From IoT to Software-Defined Connectivity: The Next Cloud Revolution

In the early days of computing, building and deploying applications meant racking and stacking servers, managing physical disks, and dealing with cumbersome hardware provisioning cycles. It wasn’t scalable. It wasn’t agile. And it certainly wasn’t built for innovation.

Then came the hyperscalers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure introduced us to a new world, one where infrastructure was software-defined, abstracted from hardware, and controllable by APIs. You no longer had to buy a server or a hard disk. You could spin up compute and storage in seconds. This shift removed friction across the board: in time, expertise, and cost. It changed the world.

The same revolution is coming to connectivity.

Connectivity, the Old Way

If you’re in the IoT space, this might sound familiar:

• You buy SIM cards from an operator.
• You send an email to request more SIMs or to assign IPs.
• You manually update security settings, often after the fact.
• You rely on static, operator-controlled routing and provisioning.
• You’re tied to long contracts, inflexible pricing, and guesswork on scale.

This model is equivalent to buying hard disks in the early 2000s or installing an IP PBX in your office. Think about how telephony evolved, from expensive on-premise switches and manual provisioning, to software-defined services like Twilio or Zoom, where developers can build full IVRs and call centers with a few lines of code.

Connectivity is following the same path. Welcome to Software-Defined Connectivity (SDC).

What Is Software-Defined Connectivity?

Just as hyperscalers have done for compute, Software-Defined Connectivity transforms rigid infrastructure into programmable, dynamic, and intelligent services. It decouples connectivity from hardware and empowers software applications to orchestrate their own network behavior.

With SDC, you can:

• Apply real-time security policies before a device firmware update.
• Dynamically change cyber posture or network slicing based on device role.
• Enforce data residency rules without touching a SIM.
• Shift a device from public to private LTE as needed.
• Provision SLA tiers, such as bandwidth or latency profiles, via API.
• Fully integrate network behavior into your CI/CD pipeline or application logic.

Think of it this way: just as developers can deploy infrastructure with Terraform or Kubernetes, they can now deploy and manage connectivity similarly. It’s programmable, scalable, and developer-friendly.

Built for Every Stage of Your IoT Journey

Software-defined isn’t just about flexibility; it’s about relevance at every stage of your product lifecycle.

Day Zero: Get Started Without Expertise or Cost

When you’re launching a new IoT product, the last thing you want is to spend months navigating telecom regulations, building infrastructure, or buying upfront SIM bundles that may never be used. Software-Defined Connectivity (SDC) eliminates that friction. From Day One, your team gains access to enterprise-grade capabilities without the need to become telecom or security experts. There’s no upfront commitment, just pay as you go. SDC allows your software to manage connectivity the same way it handles cloud services: dynamically, programmatically, and instantly scalable.

Scaling Up: Global Reach, One Provider

As your IoT solution gains traction and enters new markets, your connectivity needs evolve fast. SDC simplifies global expansion with multiple Points of Presence (POPs) worldwide and seamless provisioning across regions and carriers. Instead of managing fragmented relationships or rearchitecting infrastructure for each new country, you operate through one software layer and one provider. This unified approach enables you to scale efficiently without renegotiating contracts or introducing operational complexity.

Enterprise-Ready: Secure and Compliant at Any Moment

Security and compliance often become priorities after initial product-market fit. With SDC, there’s no need to overhaul your infrastructure or rip and replace existing systems. New policies, like enforcing encryption, updating cyber defense postures, or managing IP and data residency settings, can be applied instantly via API. Compliance becomes a dynamic asset, not a bottleneck. You move forward faster, knowing that enterprise-grade security and regulatory alignment are built in and available on demand.

Whether you’re starting, scaling, or securing, SDC adapts to where you are and where you’re going.

Removing Friction: Time, Expertise, and Money

Across every industry, the software-defined transformation shares one major benefit: it removes friction.

Time

Provisioning or changing a device configuration used to take hours, even days. With SDC, these operations are instantaneous. No waiting. No back-and-forth. Just results.

Expertise

You no longer need to be a telecom engineer. Just as AWS enables startups to launch infrastructure without requiring hardware experience, SDC empowers your developers to handle global connectivity securely and effectively, all with simple APIs.

Cost

Gone are the days of over-purchasing SIMs or over-provisioning bandwidth “just in case.” SDC enables you to scale only when you succeed, aligning costs with value. No wasted resources. No friction.

IoT Is Evolving — Are You?

In its early days, IoT was all about hardware. But the world has changed. It’s no longer enough to build a great device. The way your device connects, secures, and scales needs to be just as dynamic as your software stack.

Software-Defined Connectivity marks the next phase in the cloudification of telecom. It's the bridge between device and cloud, fully programmable, and built for the agility of modern applications.

Just as Dropbox didn’t need to build hard drives, and Twilio didn’t need to install phone switches, your IoT business doesn’t need to wrestle with legacy networks.

With SDC, you’re not just plugging into a network. You’re programming it.

Written by Maor Efrati.