Why Do I need IoT? Cost & How to get Started

Two of the ongoing myths about IoT is that it is expensive and difficult. While that may have been true a couple of years ago. Things have changed for the better.

Not expensive to get Started

IoT solutions from leading cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft have dramatically lowered the cost of developing IoT solutions and operating them. What changed was a move from proprietary solutions that had to be developed to ‘Lego like’ IoT blocks that are put assembled and customized as needed. Instead of hiring an IoT team of 15-20 people that architects, sources and develop a solution over 12-18 months, this new approach reduces the number of engineers needed and time to complete the job substantially. Selecting a supplier that already has the engineering skills and have built deployable solutions reduces the expenses even further. Instead of having an IoT team of 25 people or pay an integrator millions of dollars, you can get away with a small internal IoT team working with the supplier.

How do I get Started

Once you have decided on IoT, the best way to get started is to appoint a responsible champion and then appoint a small part time team from the functions in your company that will implement and use IoT – Engineering, IT, Marketing, Operations, Manufacturing & Sales. If you can find a friendly customer to work alongside you already have an alpha customer. Then create a vision for IoT –   what will IoT do for your business> Now it may be time to contact suppliers who may be able to help with expertise but also with solutions that may address 80% of your IoT vision. The right supplier will offer consultative services that will augment your team. Time to make decisions on suppliers and approach leading up to a business case. Once budgets and schedules have been agreed upon it is time to kick off the effort. IoT lends itself to Agile implementation and if you do not use Agile in your business, this is a good time to start. So, write the Agile Epics, populate the stories and start implementing. First step of IoT is always to get a tracer bullet operations – a deliverable that gets/delivers data from/to device, is connected to the cloud with chosen connectivity, is processed by the IoT data gathering platform and feeds the data to one application. This is often the most difficult part but once completed, the IoT solution will be built around this already functioning part – after this, things get easier.

IoT is today not as costly as a couple of years ago and it is well known how to get started. In this series of six blogs we have described why you need IoT from a competitive and business perspective, from a customer/business understanding and ended with a discussion of the costs and how to get started. At Triotos, we can help you along the way.