Remote Site & Equipment Management 2016 - (Page 10)

Feature Article Three Considerations for M2M/IoT Connectivity John Horn, CEO, Ingenu Decisions, decisions, decisions. We have thousands of decisions to make each day and with each passing hour, we have a seemingly endless growth curve to that number of choices. Entire companies have built their business model on offering choices. If you look today on Amazon and search for just about any common item in your home, you will find hundreds, if not thousands, of options relating to that product. A tastier option would be to make a quick visit to your local frozen yogurt shop and just try to calculate the immense number of flavor combinations that you could possibly come up with. So, what does all of this have to do with the considerations to make when it comes to selecting your IoT connectivity? Well, actually quite a bit. You see, analysts across the M2M/IoT industry love to develop really colorful Power Point slides that cram as many logos as is possible into a single view. They have this idea that if we create a map and put all the options of the ecosystem players together, then you, as a company, will be in a better position to make a technology decision. Well, the problem is, as has been pointed out by Barry Schwartz, the author of "The Paradox of Choice", that when offered a multitude of choices we develop a type of paralysis that impedes our ability to actually move forward with any decision. In the IoT world, this translates to major enterprises waiting it out while smaller, nimbler companies move in to capitalize on the efficiencies and profits of the Internet of Things. We could go through endless examples like Borders and RIM where organizations just couldn't pivot quickly enough in the right direction - at some point those organizations were agile, but have subsequently lost that trait. RIM is one company that is especially relevant to this discussion since a big focus of their delayed pivot now ironically places the Internet of Things as a central hub of their future strategic path. With that, let's get down to what companies can universally do to take avoid decision paralysis and get on board with the biggest industrial opportunity that many of us will ever see in our lifetimes: the IoT. The first determination to make is assessing the proper data usage profile that fits your business or application. While the talk of the IoT naturally flows to the fastest and flashiest applications, the fact remains (and will remain) that the vast majority of machines in our world just need to interconnect. That equates to a data profile of less than a few megabits of data per month. In fact, leading IoT analyst firm James Brehm and Associates estimates that 86 percent of devices consume less than 3MB of data per month. Battery life becomes ever-important in this world of remotely connected things, and is the second consideration that companies need to take into account. We have all experienced the sinking feeling of having a dead battery on our phone early into our afternoon, and we've become accustomed to getting about a day's charge out of our cell phones. But what happens when that device is out in the middle of a prairie or desert and there isn't a human being in sight to swap out a battery, and there definitely isn't power to plug the thing in? The IoT will require dramatically different battery performance, as in decades on a single charge. Lastly, and maybe most importantly to the achievable business benefits, is the ability to count on the longevity of your network connectivity. Just ask early owners of the first OnStar-enabled vehicles. Those first OnStar vehicles that led the market with cutting-edge, in-vehicle connectivity were only a few years on the road when they abruptly experienced the shutdown of analog, completely muting that helpful OnStar operator on the other end of the connection. This network shutdown rendered that flashy new technology completely obsolete. Here's the difference with longevity between the IoT and consumer technology worlds: in the IoT, we don't want a new flashy device every couple of years; we expect our vehicles to last longer than our cell phones, and we sure don't want to budget in replacement cost every couple of years for a widespread deployment of IoT devices. It's critical when building an IoT solution to make make sure that you can plan on your network technology lasting the life of your IoT device. If not, you should just go ahead and take a lighter to that money now and avoid the long-term burn of those resources. It really is that simple. No longer should you try to find your path through complicated decision trees. Take the paralysis out of the equation by matching your business plan with those three simple considerations. Work with people that understand the IoT and that have the right tools and technology to help you succeed. That way you won't infamously be referred to in business strategy textbooks as just another company that wasn't able to capitalize on the opportunity in time. For more information please visit www.ingenu.com. 10 www.RemoteMagazine.com http://www.ingenu.com http://www.RemoteMagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Remote Site & Equipment Management 2016

Editor's Choice
Integrating Local HMI with the Cloud
Managing Distributed Energy Resources with IoT and Cloud Technologies
Three Considerations for M2M/IoT Connectivity
Creating Value from IIoT Data
Wireless Sensor Networks - Applications in Oil & Gas
Applying Remote Monitoring & Predictive Analytics to Satisfy Customers While Keeping Costs Down
M2M & IoT Products
Industry News

Remote Site & Equipment Management 2016