IoT has got a pace now. Businesses are looking at this technology to enable it in their products. This technology can help many businesses differentiate themselves from others and of course, increase their profit margins. With the help of good marketing strategies, these businesses have also succeeded to create a space for their commodities in the market; they are succeeding at convincing customers that how their AC can switch itself on by sensing that they are about to reach home or how their curtains can adjust themselves to avoid direct sunlight in specific hours of the day.
With IoT connectivity, businesses are able to provide connected products, which are able to deliver richer user-experience and are more user-friendly tools with excellent controllability.
But not all companies are able to designs and develop IoT applications for their devices. They need the support of professional marketing companies, which provide their IoT platforms for applications.
By seriously investigating about IoT application development or IoT integration to a product, it’s easy to figure out that it would take more than six months to a year to come up with a working IoT enabled product. Of course, long development timelines and associated costs may discourage some small-medium businesses from taking a leap and give an opportunity to those who question on the worth of IoT.
Businesses are in the confusion of building vs. buying IoT technologies. Building requires more than enough time while buy is actually not a fully buy option as some of the components have still to be built.
Are you looking for the IoT integration to your product to provide it advanced connectivity control, alerts and Over-The-Air (OTA) upgrade? If not, then most of IoT platforms available for buy can meet your requirements.
What comes next is the security, which means you have to ensure that your IoT enabled devices are hack-proof. But, do you have the expertise to provide that security? This question is worth asking because while using your devices, customers will likely share personally identifiable information that could put everything at risk if your devices are hackable.
No doubt customers will express their concerned about the possible burglaries that your IoT devices containing personal identification information may cause. Say it’s a home ambiance light programmed to welcome the owner when he returns. It switches itself on when the owner reaches within 100 meters range of his home. Also, the light automatically switches off when they’re the person leaves his home in the morning and never turns on until the person comes back. IoT devices keep this PPI data and use it to work what they are made for, but if the data is accessed by burglars then they can easily discover the routine of a specific person that when he leaves home and comes back. They can commit burglaries during those hours in which there is no one at home.
Now if your device does not keep PII then it can be used against third party providers. Remember the incident of DDOS attack took place at several sites in the US, on October 21, 2016. Attackers were able to access IP cameras made by a Chinese company. Indeed, the company received intense defamation everywhere in media. Would you want your company to get bad headlines in media because your IoT products were hacked due to lack of security in them?
So, security can be an issue also in third-party IoT platforms. But, your IoT platform provider will naturally have more resources to take care of security than you.
Hiring a vendor, which provides you IoT application, infrastructure and security, is probably the right choice. But make sure that the service provider has a strong solution to secure your device.
Author Bio. :- Sofia Coppol is a digital marketing expert in Rapidsoft Technologies, a leading IOT Development Company which provides Software for Education, Automation, Construction and Finance across the global. He loves to write on latest mobile trends, mobile technologies, startups and enterprises