It’s imperative for enterprises today to adapt to a digitalized business model and align their operations to the evolving customer requirements. Several enterprises have now started to step out of their comfort zone to explore the diverse technology solutions available today- all credits to “Digital Transformation” for this paradigm shift.
Amongst the diverse future-driven technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) holds a pivotal part in redefining the operational model to enhance the customer experience. Considered as an important solution in the technology ecosystem, IoT is driving enterprises to think ahead of time to implement new and innovative solutions. Industries like Healthcare, Automobile, Manufacturing, Consumer Electronics, and Agriculture are largely benefited from the latest IoT applications.
Let’s take a deeper look into IoT App Development
Today, the implementation of IoT applications is growing in numbers; enterprises have started to discern IoT applications’ need in their businesses. This change has led to a significant rise in the development of IoT applications in recent years. Though the numbers of IoT app development are climbing high, the implementation failures continue to be a worrying factor for enterprises. The Connected Futures Cisco Research reveals that only 26% of all surveyed companies are successful with their IoT initiatives. The IoT app development journey is easier said than done; it involves a lot of factors that need to be stringently evaluated. From requirements to strategies and implementation – enterprises should have a more in-depth look into all the significant components that determine their IoT implementation’s success.
Having considered IoT as a game-changer in redefining business operations, enterprises are quickly jumping into IoT implementations without having a clear scope of the project. Microsoft’s report on IoT adoption explains that nearly one-third of IoT projects (30%) fail in the proof-of-concept stage, often because the implementation is expensive or bottom-line benefits are unclear. The report also states, 38% of IoT adopters cite complexity and technical challenges to using IoT as a barrier to furthering their IoT adoption.
Let’s look at the few critical challenges faced by enterprises in their IoT app development journey.
Apart from these common challenges, several other factors could disrupt the IoT app development journey. The challenges vary from one project to the other based on the requirements and development approach; hence it’s crucial for enterprises to have a clear understanding of the requirements beforehand.
Tips for a Successful IoT App Development Journey
Here are a few important tips that will help you to plan and execute a successful IoT app development process.
Identifying the business objective – For any application development process, the first and foremost step is to identify the business objectives. Without an idea of the project scope or objectives, it is almost impossible to accomplish an IoT app development process. Hence, it’s critically important to have a clear picture of the goals, operational tasks, cost estimates, and baseline requirements before kicking off the app development process. Today, several IoT implementations fail to deliver as enterprises do not have well-defined business objectives in the first place. IoT experts also believe that the pre-development phase has a pivotal role to play in comprehending the project dependencies and risk factors at an early stage. This will help in minimizing unnecessary bottlenecks during the development phase. Hence, it’s essential to have a clear view of your business objectives and a well-defined project roadmap before jumping into your IoT app development journey.
Determining the IoT framework and ecosystem – A predominant factor to consider in your IoT app development process is the IoT framework and ecosystem. Selection of your IoT framework holds the base for your development process; it’s one of those critical components that significantly contribute to your IoT implementation’s success. To determine the best-fit IoT framework for your app development process, you must evaluate several capabilities like app development features, connectivity management, applications environment, data management features, security, integration scope, and scalability. It is also vital to ensure that your IoT solution encompasses all the major services: app development and hosting, solution integration, implementation, and maintenance. Hence, it’s essential to evaluate all the significant factors before determining your best-fit IoT framework.
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Choosing the communication channel – Communication channels are an integral part of your IoT app development process. These channels facilitate all sorts of interaction between the application and the IoT device. It is vital to assess the compatibility of your application while choosing the communication channels. The diverse communication channels include Bluetooth, LAN, WAN, and wi-fi. Considering your business requirements and application structure, you must pick the best communication channel to ensure uninterrupted and seamless communication. A few important factors that will aid you in determining the ideal communication channel are bandwidth, range, latency, signal strength, and other security aspects.
Analyzing the security features – When it comes to IoT app development, two important security features must be clearly addressed: data and hardware security. Both the security features play a significant role in determining the IoT app’s credibility; hence, it’s crucial to ensure proper security features to safeguard your IoT application. Managing data security in your application will undoubtedly be an uphill task; any sort of data breach will collapse the entire application. Hence, your application must have a reliable data infrastructure to offer end-to-end security for your app’s ecosystem. The application must adhere to all the security policies and must have a proper compliance management plan to ensure utmost security even in changing environments. Other significant security factors that will help build a robust and secure IoT app are identity management, threat intelligence, and data isolation measures. Several reports have revealed that the expenditure for IoT security has continuously increased in recent years; this is proof of the significance of the security features in an IoT app development journey. As an enterprise, you are completely liable for your application’s privacy and data security.
Similar to data security, hardware security is also a critical feature that needs a special focus. With the increase in hardware attacks today, the need to secure your IoT devices have become the need of the hour. Specialized security hardware and integrated circuit blocks could save your app from security attacks. Some of the standard hardware security features that will aid you in this process are – crypto acceleration, random-number generators, and tamper pins.
Enhancing speed and scalability –It’s always vital to ensure that your IoT application adheres to a scalable and manageable IoT architecture. Your IoT app relies entirely on the principles of connected devices and systems; hence, it’s vital to scale these connected systems’ performance to ensure maximum operational efficiency. Since the IoT applications deal with a lot of real-time data streaming, it’s essential to determine a set of strategies to enhance the application’s scalability. Some of the common techniques to improve scalability are automated bootstrapping, the three-axis approach, controlling the data pipeline, and microservices architecture.
It’s important to evaluate
We hope, by now, you would have a clear understanding of the significant factors that will help you plan a successful IoT app development. The key elements discussed in this blog are only a part of your IoT application; several more critical components need to be considered before commencing on your IoT journey. This analysis will help in ensuring the long-term success of your IoT application.
If you are still skeptical about your IoT app development, our team of experts is here to guide you through your IoT app development journey.
We help enterprises shape their business operations because our deep-rooted experience in IoT app development has enabled us to offer innovative and scalable IoT solutions every time. So, feel free to have a conversation with our IoT experts and figure out how our custom IoT solutions could benefit your business.
