You’ve spent a lot of time and money building out your consumer or commercial device hardware, and now it’s time to launch those devices! There’s an entire ecosystem of software components that you need in order to provide a seamless end-user experience and effectively manage your growing fleet of connected devices. We’re here to help you understand why building out your IoT cloud platform is just as if not more critically important than building your hardware platform. Looking at the big picture of software development is going to be a huge win for you in the long run.
Critically Important Factors to Consider with an IoT Software Platform
What once was a “nice to have” feature, IoT technology is now a must-have in your device lineup. Features such as controlling the device from a phone, or remotely via a web platform, and accessing data about usage, productivity, and insights are expected by consumers. Consumer devices need to be smart to be competitive, and an IoT platform will get you there.
When you first start to work on your IoT platform, there are a few factors of critical importance that must be considered to help guarantee your success:
1. Stability of the hardware and IoT software components
It’s easy to build hardware in a vacuum. Unfortunately, when the focus is purely on the hardware, the emphasis on over-the-air firmware updates or configuration management can become secondary or even an afterthought. Make sure that all components from hardware, firmware to software are perfectly stable and effectively vertically integrated. Think of factors like the resiliency of the back-end platform, apps, ability to work in multiple environments, big data collection and management, etc. Ensure stability is the primary focus, because without stability, you have nothing—all it takes is one bad OTA update to brick thousands of your devices and put an end to your business.
2. Scalability
Can you handle exponential growth? What happens when you go from a thousand devices to 100 thousand to 1 million? To sell thousands of hardware units isn’t easy—your hardware and firmware have to be bulletproof to pull this off. But your IoT software platform needs to be bulletproof and readily scalable as well, AND it needs to keep OpEx in check else your profitability can plummet.
Are You Ready?
IoT presents some unique challenges when it comes to software platform design and technology selection. The choices you make will be with you for a long time. Start your process with a Technology Decision Scorecard to help evaluate the options and make better decisions.
Don’t get fixated and think there’s a bright line between hardware and software—remember to truly win at this, you need a vertically integrated technology solution: hardware + firmware + software. Over-the-wall engineering does not work. Remember the lessons learned by the automotive industry over 20 years ago: the only way to 1) Quickly, 2) Successfully and 3) Profitably bring a new product to market is to embrace concurrent engineering—with hardware, firmware, and software teams operating like one and in constant communication with each other. This “One Team” approach is what’s needed, and you need mature and effective technical leadership on both hardware and software sides to get it over the line, reach your full potential, and to be blunt, avoid disaster.
Top 4 Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Building out an IoT Platform
1. Becoming Overly App-Focused
It’s easy to focus on apps. They’re fun, they’re visible, and they’re what most people talk about. However, the app is not the whole enchilada. Far from it! When you consider the whole of an IoT platform you need to consider everything.
Choose to be platform-centric instead of app- or product-centric, which means you need to think about:
- Integrating both current and future devices
- How to achieve effective communication and cohesiveness between hardware, firmware, and software teams
- The ability to cost-effectively and efficiently store and analyze data at scale
- Centrally managing your fleet of devices
- How to implement bulletproof OTA firmware updates and rollbacks en-masse
- Supporting multi-tenancy
- Building out frictionless mobile and web experiences for installers and end users
- Designing and monetizing APIs to light up net-new revenue streams
- Streamlining device provisioning and activation
- Maximizing reusability
- Ensuring security and data integrity
- Avoiding IP leakage
- Closely managing OpEx as you scale up and out
2. Underestimating Effort
A streamlined and frictionless installation experience is essential! Margins on devices are not huge and you can’t afford to spend hundreds of dollars sending a tech out on a $50 device. Imagine you spent millions of dollars building out your device, you ship out 10,000 units, installation is perfect, and then the majority of the devices fail to communicate with your back end. Can you afford to field 10,000 support calls or visit that many locations? Make sure your software solutions are bulletproof so you don’t lose your profits to service and installation issues.
3. Engineering
It is absolutely critical that your firmware engineers collaborate closely with software engineers to ensure your firmware is stable. You need to be able to roll out and roll back firmware updates over the air with zero user interaction.
Collaborating with an experienced IoT software partner can help to eliminate this risk for you.
4. Choosing the Wrong Partner
It’s not easy to build an effective IoT solution.
Just as you would want the best partner helping to create your hardware, take the time to pick a strong, strategic software partner! Building out an IoT platform is more than just throwing some coders and a PM at a project. A mature and experienced company like Modularis can help you build an innovative IoT platform that is scalable for your business. Take a look at this case study on the project we did for SmartWitness; their platform was up and running efficiently and they achieved ROI in 6 months!
In-House vs. Outsourced vs. Pre-Built?
Once you decide to build out your IoT platform, you will have the option to build a team to handle it in-house, outsource the project, or purchase a pre-built platform. We offer a few points to consider when making your decision:
- Experience. You need to make sure that your choice is centered on experience in IoT space. Consider the combination of skills necessary to be successful:
- Back-end engineering
- Effective mobile app development
- Expertise in the process and challenges related to connected device development
- Device protocol definition and integration
- Scalability. Does your in-house team have the knowledge and expertise necessary to be successful? Look at the big picture and don’t just focus on app development. Consider scalability. What is your time to market? Can a software partner get you to market more quickly?
- IP. One of the most important questions you need to ask yourself is: do you own the intellectual property and underlying data? This data is going to light up additional revenue streams down the line; it could eventually be more valuable than your device fleet itself. You want to own the platform, and more importantly, ensure ownership of the IP is clear.
Why a Software Partner Can Help
A software partner who understands IoT development can handle the complexity of IoT. Time to market is a huge factor in profitability, and it probably feels like you need everything done yesterday. There will be inevitable delays in hardware—don’t further delay your time to market with the wrong IoT platform decisions. Modularis can light up all the pieces in 90 days and have you on the market as planned. Having the right partner will get you the results you want.
If you’re ready to make your consumer or commercial devices smarter, follow us on LinkedIn to learn how we build IoT solutions—right, fast and built to last!