: How did you identify this need?
CLAIRE: The need was simple, quite clear. We have a variety of customers and on our client panel we had people who don’t necessarily have the ability of developing a device. So we needed a turnkey solution to allow customers to be able to test the Kinéis service in their environment, in their use case.
ALTYOR: Why did you choose Altyor as your partner?
CLAIRE: Because Altyor was the partner that, via the launchPad assistance program, offered us to move forward by iteration and a completely risk free approach, while benefiting from the experience that Altyor has, on the whole design part until the industrialization of a connected object. It is true that we arrived with a specification (with an idea in mind), and Altyor was also able to accompany us in everything, in the end, choices that we would not necessarily have made. So it is true that operating on an iteration basis also allowed us to consolidate our specifications and to be able to produce a device that perfectly met the criteria we had developed.
ALTYOR: What was the main challenge for you and for Altyor?
CLAIRE: We had a main challenge that was ultimately the compactness of the object. We wanted something compact and very adaptable because it is still a demonstration object assisting customers and, in the end, a use-case that we do not always know in advance. We really needed to have both a compact and multi-sensor device, adaptable also in terms of fixation, in terms of mode of operation for any type of environment.
ALTYOR: How would you describe the relationship with Altyor throughout the production process?
CLAIRE: Very, very good. Altyor is a very reliable partner who has been able to give us feedback at the right time, who has been able to de-risk a number of steps, who has also been able to advise us in some production situations, in some choices and always bring solutions when we were faced with problems, so we are extremely appreciative.
ALTYOR: What particularly struck you in the way Altyor works?
CLAIRE: What particularly struck us was the fact that we were always able to bring solutions when we encountered problems. And also the fact of always offering developments to the product or different ways of thinking and, therefore, constantly improving our initial ideas.
ALTYOR: What are the next steps?
CLAIRE: For Kinéis, it is actually the installation of this turnkey solution for customers with the device, our connectivity and then the platform that goes with it. Always with the aim of having a decision-making accelerator and finally being able to present the offer, what Kinéis is able to offer.
ALTYOR: Anything to add?
CLAIRE: Yes, I would like to add that it is true that with Altyor, beyond the customer-supplier relationship that we may have had on this project, it is true that now, we see more of an evolution around a partnership and we work with good understanding, in a good mood and it’s overall really nice.