It’s tempting to build your own connected device, either wifi and/or cellular, given that connecting a device to the Internet, and keeping it secure, seems routine and straightforward.
At first it seems obvious that letting your in house team of engineers take on the challenge of connecting devices is the right choice. After all, they’re a fixed cost and subject matter experts on what your company does, what the connected devices need to do and the myriad protocols, standards and regulations unique to your industry.
However, if you think about the 80/20 Rule, it seems to me that the best use of a manufacturer’s time is to spend the 80% focused on how you drive value from the data gained from connecting your devices and the interaction with your customers, not the ‘plumbing’ of how you connect, secure and support that device in the field for its life time.
Here’s what a secure IoT product requires over its lifespan from manufacture to end of life:
- Security for data, apps and hardware that is designed in at the beginning and maintained for the life of the product
- Unified hardware and software development process from idea to proof of concept, connected manufacturing, OS and application updates, as well as security maintenance through end-of-life
- Scalability from one to hundreds of thousands of connected devices in an instant
- Tightly controlled and monitored software provisioning of OS and apps
- Standards compliance, including existing and future standards for security, communications, messaging, networking and storage
- Ongoing integration and support for different connectivity options
- Application layer between the device and cloud that enables the device to be personalized for custom services, actions and data management
- Out-of-the box integration with leading cloud vendors
So the question is, what is the value gained by creating the connectivity and security layers yourself?
Instead of dedicating time and resources to building and supporting complex IoT technology, we believe the best strategy is to use the power of the Electric Imp IoT Connectivity Platform to manage the plumbing that includes all the above requirements. This will free you to focus on creating value from your connected products to grow your business.
Want to learn more? Join our webinar–IoT: Combining the Best of Build and Buy, August 7th, 9am PT