Global device connectivity provider Wirepas has appointed Andrew Gilbert as the new chairman and Jörgen Lantto as a new member of its Board of Directors. Vesa Laisi has been appointed as a new advisor to the board.
Sami Lampinen (managing partner, Inventure), Carl-Erik Mattila (partner, Topnet), Teppo Hemiä (CEO, Wirepas) and Patrick Sheehan (managing partner, ETF Partners) have been reappointed as members of the board. Benedikt Herles (managing partner, Vito Ventures) has been reappointed as a board observer.
Andrew Gilbert told us “Wirepas has uniquely solved, what I believe to be, one of the biggest impediments to the inevitable huge success of the Internet of Things (IoT). The ability to provide very low cost, massively scalable, self-optimising connectivity is critical to the growth of IoT. I am honoured to have been asked to chair this company in its ambitions to globalise and further develop this unique product to enable the next big growth phase in connected devices” .
Andrew Gilbert has served as Executive Vice President, European Innovation Development of Qualcomm Europe, Inc., and as a member of Qualcomm’s Executive Committee. Prior to joining Qualcomm, Gilbert served as vice president and general manager of Flarion Technologies’ European, Middle Eastern and African regions (EMEA), responsible for strategy and operations. He has also worked for many leading global technology companies including Motorola and Racal.
Jörgen Lantto has served as President and CEO at Fingerprint Cards AB, where he delivered unprecedented growth in global high technology business to business environment, executive VP and CTO at ST-Ericsson, CEO at Alice Systems AB, and has 25 years in Ericsson in different positions.
Vesa Laisi is president, Drives Segment at Danfoss A/S. He has an extensive experience from industrial business in global context. He has served as President and CEO at Vacon Plc, marketing director at Vaisala Plc and as vice president at ABB.
The market for the Internet of Things (IoT), the Industrial Internet and device connectivity is developing rapidly. Both the number of different applications and the volume of connected devices are growing fast. One of the key enablers for this development is the connectivity.
Wirepas is focused on the software for de-centralized IoT connectivity – and nothing else. Wirepas Connectivity is a de-centralized radio communications protocol that can be used in any device, with any radio chip and on any radio band. The target market is industrial and infrastructure level IoT applications that pose high requirements for the reliability, scale and total cost of ownership. The market access is based on partnerships which enable turnkey IoT solutions to end customers.