Simplify Your Business Processes and Boost Efficiency with Ready-to-Use IoT Platforms

IoT (Internet of Things) technology has proven to be a game-changer for businesses over the years. From healthcare to agriculture, smart sensors, controllers, and other connected devices enable industries to access real-time data across multiple platforms. By gaining access to real-time data business information, organizations can successfully streamline their operations, improve decision-making, and achieve greater efficiency. 

Rightly so, IoT has presented the next evolutionary step forward for many organizations in their digital transformation journeys. However, building a fully-functional IoT platform from scratch can take time and effort. Establishing an operational infrastructure requires the right mix of hardware, software, networking capabilities, and relative experience that not all businesses can quickly come by.

Thankfully, ready-to-use IoT platforms have been developed to help you  simplify the adoption of IoT and give you the ideal tools you need to grow quickly and start benefiting from this technology.

What Exactly is a Ready-to-Use IoT Platform?

A ready-to-use IoT platform is a pre-built software solution that provides the necessary components for quickly developing and deploying an IoT application. These all-in-one platforms typically include the following components to help organizations deploy IoT technology quickly and easily across their infrastructure:

• Hardware - Edge devices, sensors, gateways, and other devices that collect relevant data surrounding physical locations.
• Software - Necessary coding that runs on IoT devices to collect, organize, and store data locally and in the cloud.
• Cloud Services - A cloud-based infrastructure or collection of third-party services that receive data from IoT devices that can be used for various purposes.
• Connectivity Options - Wireless protocols like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), cellular networks, or satellite communication to connect devices with each other or interact with cloud environments.
• Analytics Tools - Software solutions used for processing large amounts of data collected by devices with the purpose of extracting valuable business insights.

How Can Businesses Benefit From Using an IoT Platform?

Ready-to-Use IoT platforms were designed to help organizations expedite their IoT deployments while allowing them to maximize the technology's benefits quickly. Below are just some reasons why you should consider leveraging the use of these platforms when creating their own IoT projects.

Significant Cost Savings

While IoT technology can provide businesses with various operational improvements, implementation can often be costly. One of the organization's most significant challenges when strategizing an IoT deployment is the upfront costs of hardware, software, and development services. This can make the ROI (Return On Investment) of these types of solutions less apparent and create unnecessary stalls or roadblocks.

A ready-to-use IoT platform drastically reduces the cost of entry for these deployments, allowing you to leverage the new technology without breaking the bank. IoT platforms also remove the strain on internal resources, as your team won't have to create and maintain your own IoT solutions out of the gate.

Improved Accuracy and Efficiency

To maintain the highest accuracy level in data collection, companies need to ensure that their IoT devices are always up-to-date and functioning optimally. Ready-to-use IoT platforms can provide you with the necessary tools to manage a fleet of connected devices. 

This includes over-the-air updates, remote monitoring, and automated maintenance tasks, allowing organizations to stay on top of any potential issues and maintain higher accuracy and business compliance standards.

Better Scalability

IoT platforms are designed to be scalable, which means they can grow as your business grows. As your IoT project expands, you can easily add more devices or sensors without completely overhauling your existing infrastructure.

This scalability also allows businesses to adapt quickly to changing market conditions or customer demands. For example, suppose a company wants to expand into new markets or launch new products and services. In that case, it can use an IoT platform to quickly gather relevant insights to make better-informed decisions about the business's direction.

IoT platforms also allow businesses to be more agile by enabling them to respond quickly to market or competitive landscape changes. By not completely rebuilding their existing solution, companies will be better equipped to capitalize swiftly on opportunities.

Completing the Project

Once you select a ready-to-use IoT platform, you’ll have more work to complete the project. Data analytics is an important factor in its success, but you also have to consider device management and security with sensors, gateways, cloud services, user interface, and more.

Ready-made products make it simple to handle all these details. You have plenty of options to choose from with numerous vendors, but the first should be a component to transmit data from the sensors to the data center. The best options are a data connectivity platform or a third-party cloud service.

Your project will be collecting high-volume data in real time from sensors and processors. It’s best to add a cloud IoT platform to handle the workload, then a rules engine to capture the data as it comes and process it efficiently. There are ready-made solutions for this as well, or you could custom build the component.

You’ll also need a data management solution with an option to offload historical data regularly – at least every three months or so – into a secondary data storage solution. This will help you manage performance.

Finally, you will need a user dashboard, which can be out of the box or custom built, as needed, for your particular use case. Consider the requirements for permissions, access controls, and security when evaluating your options for the user dashboard.

Start Expediting Your Own IoT Deployments Today

Crafting an effective IoT solution isn't for the faint of heart, but it doesn't need to be an expensive initiative with limited results. Ready-to-Use IoT platforms take the guesswork out of deploying IoT technology across your expanding infrastructure with minimal upfront costs and quicker time to market.

If you're ready to join the world of connected devices and start harnessing the power of IoT technology, consider using a ready-to-use IoT platform as your first step. With the right tools, you can quickly begin collecting and processing unprecedented amounts of data to help drive your business forward.