Inpixon [Nasdaq: INPX]
Enhance Business Outcomes with Indoor Intelligence

“One of my favorite words is ‘niyat’ in Urdu. It means ‘intention.’ I believe that the world would be a better place if we thought about intention before we made assumptions about what someone else said or did. If people could give one another the benefit of understanding intentions, perhaps there would be more peace and understanding in the world,” reflected Nadir Ali, CEO, Inpixon.

At Inpixon, the intention is to do good with indoor data. From helping to secure military command and control centers to facilitating contact tracing to mitigate the spread of disease, Inpixon is committed to seeing its technology deployed to bring about goodness and well-being in the world. The ability to use data to inform decision making at every level is critical to any organization’s operations and success. Inpixon’s Indoor Intelligence solutions allow organizations to harness the power of their indoor data by providing key decision makers with critical tools that transform information into actionable intelligence, allowing for smarter, more informed decisions that can drive business results and enhance safety.

In an interview with CIO Applications, Ali offers an in-depth look into the increasing importance of Indoor Intelligence and what it could mean for organizations worldwide.

What gives Inpixon an extra edge over the competition when it comes to the indoor positioning landscape?

Inpixon has been in business for over 21 years, with an exclusive focus on Indoor Intelligence solutions for over a decade. We’ve made acquisitions and developed internal innovations that allow us to offer what we believe is the market’s most comprehensive indoor location technologies that provide positioning, mapping, security, and analytics. Inpixon’s scalable, enterprise-class, and government-grade Indoor Intelligence platform can serve a wide variety of industry verticals and use cases. The platform’s open, technology-agnostic architecture allows ingestion of myriad data sources and nearly limitless integration with third-party products, systems, and data to support the entire indoor location ecosystem.

We offer an extensive product line, including a variety of sensors, from specialized Wi-Fi detection devices to multi-tech sensors for UWB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular, from which customers can choose to meet their specific needs. Additionally, our solution’s on-device positioning capability that utilizes a phone’s internal sensors, such as the accelerometer and gyroscope, gives it an edge over many other products in the market. Our solution also allows customers to integrate RF detection with video surveillance systems for advanced security uses. Additionally, we have chirp spread spectrum solutions for longer-range applications and indoor-outdoor transitions. Our versatile Indoor Intelligence platform enables customers to grow the solution footprint or adapt new technology strategies as they deem fit while preserving their previous infrastructure investments.

Inpixon is one of the few indoor positioning providers with advanced mapping technology as part of its integrated platform. Unlike competitors that plot positions on a simplified map or pass the location to a third-party map, Inpixon integrates positioning with dynamic, multilayered, intelligent maps. This enables the solution to display information that can be acted upon in real-time, making available new, innovative uses cases and even making traditional use cases more user-friendly and effective.

How Inpixon location technologies assist in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic?

Inpixon’s Workplace Readiness solutions are designed to help organizations reclaim their workplace by increasing their ability to operate more safely, even in the face of pandemic-related challenges.

Our solutions’ contact tracing features can serve as a powerful tool, helping to reduce the spread of infections. With digital contact tracing, if a staff member reports an infection, our technologies can then be used to see not only with whom that person was in contact, in order to do possible exposure notification, but also to identify the areas and assets that may need to be deep cleaned.

This may eliminate the need to shut down entire wings or buildings if there is evidence that the infected individual never ventured to some parts of the building. While traditional, interview-based contact tracing will uncover part of the history of paths taken, rooms visited, and people meet with, digital tools can supplement where memories may fail.

Our Workplace Readiness solutions can also enable customers to monitor occupancy levels and crowding, which can help enforce social distancing protocols. Officials can view zone- by-zone building health scores, which can be derived by looking at the number of wireless devices in a given area, device density, and other factors. Building usage data can also be used to help proactively identify and mitigate high-traffic areas to assist with social distancing efforts.

With the pandemic crisis, an organization’s use of location technology has moved from a competitive advantage to a business imperative. Indoor Intelligence can help organizations with their efforts to follow best practices and guidelines to increase workplace health and safety in light of infectious disease threats like COVID-19.

Besides Workplace Readiness solutions, what are some of the other ways organizations benefit from your solutions?

Our solution is designed with the capability not only to facilitate the return to work but also to help businesses increase sales, decrease costs, and enhance safety and security.

Our robust offering can benefit many industry sectors. Businesses with complex buildings, such as hotels, airports, shopping malls, hospitals, and corporate campuses can provide intelligent maps for indoor navigation to speed visitors on their way. Retailers can use advanced analytics to gain insights from visitor counts, dwell times, and paths taken. Industrial and other clients can take advantage of the real-time location to help find an injured worker, avoid collisions, and monitor parts on a production line. High-security facilities, like government sites, can monitor for unauthorized wireless devices and enforce no-phone zones. In short, organizations in almost every industry can benefit by tracking the location and movements of their assets, equipment, and IoT devices to maximize operational efficiency.

The data sources are everywhere -- from smartphones to smart air conditioning units. Many data-transmitting IoT devices have a spatial component, so we’re able to give them context by plotting the devices and their data on a dynamic, multilayered map. This delivers an intuitive graphic presentation of the facility’s information for powerful visualizations and potentially faster decision making and action. For example, using our platform in conjunction with a facility management app, one could identify building zones that have sensors reporting poor air quality, pinpoint and navigate to the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) units that have sensors reporting a need for filter cleaning or replacement, and then dispatch maintenance teams with turn-by-turn directions to the equipment needing service. Advanced analytics can be added to see the key insights and trends over time. And, assuming ample historical data is available, it’s even possible to perform AI-powered predictive forecasting to help with planning for future periods.

Could you please elaborate on your mission—“to do good with indoor data?”

I realized the critical value that our indoor location technology provides from one of our clients, a large US military agency. The customer talked about how our devices detect and locate connected devices that come into their facility and how that allows them to ensure that those devices are registered or approved. He then explained to me that if any of the devices in the facility were hacked, classified information that impacts our actively deployed soldiers could be compromised.

This is just one of many examples of how Inpixon’s technology can truly make a difference. Indoor data is too valuable to be ignored, and while COVID-19 has created more awareness around the benefits of leveraging this information, this goes well beyond one public health use case. Harnessing the power of Indoor Intelligence can change the way we experience the world inside our built environment. I often think about how we can make smartphones, or any other connected device for that matter, truly smart. You shouldn’t have to ask your devices for information; it should be served to you as you move from one location to the next, providing meaningful, helpful content based on the context of your location. It should anticipate your needs and provide safety and security as you move through the world. This removal of friction can happen at scale with a combination of our location data, contextual information, and applied AI analytics. If we think about the impact GPS had in making people’s lives easier, we’re overdue to bring that experience to indoor spaces.

In today’s world, any opportunity to enable businesses and individuals to be more productive, healthy, and secure is one that is worth pursuing, and we’re proud to provide the solutions that help to achieve that goal.