SICCAR demo booth at GITEX
By Chris Dixon, Head of Customer Success
Recently the SICCAR team visited Dubai to attend GITEX, one of the largest tech conferences in the world, which focuses on how to achieve rapid technology-driven transformation and investment across the EMEA region.
This was our first conference outwardly showcasing the brand-new product we’ve developed in conjunction with Vysus Group: ‘The Energy Transition Databox’.
As SICCAR’s Head of Customer Success, it’s vital to keep my eyes open to the data security world and to ensure our product approach is resonating with customers. Here I will highlight a few of my key learnings from the event.
This blog also marks the beginning of considerably more content from SICCAR over the coming weeks and months; we will be writing as we take to the road, make exciting announcements and provide informed comment in the space of data security, integrity and collaborative trust.
Visualising SICCAR in an unexpected way
One area where data storage and security platforms have struggled is in explaining to people what it is that the product actually does. We also experience this as, at our core, we are a headless platform that doesn’t have a UI in the way a phone app or a website might. Similarly, lots of the projects that we do tie into sensor APIs which, if we showed potential customers, just looks like a lot of code on a terminal – again not particularly helpful.
The challenge is that people prefer something visual that they can tangibly latch onto to understand what is actually being offered. We can, and do, output to lots of graphical visualisation tools but, more often than not, these tools get people excited about the end dashboard as opposed to the data that’s secured below it.
SICCAR Admin UI highlighting transactions and details of a Register
That’s why for our Dubai demo where we were running a real-time application that could share data between multiple participants, we took a new approach by opening up our SICCAR Admin tool to the public for the first time. We had never originally intended this to become a visualisation tool for demonstrating the power of the SICCAR platform as it is designed for a System Administrator to effectively govern the participant network and ensure the platform is functioning as intended. However, by showing the tool, we were able to very effectively get across key messages about our encrypted payloads (particularly that even a system administrator wouldn’t be able to see the unencrypted data) and our blueprint design process. The latter is a function within the admin UI that lets you visualise a blueprint and is our way of governing how data should flow between participants and what should be disclosed to whom.
“You’re not planning on going to the moon but you’re the only company I’ve seen here who are planning to put bread onto the table”
At GITEX we had our booth within the Future Blockchain Summit and found ourselves surrounded by lots of companies in the Cryptocurrency and Metaverse space. Aside from some of the big players in crypto exchange, it was really difficult for people on those booths to find a way to articulate the problems they were trying to solve. Instead, the conference was full of the type of meme-able content you’d see shared on reddit around ‘Elon Musk’ or ‘Lamborghinis’.
What was validating was that unlike, say, police in the Metaverse or a cryptocurrency for Mars, SICCAR is already solving real-world problems, which is why our message, use case and demo really did resonate with investors and customers at the conference.
While blockchain powers our register service, we do not want to be seen in the same light as some of the companies at the Future Blockchain Summit who put this technology front and center in their customer communications. Blockchain is an enabler – customers aren’t buying something because it’s a ‘blockchain based service’ but because it solves important problems – problems such as ensuring accurate and secure sharing of data between enterprises.
The title of this section is a quote from an investor and it really resonated with us. We’re not aiming to fluff about solving non-problems of tomorrow, we’re laser-focussed on the challenges of today – real-world problems that need urgent solutions and that can make the world a better place.
Tunnel Vision into Oil & Gas
Working shoulder-to-shoulder with Vysus Group, we have prepared a really powerful demo to show how the Oil & Gas industry can accelerate decarbonisation by collating and analysing accurate, trusted and secure data from across the supply chain. We start by looking at the oil well drilling process as a blueprint reflecting not only a very large amount of Scope 3 emissions – a particular challenge to the industry – but also the most energy emitting function carried out by an operator. For the last few weeks myself and the team I work with have been focusing purely on this use case within this industry.
That said, the Energy Transition Databox is designed to be applicable to any GHG emitting process within the industry. What’s more, as decarbonisation is required across all industries, my learning here has been to think more broadly to ensure companies in other industries can also benefit from the power of the SICCAR platform. Some of the potential customers we spoke to who were interested in the Databox, for example, were looking for solutions to help them decarbonise within the shipping and logistics and the travel sectors.
And outside of the Databox use case we had some fascinating chats around the sharing of legal documents between defendants, government officials, lawyers and third parties that would also need to follow a standardised process and require the highest level of security and encryption of information.
Partly what got me into this industry is thinking about how we can utilise this technology to solve a wide variety of problems around trust and security – ensuring we keep an eye on other industries and use cases is particularly relevant given the fact that the SICCAR platform is industry-agnostic.
The Secret Ingredient is ‘Blueprint’
We often see our differentiation as a combination of lots of best practice security principles wrapped up into a single proposition. Interestingly, when explaining each of these to people within the conference the one that resonated the most with users was our blueprint service. SICCAR is a little different to a traditional database where if I had access, I could – in theory – read or write data at any time. We use a blueprint to map a data sharing workflow to ensure data can only be sent to participant(s) at specific points in a process, with full or partial disclosure based on pre-defined preferences.
In many of the workshops we’ve performed over the years, customers often haven’t thought about what the process looks like. However, once we’ve completed the first discovery workshop, they immediately start thinking about simplification of some of the steps to provide immediate efficiencies in their business. Similarly, because we know the time taken between actions in a blueprint, we can provide this data back to a customer to aid them on data-driven efficiency savings; perhaps one step takes far longer than it should and, therefore, switching to a different method of transport to deliver a product, for example, could deliver it more quickly.
What’s the elevator pitch?
Our journey marketing, demoing and positioning the Energy Transition Databox in partnership with Vysus Group is just beginning and we are very aware of the need for simplification of messaging in communicating benefits. Data sharing and the security around it can be quite complicated to explain but ensuring our message was concise and clear was key to us having a successful GITEX conference. Challenging visitors with the slogan “How secure is your shared data?” was great in forcing people to think about their current processes, how they are full of potential attack vectors and that their organisation’s reputation or ability to trade is on the line if the data sharing process cannot be trusted.
At GITEX, our Head of Growth, Jonathan Jones, with only two minutes to explain why SICCAR is essential for businesses across the EMEA, took us to the semi-finals of the North Star Pitch competition where we were the only non-crypto, non-Metaverse blockchain-based product.
Our Head of Growth pitching SICCAR at the North Star Zone
And to support the release of the Energy Transition Databox and our presence at the event, our marketing partners have been pulling together material that explains what we do – to find out more visit SecureSharedData.com.
It’s been a while since we’ve created some new material but, working with a partner who can bring a fresh take on how to simplify our message further – including taking a visual approach – is proving fruitful to us when engaging potential customers.
For now we’re back on the road, travelling to Abu Dhabi for ADIPEC 2022, a major event in the international energy sector calendar to demonstrate the Energy Transition Databox to leading players in the oil and gas industry.
If you’re interested in hearing more about the Energy Transition Databox or to see a demo reach out to myself Chris Dixon (chrisd@staging.siccar.net) or Jonathan Jones (jj@staging.siccar.net) or visit Energy Transition Databox.