How Mobile Device Management Fosters Innovation: Q/A with Esper CEO Yadhu Gopalan

Struggling to keep up with device updates and maintenance?

Yadhu Gopalan, Co-Founder and CEO of Esper, has spent the majority of his career working with devices and building the underlying infrastructure and systems needed to manage and deploy software to these devices. He also has 35 patents in embedded systems and security, and has designed back-end solutions for FireOS, and AWS before owning Systems Engineering for Amazon Go.

In this interview with Website Planet, he explained how Esper helps some of the world’s most innovative brands in retail, hospitality, logistics, healthcare, education, and more deploy software and updates to mission-critical devices more easily and securely.

How did Esper start, and how are you doing today?

I created Esper with my co-founder Shiv Sundar because every engineering project has to start from infrastructure. Even before innovation happens, you need to have the underlying infrastructure. I built out core device infrastructure multiple times through my roles at Microsoft and Amazon, and wondered why I couldn’t build it once and have it available for others? Infrastructure should be turnkey, democratized, and made available for others to use and build upon.

Infrastructure should be turnkey, democratized, and made available for others to use and build upon.

Esper is on a mission to power exceptional device experiences by revolutionizing the way companies manage their device fleets. We enable next-gen device management for company-owned and managed tablets, kiosks, smartphones, IoT edge devices, and more. In its simplest form, we make it easy for our customers to deploy software and updates to their mission-critical devices in the field.

What problems are you solving for your customers and audience?

Our customers choose Esper because they need a platform to manage their device infrastructure so that they can continue to deliver innovative user experiences. Esper allows them to focus on innovation and releasing product features, since they no longer have to build and manage the undifferentiated infrastructure themselves. Unlike traditional MDM, Esper allows customers to close the loop and keep delivering amazing experiences for their customers in a reliable manner.

By using Esper, our customers are able to take advantage of:

• Cost Savings: With Esper, customers can more efficiently and cost effectively manage their devices, from provisioning to monitoring and maintenance. Additionally, if customers have aging hardware and want to extend its useful life, Esper provides Esper Foundation for Android on x86, an enterprise-grade version of Android that can run on x86 chipsets. It includes monthly security patches and enterprise-level long-term support. With this innovation, customers can just jumpstart an Android POC with their existing equipment, or continue to use their existing hardware long term rather than rip and replace it.

• Ease of Use: Esper’s robust yet intuitive console makes it easy for developers and IT teams to get value quickly. For example, customers can create provisioning templates in minutes, remote view into and control devices, and lockdown devices in just a few clicks, making it easy to deliver safe and secure end user experiences. Customers are also able to support mixed fleets of Android and iOS devices under the same pane of glass.

• Scalability. Esper enables our customers to scale their device fleets reliably and cost effectively, and has worked with global retailers, restaurant groups, and consumer devices, who can now deploy (and continue to deploy) devices at scale easily and cost effectively – even dropshipping devices ready to go straight from the manufacturer with features such as Seamless Provisioning. And they can precisely control update rollouts at scale with Group Hierarchies, which can be organized as many as five levels deep.
• Control. Esper lets customers retain control of their tech stack. We understand that the way they grow and scale their fleet is going to change the way they manage and deploy software as the complexity of that fleet grows. Rather than be subject to update cadences driven by 3rd parties, Esper Blueprints allow them to execute tasks on select groups of devices, like sending a reboot command to every device in the lab, or pushing an application update en masse out into the field. If customers have a mixed fleet (hardware or operating system), they can manage all of them from a single, unified platform. You control what hardware they want to use, not the other way around.

• Security. Esper has a longstanding commitment to protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our customers’ devices and apps, and has many globally recognized security certifications including ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and SOC 2, Type 2. Furthermore, we help our customers deliver more secure solutions because unlike traditional MDM, our capabilities around testing and automating software delivery allows customers to stay up-to-date on security patches by making it easy for application developers to regularly and frequently push new features and security updates into the field.

Which types of companies benefit the most from what you offer?

Esper makes device management easy for customers across various use cases and industries – everything from point of sale systems (POS) and tablets used in restaurants and warehouses to medical devices. Let me call out a few.

