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

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