Cirrent ZipKey Scorecard

IoT Function Provider

Company Overview

Cirrent focuses on the Device’s wifi connection to the Internet, essentially make it simple for users of connected consumer electronics to get their devices connected to the internet once powered on within their home without having to enter wifi setup information, configure the device first with their smartphone, or jump through other setup hoops that can negatively impact the user’s initial experience.  The smoothest experience exists when the home broadband provider is also a partner of Cirrent.

Cirrent is a private company founded in 2014 which has raised $5M as of April 2016.  They launched ZipKey in May of 2016.  Part of the success of ZipKey is dependant upon how many broadband providers adopt their technology.  As of January 2017, they have an agreement with Comcast Xfinity in the United States and Canada which provides them an ecosystem of 67M homes that could have an easier connection experience for consumer connected devices.

Offering Overview

Device

• Physical Devices
• Sensor
• Communication – Zipkey just helps devices connect to their local wifi in order to simplify and speed the initial setup process.  They don’t provide any of the physical wifi chip level capabilities but ride on top of that from a software perspective.

Edge Gateway

• Physical Edge Gateways
• Communications
• Processing
• Analytics
• Data Storage

Data & Insight

• Things Operational Big Data
• Stream Analytics
• Machine Learning
• Thing Meta Data
• User Meta Data

Messaging & Automation

• Communications and Messaging
• Identity Access Management
• Event Processing
• Integration

User Interaction

• Web Interface
• Mobile Interface
• Voice Interface
• Interface Development APIs
• Interface Development Environment

Security

• Encryption
• Access Control – ZipKey helps with Access Control from the perspective that can wire a consumer IoT Device to the home Wifi network automatically. This requires a connection between the home Wifi Router, ZipKey internet Service, and the IoT Device. In theory, even if your wifi router doesn’t support ZipKey, there may be a nearby wifi router that does and simplifies granting access to the Internet.
• Identity Management – ZipKey indicates that their authentication framework is used for validating products, but the details are openly shared.  However, there is no mention of integration capabilities.  As a device owner’s identity would also need to passed to other Messaging & Automation layer to ensure that the device can community with the vendor’s cloud application.
• Secure Device Updates

Management

• Device Lifecycle / Operations – ZipKey is able to provide some level of management of a device’s internet connectivity, using the public ZipKey hotspots (primarily riding on top of the Xfinitywifi public hotspots) to ensure a device doesn’t lose internet connection when the primary home wifi hotspot has issues.  It’s unclear to what level of internet access lifecycle management ZipKey offers.
• Security – ZipKey is providing management of the Wifi login credentials and the User’s device credentials.  There isn’t much mention of the users device credentials integration with wider security around the cloud application which would be running outside of ZipKey.
• API