Restaurants
Our restaurant customers use our platform to modernize restaurant ordering experiences with smart point of sale terminals and self-ordering kiosks, line busting applications and tablets, and dynamic signage.

Healthcare/Telehealth/Medical Devices
Our health and medical devices customers use our platform for innovative and secure healthcare solutions, from remote patient monitoring devices (RPM) to clinical research trial devices, kiosks, and tablets for staff.

Fitness
Our connected fitness customers are building and maintaining a competitive edge by quickly testing and deploying innovative cloud-connected products and features that meet the increasing needs of customers.

Retail
Our retail customers use our platform to modernize shopping experiences with smart point of sale and tablet terminals to mPOS, in-store kiosks, and dynamic signage.

Logistics
Our logistics and transportation customers use our platform for electronic logging devices (ELD) to ensure corporate devices are used for their single purpose.

Education
Our education customers use our platform to quickly enable remote learning on tablets with remote management, lockdown, and monitoring capabilities.

What makes them eventually choose you over your competitors?

Our customers who are building products for their customers or employees overwhelmingly prefer a solution that is geared towards creating the best solution with the best experience that is always up to date, works as expected, helps them avoid downtime, and resolve issues quickly when they occur.

They don’t want just device management. They want infrastructure that makes their product better. Esper provides exactly that.

❌ Our competitors are relics of the past. They are what the industry once relied on to manage devices, and their focus is in managing bring-your-own devices (BYOD) and serving mostly IT departments to enforce enterprise policy.

✅ What Esper does is much more – we holistically focus on the software that is being deployed and the configuration of the device that is required for that software to run at its best.

We provide industry-defining while bringing the ease and seamlessness of the cloud to our customers’ devices.

We also do more than provide the underlying device infrastructure. We also truly partner with our customers in ways that allow them to be successful with their product. For instance, when it comes to hardware selection, it is one of the critical areas for creating a successful, scaleable device fleet. We have strong relationships with OEMs and hardware partners that can help bridge that gap.

But Esper provides not only an innovative product, as we also provide world class support, where we meet our customers where they are, while also ensuring that they are building their product for the future.

What perspective do you have about where your industry is headed?

Devices are poised to become increasingly prevalent, used by both consumers at home and employees in the workplace. The trend toward a variety of edge devices will persist, with multiple devices collaborating in various use cases.

For instance, homes are witnessing a rise in interconnected smart devices, while workplaces, including establishments like restaurants, are adopting multiple devices such as POS systems, kiosks, tablets, and kitchen tools. The orchestration of devices within a unified system and a single pane of glass is critical for customers to navigate these diverse environments effectively.

The upcoming era of intelligent devices is poised to enhance their capabilities, offering utility to automate tasks that no longer necessitate human intervention. Until recently, AI and machine learning at the edge were limited to a small set of specific use cases. With the revolution of AI we are seeing now, we will start to see additional use cases that can be implemented at the edge.

Typically, edge devices will leverage the cloud for their AI capabilities. However, in scenarios with suboptimal network conditions or latency, there is a growing trend toward conducting processing on the device itself or a local system at the edge. Chip manufacturers like NVIDIA are increasing the computational power needed for edge processing, with other companies also stepping up.

What’s in your roadmap for your future?

Esper’s North Star is to assist our clients in developing great products for the edge. We are committed to advancing our platform as the industry adjusts to diverse technologies. Irrespective of the type of edge device, our objective is to meet the customers where they are. Therefore, we will consistently introduce support for new use cases and expand the range of supported devices.

Esper caters to device fleets of various sizes, whether small or large. The user-friendly interface and intuitive feature set of Esper simplify device management for small fleets. Customers can seamlessly transition to more advanced features as their requirements grow.

For large fleets, the challenge of management starts to compound. This is where our customers can gain advantages from the unique features that Esper provides. This means helping our customers manage their devices by exception rather than actively managing devices individually. We are bringing more intelligence to the platform that will provide further insights into managing their fleets efficiently.

The first is to continue to help our customers manage their devices by exception and allow for a higher level of automation. We are bringing more intelligence to the platform that will help our customers manage and maintain their device fleets holistically.