Key Tips for Powering Your Connected Products with the Cloud
As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to evolve, it can transform the business scene as well as our lives. Cloud computing is the backbone of this transformation. Rapid cloud adoption has served as a springboard for many IoT applications and business models, enabling the enterprise to reduce time-to-market and cost of ownership.
With cloud computing, enterprises do not have to use great hardware or configure/manage networks and infrastructure. Cloud computing enables enterprises to scale up the foundation, as per their needs. This not only aids to speed up the development process but reduces development costs considerably. Close to half of all CIOs and IT leaders who were surveyed by the cloud-security company Bitglass reported about cost savings using cloud-based applications. Worldwide spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) is forecast to reach $745 billion in 2019, an increase of 15.4% over the $646 billion spent in 2018
Technical Hurdles and How Cloud Comes to the Rescue
Firstly, it’s not easy to launch an IoT solution. You have to worry about how your hardware or machinery can function. This involves working with sensors, connecting the device to the internet, potentially dealing with battery life, and more. Then you have to develop the software to facilitate all of the communication and data collection. Finally, you have to deploy all of the back-end infrastructures to bring every moving part of your IoT solution together. Cloud computing helps you tackle these technical issues.
When you’re in the process of setting up your IoT hardware and software, you don’t want to have to worry about configuring networks, setting up servers, deploying databases, or performing any other infrastructure tasks. Cloud computing service providers have all of this ready in no time. You can quickly spin up virtual servers, launch a database instance, and create data pipelines to help run your IoT solution.
What’s more, there are now services dedicated explicitly to launching and managing IoT offerings. For instance, AWS’s IoT platform allows you to instantly and securely connect as well as manage these device connections, and capture and feed the collected data into other AWS technologies like S3 and Redshift for processing and analysis. Not only does this help to expedite your development process, but also reduces the development costs. Therefore, you won’t have to spend money upfront to buy and provision servers and other infrastructure. As a subscriber, you only pay for the resources that you utilize. Cloud computing providers have all of the foundations that you need, ready at their disposal, and can help speed up your development process. This enables you to get to market faster allows you to concentrate on developing the best product possible.