Introduction

Companies come and go, especially during globally turbulent times such as those we face in the early 2020s. The question is, how does one stay future-proof in an ever-changing market? For IoT, the answer is short and sweet: Open technology. Open solutions allow companies the freedom to switch both hardware and software providers or technology at any given time, no matter the reason. With such freedom, companies can always operate with the most suitable contemporary solutions and stay innovative, while never being left in a pinch due to changes in the market.

We will illuminate the benefits of such flexibility by looking at a real-life example of how open technology protected a company from operational disaster.

Different protocols and technologies

In our example, we had a real estate company as a customer through one of our partners, where the partner provided a service layer on top of our platform. The company has deployed IoT solutions to monitor residents’ indoor climate and water consumption. For this installation, different technologies were installed from different suppliers, using multiple protocols. As the customer utilizes technology from different suppliers with varying protocols, they need a platform that can act as the interoperability layer, translating data to make it actionable.

In this case, the customer makes this possible through Sensative’s DiMS IoT platform Yggio which is a powerhouse that can be utilized for many different tasks in one’s IoT operations (data collection layer, service layer, integration layer, and more). For this reason, many companies develop services on top of Yggio, i.e., they offer their own service application. The services are many and vary in their focus, from visualizing office seats to building management, and gym machine usage.

Left in a pinch but easily saved

Due to unfortunate developments during the pandemic, the company was not able to continue its operations and the customer was left with no service. This put the customer in quite the predicament as their investment was gearing towards a system shutdown – the service would no longer be maintained and would eventually be shut down. What would happen now? How could their operations continue when their platform provider ceased to exist?

Had the customer invested in a vertical end-to-end solution, then this might have been the end of their journey in IoT as they could have been left with substantial hardware and software investments, apart from time and other resources invested, that lost their value and functionality overnight. Specifically, they could have been left with a substantial hardware investment that could no longer be controlled or used, without any access to their real-time or historical data, and this would have forced them to find a new solution, install new hardware and handle the loss of historical data, or simply take their loss and possibly lose faith in IoT.

Fortunately, the customer had chosen to base their IoT operations on open solutions, i.e., they chose a service that acted with Yggio as the middleware platform, providing a future-proof solution capable of moving with the market. As a result, the customer could without disruptions continue their daily operations, avoid losses of huge sums on both hardware and technical issues, and maintain their tenants’ satisfaction.