There’s a (not so unknown) secret in the world of IoT and it’s this:
We are still a long way off from the 50 billion devices that Gartner initially predicted would be connected by 2020:
The lack of standards and interoperability turns even the simplest IoT project with modest goals into complex custom embedded firmware and protocol-aware application software development projects.
Only the largest and richest companies are benefitting from IoT today as they are the only ones who can afford the budget and resources required to invest and execute custom software development. Even then, it can cost millions of dollars to develop custom firmware, software applications and platforms that are not easily scalable beyond their own walls.
Small and mid-sized companies - who could most benefit from the efficiencies, ROI and competitive advantages that an IoT strategy can deliver – are also the ones who don’t have the financial and resource capacity to gamble the months, dollars and manpower on an IoT project
Operational data is still trapped in proprietary application or platform silos that require custom software development or human intervention for information to be transported into the enterprise workflow.
More than a decade after Cisco declared that the IoT was “born,” the result of these circumstances is that only one out of every 10 IoT projects are field deployed and even fewer are considered successful.
While the range of sensors, powerful low-power processors, inexpensive wired and wireless communications technology options are greater than ever before, integration of heterogenous machine data with line-of-business applications is one of the key elements of IoT deployment that remains complex, time-consuming and expensive.
For the advantages of IoT to be accessible to every one (organization, new or old machine or sensor, developer, and business application), we believe that integration solutions must be:
Simple and ready-to-deploy. Read-to-deploy means that you can integrate existing sensors, machines and applications without the need to first develop custom firmware and software applications. Ready-to-deploy means minutes not months.
Focused on configuration instead of coding. In the field, sensors, machines and applications talk different protocols and exchange data in different formats. Configuration instead of coding enables the right data to go to the right applications at the right time while eliminating the need for custom firmware or application software development.
Hardware-agnostic. Developing custom firmware directly on sensors, machines or IoT gateways to integrate with business applications seems like an obvious and easy choice to many IoT developers. However, this creates vendor lock-in and limits reuse of investment. A network-integrated IoT data management solution enables IoT data management across all the sensor and machines in the network.
At Machinechat, our commitment is to building solutions that reflect the values we think every IoT solution should be – ready and easy-to-use, affordable, robust and hardware-agnostic. That’s because we believe that for the next billion sensors to be deployed, our job isn’t just to create solutions that work well, but solutions that allow IoT to be accessible to every one – and not just some.
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