It’s already happening, we’re already looking at physical products a whole new way as their market value and usability is highly effected by the enhanced usability and availability they get via software and user applications. Some devices are more or less useless without its companion app, others are even delivered long before the software is anywhere near finalized. But it’s clear that this is a winning concept, and we’ve only got started.
If a chef wants to buy a posh immersion cooker for his slow food sessions, why not the one that also texts you how much your beef has left prior to dinner service? Who would buy a considerably cheaper mobile phone or pad with an alternative operating system, should you find there were very few apps available. This will read true for an increasing variety of devices and gadgets. More and more products come with, and rely on a companion app, and services without accessible APIs become endangered species fast. But for this evolution to happen outside the scenario of consumer gadgets, we’ll need more services out there, we’ll need mobile apps on top of the infrastructure, serving these complex systems. This is simply one of the core challenges in IoT as a whole, both for the established players as well as for new entrants who see business advantages in making their offerings smarter and more connected.
The internet of things is now in its second act, states ex-googler David Hirsch of Metamorphic Ventures in a recent Techcrunch article. We’re moving from a world of one-offs for connected devices and their mobile remote counterpart with a traditional one-app-per-device-type approach, into wider systems that connects many to many. In doing so, bundled services get smarter over time as the system itself learns more on the needs and wants from car commuters, house owners and media consumers. The trend of data silos seems in Hirsch’s article to remain, yet with forerunners attempting to expose system or human centric API endpoints, allowing other services or brands to interface with a given system. Regardless of the nature and level of interoperability, there is a greater issue present – a substantial need for scaling up development for all these services and expected functionality from users, along with their supporting software structures, accessibility, security and the means for producing mobile applications in a far larger scale than is possible today.
For us as developers and tools providers, it’s positive to get these reads, especially when they come from the financial community. It is a good telltale that they’re catching up with the forefront of internet’s industrial side and that it means real business, far from any crushed candy and ill-tempered birds. As late as 2013 there were far fewer insights of this kind, with the exception of McRock Investments with their well-researched reports, which covers the development dilemma quite nicely in executive summary style.
In McRock’s piece on apps for the industrial internet, McRock states that the “industrial platforms must become more developer-friendly by publishing Software Development Kits (SDKs) and APIs that make coding easier and more modular. These tools will allow developers to access industrial data and devices without having to recreate basic functionality, or delve into the details of device or sensor operating systems”. Another area is their proposal for holding developer & domain knowledge sessions, and the importance of providing desensitized data sets and simulations allowing developers to be innovative without risking to close down a factory, causing a borough-wide black-out or by other means risk the lives of workers.
At Evothings, we’re contributing to this evolution from a focal point of software solutions for development and prototyping work. We want to prove new ways for developing software in parallel with the accelerated pace of hardware and device prototyping – accelerated by advances in computer-aided design, new materials and on-site 3D-printing. So instead of developing in serial, hardware and software can grow hand in hand with tools like the Evothings Studio.
Rapid prototyping software based on web technologies shortens the overall deployment time for new software-driven products, rendering a more efficient time-to-market made possible by faster iteration cycles for development, testing and prototyping work. So when the computer is finished printing the demo’s exterior, so is the app – and an invited trial customer can run developed apps in the wild, even before the glue gun has cooled off back in its cradle in the prototyping lab. Continuously, we add support for more connected hardware, APIs and devices. We already see a movement revolutionizing mobile IoT development of the same magnitude as how table-top 3D printing has altered the rule set for small series prototyping and hardware manufacturing is conducted. We’re just in the beginning of a nothing short of an industrial revolution, and we’re all invited to see where these new technologies will take us.