PsiberTech Solutions: August 2017

Tuesday, 15 August 2017

IoT for SME (3/5) – Reinventing Wheels

Welcome to another blog post on this series. Internet of Thing is exploding fast and the applications are still catching up to the technology that is available to use. Ever wondered why is it hard to come up with innovative applications when the market out there is brimming with numerous IoT devices, sensors and platforms? The answer is as simple yet as intriguing as it sounds, reinventing the wheel. Many startups and not so startups are still reinventing the wheel when it comes to IoT. Let me explain this further in this article.

Let’s segregate Internet of Things into layers for clearer understanding. We start with first layer, the Things themselves. These are the devices, sensors and other hardware related things which forms the basis of IoT. They may or may not have screens, have low-power processor or some sort of OS to communicate wirelessly using some sort of communication.

The second layer is an ingestion layer. This is usually a software infrastructure which either runs in cloud or corporate server which organizes the data from the “Things” or devices. This software is also the one responsible for managing these devices.

Then comes the analytical layer, which is responsible for processing the data and analyzing it. On top of this sits the end user application. This takes care of user interaction and experience. This could be an enterprise applications, a custom software which is a web application or mobile apps.

Some of the companies who are working to develop IoT applications often starts with Layer1 or 2. This is a costly and sometimes counterproductive approach as these layers are already been explored by several giants as well as startups to create unique products and services.

For an SME, it’s good to start with Layer 3 or 4 which is the analytics and user interface layer. These two layers exploits the services already available from wide range of vendors and can benefit the SME at lower cost.

Many companies offer these sorts of platforms like, Xively, Mnubo, Bug Labs and ThingWorx . They have the capability to communicate with a range of "things" produced by a lot of manufacturers. Established companies such as Microsoft, with its Intelligent Systems Service, and enterprise software vendors likes SAP, with its Internet of Things Solutions, are also adding Internet of Things capabilities to their offerings.

So it makes much sense to build the IoT custom applications on top of these existing array of platforms which can provide easy to configure and use API for communication with the devices. To know how you can exploit these Internet of Things specific to your product or service offering, please contact us here. If you like to read more on this subject, please click here. Thanks for stopping by and have a fantastic day.

Srivatsan Aravamudan

General Enquiries	:	info@psibertech.com.sg
Sales Enquiries	:	sales@psibertech.com.sg
Telephone	:	+65 62689551
Fax	:	+65 62689858

Business Analyst - Snr Software Consultant.

PsiberTech Solutions Private Ltd

Twitter

Monday, 7 August 2017

IoT for SME (2/5) – Custom Applications

There are revolutions that are loud and clear, like the Industrial Revolution. And then there are revolutions that are quiet yet disruptive like the invention of Internet. During the initial days, no one knew what it could be used for or even how to make use of it. One such recent revolution is IoT. Although people are aware that Machine intelligence and its ability to communicate in a “Smart” way has increased, often end users are unaware of the involvement of IoT. And that’s the beauty of the system as the business leaders can take advantage of this quiet time before it becomes one of the buying decision.

The research from Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) shows that nearly 100% of the business leaders expect their business to be using IoT in one form or another by the end of 2016. With that interesting perception, I welcome you to the second post on the IoT for SME series. If you are tuning into this post for the first time, I suggest you look at the first post here, where we have discussed about the monetary implications of using IoT for SME and how they can tackle this situation. Alright let’s dive into today’s topic, custom applications using IoT for SME.

Reaching out to Customers:

SMEs can use IoT in understanding the behaviours of the customer, in terms of buying activities, touch points during and after sales cycle. For example, sensors can report exactly where, when and how a product is sold, providing valuable inputs in the marketing and sales process both online or offline. The process of collecting this real-time data can be less costly, fast and more accurate with use of IoT.

Another instance could be monitoring and usage of connected components or parts. Using this data SMEs can ensure they have the necessary products are available for replacement.

For example, if the printer could communicate about the low toner to the manufacturers they could send out the toner on time by cutting down the time delay and increasing the sales revenue.

Enhancing workflows

On the other hand, SME can also benefit from IoT in terms of product engineering and workflow enhancement. Monitoring machine conditions, settings and usage can result in fine tuning the existing workflow and ensuring the production is done efficiently. It will significantly improve the quality of products.

Summary

While it is not so straight forward when it comes to implementing IoT for SME, it is worthwhile to consider this option to see how best we can utilize the technology and reap the benefits sensors, machine learning and internet. At this point it is difficult to use off the shelf products or packaged software for enabling IoT to use SME, unless the whole solution suit the requirement of the SME business. Therefore, it is safe to say, custom applications would be able to fill this gap in creating applications that suit the SME needs while also harvesting the benefits of IoT.