Witekio: A World-class Software Expert

IoT trend has made software the cornerstone of countless innovative projects. It first started to affect the B2C areas and is now spreading into the B2B markets and complex industrial contexts. Adding intelligence into devices is a great opportunity to create added-value. Software now impacts many non-specialist companies who master their innovation process but not software projects. One company that stands out when talking about the software industry is Witekio. Its added-value is to bring a global software system vision, it boasts the ability to manage global software projects for its customers and has the knowledge of cutting-edge technologies.

Passionately Dedicated to Embedded Software

Witekio has been dedicated to embedded software for 17 years. The company was formerly known as Adeneo Embedded, a low level software expert with a worldwide recognition for Board Support Packages development. It was the time when software was only considered to be an expert’s business. With the emergence of the IoT trend, the company’s management team anticipated that software would get out of the ghetto and become key to many innovations and affect all markets.

And when traditional industrial companies need to innovate including intelligence and IoT scenarios, they need a co-pilot to take care of the software part of their project with a global software system vision and know-how. Adeneo Embedded accompanied that change by progressively evolving from a software expert to a software system expert, designing and engineering complete software systems for companies all around the world. The company changed its name to Witekio in 2016 to complete that change.

Helping Customers in All Stages of Development

Witekio brings along a world-class recognized technical expertise on both low (OS, driver, firmware) and high level software (application, connectivity, cloud) associated with a usage knowledge on specific markets that allows the best choices in technologies and architecture for the best performance and security. Witekio provides custom services for software development, integration, design, support, and training.

Witekio applies its rich experience to a wide range of embedded solutions for the automotive, handheld, industrial, medical, mobile, and wireless markets while working closely with the industry-leading silicon and software vendors along with its passionate teams based in Europe, United States, and Asia. The company helps its customers in all stages of development to enable the success of their projects and maximize their efficiency. Witekio provides expertise, methods, and engineering teams that enable flexible, scalable and mature system software integration.

Leading the Global Software Integration of Connected Systems

Witekio accompanies industrial clients of all sectors around the globe, like L’Oréal, Precor, Cerevast, Datalogic, Evoca, in the design and development of their innovative embedded IoT systems. Witekio’s skillset spreads from the hardware to the cloud, from UX design and system architecture to the development and integration of the full software stack. The company’s experts bring their knowledge into innovation projects to anticipate all crucial aspects like rea- time, power consumption, security, system update, connectivity, etc.

The profound knowledge of smart embedded systems, their software architectures and ambitious project contexts enables Witekio to play a leading role in the global software integration of connected systems. The company’s rare mastery of lower layers and hardware compatibility, which is essential for high-performance systems, coupled with its expertise in applications and interconnectivity are a great asset to meet the challenges of today’s connected ecosystem.

As co-pilots of the customers’ projects, Witekio promotes team work to foster collaboration and idea generations. The company has developed its tools and methods to make sure that the team optimizes time to market. “Our project managers, functional and technical, adapt our methodologies to our customers. We have developed our own methodologies to make sure we end up with the right product for the right customer. We are risk mitigators for innovators (market risks, project risks, technological risks, technical risks, etc),” Yannick Chammings, the Co-CEO of Witekio mentions.

Building Complex and Secure Global Software Systems

Witekio counts among the few companies in the world that makes tech consulting as well as full-stack software development while having deep roots into the low level software. Yannick explains “What I want to say is that many companies doing software come from web or mobile app with low level of expertise. That is quite unique and that’s why Witekio has more legitimacy and added value on complex embedded and IoT systems.” Its added value is to build global software systems that are complex, secure, and updatable for serious IoT/embedded devices. Simply put, Witekio brings a software mindset with industrial track record.

For Witekio, 2016 was an important milestone. “When we changed our name and started to promote our new positioning, as pioneers we had all our historical partners and customers to convince. It took some time to prove that it was a good move to get away from the technical expert position to the full system software co-piloting of innovative projects,” Yannick recalled.

The deep change in Witekio’s positioning also implied significant internal challenges in terms of the organization, processes, and staffing. “The first commitment was to grow fast and integrate new skills: functional project managers, scrum masters that were requiring new processes and methods. We decided also to change our offices to foster collaboration and team spirit. We made a huge effort to re-invent our processes and methodologies for team management and find ways to adapt agile project methods to embedded software development. In short, we had to switch from an industrial SME in the software field into a software SME in the industrial field,” added Yannick.

Focusing on the Software Side

Yannick believes that the competition is densifying as more and more tech companies (hardware, technology providers, etc.) are selling professional services to differentiate and create intimacy with their customers. There will be an increasing need for actors who have a holistic vision of innovation and can help industrial companies develop and launch innovations.

“Today we bring a global software system vision to co-pilot innovative projects. We focus on the software side. Tomorrow we want to bring a global product innovation support, increasingly integrating with business innovation, UX consulting and ahead of the curve technological insight,” Yannick exclaims.

The Visionary Duo

Yannick Chammings and Sébastien Chaillot are the Co-CEOs of Witekio. The duo brings a unique mentality to the company. While Yannick brings experience, software knowledge, and long term relationships within the ecosystem and a strong ability to manage the present, Sébastien, on the other hand, brings long-term strategic thinking, business innovation methods, and start-up approach.

Yannick has been leading the company since 2009, when he created it to provide Software and Technology expertise to OEMs by developing complex embedded devices. Yannick brings more than 20 years of industry experience, a deep expertise in embedded software and smart object technologies, combined with strategic thinking, which has resulted in leading the successful track of record of Witekio. In 2002, Yannick started building Adetel’s embedded software branch, which became Adeneo Embedded, the foundation for Witekio. In 2007, he set up the US operations and developed the overall activity before spinning it off and transforming it into Witekio.

As Witekio’s Co-CEO, Yannick, along with Sebastien Chaillot, have re-designed the company’s positioning and overall strategy. Yannick is now managing Witekio’s market expertise and positioning, strategic partnerships, and operational management, while Sebastien is dealing with structuration, strategy and animation of the management team.

Sébastien has a consistent expertise in growing startups and SMEs, creating business strategies and managing innovative projects. He implemented his skills as an entrepreneur in different sectors (Saas, industry, web) and as an expert consultant on innovation and growth strategies on numerous projects involving technologies and market or business model innovations.

Sébastien is also the board member of several start-ups and SMEs, angel investor and member of the Strategic Committee of the digital B2B startups accelerator, Axeleo. Additionally, he is a keynote speaker for several high schools and organizations on topics such as entrepreneurship, growth generation, management of upscaling or innovation’s marketing. Sébastien holds an Engineering degree from the National applied sciences institute of Lyon (INSA) and a Master’s degree in entrepreneurship from the HEC Paris.