March is the end of the Quarter – What is the Status of Your IoT Initiatives?

One of the interesting aspects of a business year is the nature of the months and quarters. January is focused on closing business left unfinished last year but also staring new initiatives (IoT?) and set the pace for the year. Plenty of meetings activities – busy and optimistic time. February things are set in motion – customer meetings, first sales hopefully closed, projects under way. March – ouch – first quarter already closing – how are we doing against plan? – what does the funnel look like? – what about the rest of your initiatives? What do we still need to set in motion to have an impact on your results this year? Have we run out of time? Contrary to common belief, IoT projects do not have to take years. How is that possible?

Structure & Timeline & Cost of an IoT Project?

IoT is often described as being complex, timely and expensive. After all, there is a whole industry of consultants and systems integrators that make a living from this view. In their world, IoT solutions are made up of 10 to15 piece parts (from IoT Devices, Connectivity …… to Applications, ML & AI) that are challenging to integrate and turn into deployable, operational solutions. Bring us your requirements and our large team will work with you to develop a solution available 18 months from now for only $1.6 million! While viable for large and complex projects, this model is becoming obsolete for a variety of solutions. Why is that?

The answer is to look at IoT solutions as made up of three main parts – The Front End, Back End and what Connects them:

• Front End – this is the Edge made up of IoT devices, sensors, gateways, edge processing and integrations with products, equipment, systems, and physical structures.
• Back End – this starts with the IoT data handling platform and extends to all applications (web, mobile, control, messaging) and the Data Base, Display, Analytics, Machine Learning and AI applications that support them.
• Connectivity – NFC, LAN, WAN, and Internet

Out of these three the Front End is still the most time-consuming part of an IoT solution as it can involve product development, device/system selection and integration with the real world. Connectivity can be an initial challenge but once it works it tends to work. This leaves the Back End where revolutionary changes have taken place that dramatically reduce complexity, time (development, integration, testing, deployment, and operations) and cost. The answer lies in using an already developed Back End Solution flexible enough to connect to any Front End.

This approach dramatically reduces bot Timeline and Cost as it uses existing technology and solution already developed and deployed. So instead of Development, a project is focused on Customization, Integrations use ‘standardized’ Data Models and APIs instead of starting from scratch.

A ‘Standardized’ IoT Back End

At Triotos we have developed a ‘standardized’ back end using AWS IoT Cloud Technology and applications. On top of this we have implemented a set of applications that already work with JSON data models delivering the data from the Front End. Once the data model from the front end is agreed upon, initial applications supported by simulated data are brought up in less than an hour. So instead of starting from scratch, a customer reacts to an existing solution using skeleton applications designed to be customized and fed by simulated data using the same data model that the Front End will deliver. Using an agile approach, we then work with customer to perfect applications and integrations delivering a complete solution in agile sprint results completing solution in months instead of years and for $100ks instead of $ millions. March is not too late to start your IoT initiatives. If you start now you will see your solution before the end of the 2^nd quarter and real business results before the end of the year. To find out more, contact us today