From Classrooms to Critical Operations: The Truth About Favoriot’s Enterprise Role

They Thought Favoriot Was Just for Students.

I Let That Misunderstanding Linger for Too Long.

I need to admit something first.

This one is on me.

For years, people have come up to me and asked a question that always makes me pause.

“Dr Mazlan, is Favoriot only an education platform?”

Every time I hear that, I smile politely. I explain. I clarify. I move on.

But deep inside, I talk to myself.

How did we let this idea stick for so long?
Why didn’t we tell the story better?

Let me do this properly here. Slowly. Honestly. From the heart.

Because Favoriot was never born as an academic toy. It was never designed to live only inside labs, classrooms, or final-year projects. Favoriot was built as an enterprise IoT platform for real deployments, real operations, real risks, and real consequences.

Education came later. And it came for a reason.

Favoriot Was Built for the Real World First

When we started Favoriot, the vision was very clear.

Factories. Warehouses. Farms. Buildings. Cities.
Sensors are sending data every second.
Dashboards that people depend on, not admire.
Alerts that wake someone up at 3 a.m. because something is wrong.

That was the intention.

An enterprise IoT platform is not glamorous. It is not flashy. It does not impress with demos alone. It needs to survive power outages, unstable networks, noisy data, and human mistakes.

That is the world Favoriot was designed for.

Air quality monitoring, indoor and outdoor.
Gas detection in agriculture and manufacturing.
Cold chain and warehouse monitoring.
Energy usage. Environmental sensing. Operational visibility.

These are not student exercises. These are systems people rely on to protect assets, livelihoods, and, at times, lives.

And yes, many of these implementations cannot be publicly shared. Clients trust us with their data and their operations. Confidentiality is part of doing real work.

Ironically, that silence made people assume nothing was happening.

Maybe that’s where the misunderstanding started.

The Real Problem Was Never the Platform

Here is the uncomfortable truth.

The biggest challenge in IoT is not platforms.
It is not sensors.
It is not cloud infrastructure.

It is people.

Or more specifically, the lack of people who truly know how to build an IoT solution end-to-end.

Back in 2017, we offered a free plan. We thought adoption would be instant.

It wasn’t.

People signed up.
Then they stopped.
Nothing moved.

And I remember thinking, “Why is no one using it?“

The answer hurt a little.

They didn’t know how.

They knew dashboards from presentations.
They knew buzzwords from conferences.
They knew how to connect one sensor, sometimes.

But building a full solution?
Designing data flows?
Handling failures?
Understanding why data behaves badly in the real world?

That knowledge gap was huge.

From 2017 to 2022, I saw it everywhere. Universities. Startups. Even some companies. Everyone wanted IoT. Very few knew how to build it properly.

Why We Walked into Education

So we made a decision.

Not a pivot. Not a retreat. A foundation.

If people cannot build IoT solutions, no platform will ever matter.

I remember asking myself:
Do we complain about the talent gap, or do we help close it?

That is when we started working closely with educators. Training lecturers. Creating step-by-step tutorials. Supporting students not to pass subjects, but to understand systems.

That is why Favoriot content online often looks educational.

Not because we are an education-only platform.
But because education was the missing piece in the ecosystem.

We were not selling theory. We were teaching how to connect sensors, send data, manage devices, handle failures, and make sense of messy reality.

Education was not the destination. It was the on-ramp.

Two Worlds. One Platform.

Here is what many people missed.

While all this educational work was happening in public, Favoriot was quietly working with industry in parallel.

Two tracks. Same platform.

On one side, students and lecturers are learning how to build.
On the other, enterprises deploying systems that run daily operations.

The platform did not change.
The expectations did.

Students learn to make things work.
Enterprises demand that things not break.

That dual role was never a conflict. It was a strength.

Education feeds industry.
Industry validates education.

Yet we did not tell that story clearly enough. And for that, I take responsibility.

The Irony of Global Adoption

Here is another irony that few people realise.

Favoriot users come from all over the world. When someone subscribes, they build whatever they want.

We do not always know what devices they connect.
We do not always know what systems they deploy.
We only see data flowing.

Some of the most interesting use cases are completely invisible to us.

And that is exactly how a real platform works.

No hand-holding. No spotlight. Just infrastructure doing its job.

But again, silence creates assumptions.

If people don’t see it, they think it doesn’t exist.

This Is Not Just About Favoriot

This reflection is not only about correcting a misunderstanding.

It is about how we, as a country and as a community, think about capability.

We love importing solutions.
We love buying finished systems.
We rarely invest in learning how they are built.

Then we wonder why we depend on outsiders for everything.

IoT is not magic. It is engineering. It is discipline. It is patience. It is experience.

Platforms like Favoriot matter only when people know how to use them properly.

That is why education and enterprise must never be separated.

What I Wish People Would See

I wish people would stop asking whether Favoriot is for education or industry.

It has always been both.

Education builds builders.
Industry needs builders.

One without the other collapses.

Sometimes I ask myself:
If we had focused only on selling enterprise solutions, would the ecosystem be stronger today?

Honestly? No.

Without talent, platforms die quietly.

A Personal Reflection

I have spent my life in technology. Telecom. IoT. Smart systems. Startups.

The pattern is always the same.

People rush to buy tools.
Very few invest in learning how to use them well.

Favoriot’s story is a reminder to me, too.

Technology without understanding is decoration.
Understanding without real deployment is a fantasy.

We need both.

My Message to Educators

Do not treat IoT platforms as demo tools.

Treat them as environments where students learn responsibility.

Teach failure.
Teach troubleshooting.
Teach why things break.

That is how builders are formed.

My Message to Industry

Do not dismiss platforms you see in universities.

Those environments are where your future engineers are learning.

Support them. Challenge them. Hire them.

You will thank yourself later.

My Message to Policymakers and Leaders

If you want digital capability, stop funding only deployments.

Fund learning.
Fund training.
Fund local platforms and ecosystems.

Ownership starts with understanding.

And Finally, My Message to You

If you are reading this and you once thought Favoriot was “just for education”, I hope this piece helped.

If you already knew the bigger picture, help me tell the story better.

Because platforms do not build ecosystems.
People do.

And ecosystems take time, patience, and honesty.

I’m still learning that myself.

What about you?

Have you seen similar misunderstandings in your work or industry?
Drop your thoughts in the comments. I read them all.