Having realized the importance of IoT and IoT-powered solutions in the modern world, many companies are considering buying prebuilt IoT solutions or going for custom IoT development solutions.
Companies are still unsure whether to use prebuilt IoT solutions from third-party vendors or custom IoT development services. Let me tell you, building Artificial Intelligence solutions may sound like a great idea. Still, the challenges required to support, manage and afford it may be overwhelming for any small to mid-sized business.
If we go by the expert opinion, you can save up to 40% cost by purchasing ready-to-use, prebuilt IoT solutions instead of custom IoT development.
There are thousands of IoT solutions platforms and vendors in the marketplace today as the world of AI and IoT continues to transform, evolve, and shift.
In such a scenario, you may find yourself lost and perplexed. The confusion in choosing between prebuilt IoT solutions and custom IoT development is quite common among most businesses.
If you are also in a dilemma, this post will help you make an informed and better decision. Choose the suitable model befitting your IoT needs; When deciding between prebuilt IoT solutions and custom solutions, many factors are worthy of consideration.
These include support, budget, time, core competencies, environment, and others. Then, we need to examine the custom and ready-made IoT solutions to help you get a clear picture of both before you choose the suitable model that suits your organizational needs and goals.
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What Is IoT?
The innovative idea of the Internet of Things (IoT) is revolutionizing how we interact with our surroundings.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of connected physical objects, including sensors, electrical devices, and everyday objects, that can gather and exchange data over the Internet. These objects can be connected to many wireless networks and communicate with each other without the need for human intervention.
How Do You Combine These Technologies To Create A Working IIoT Architecture?
You can be a manager of operations looking for industrial IoT solutions to issues or inefficiencies in your companys operations.
You can be a businessperson seeking to broaden your organizations industrial IoT (IIoT) market reach. You may be trying to figure out the ideal strategy to construct Industrial IoT solutions. Whatever your profile, ready-to-use IIoT technologies and solutions will simplify your life.
To be clear, the phrase "making life easy" can also mean to stop you from unnecessarily tormenting yourself because someone else invented it. Its not necessary to reinvent the wheel. It is well recognized that the Industrial Internet of Things is challenging.
Complex. Slow-to-market. Expensive. This does not have to be the case.
Ready-To-Use, Pre-built IoT Solution - A Brief
Most companies today are going for prebuilt IoT solutions due to their incredible ease of onboarding and simplicity.
To minimize the challenges and risks that come with in-house IoT solution development, many companies are now hiring third-party vendors. From the start, the vendor will ensure that your chosen IoT solution delivers all the required functionalities and features that meet your business needs and purposes.
This approach tends to be highly comfortable and hassle-free, mainly because companies start using their IoT and Artificial Intelligence Solutions immediately. Some of the fantastic benefits of prebuilt IoT solutions include the following:
- Ready to use: For businesses that dont specialize in IoT, prebuilt solutions are an excellent choice that they can start using immediately.
- Minimum risks & challenges: Prebuilt IoT products are safer than custom IoT web or mobile app development services and solutions. You can say goodbye to the difficulties and dangers of IoT if you choose a prebuilt solution over in-house, custom development. It is because when you use a prebuilt solution, the vendor who provides the answer is fully responsible for its performance and other issues.
- With the third-party vendor taking care of your IoT solution, you use it and focus on other vital dimensions of your business growth and critical core compensation.
- Compared to in-house IoT mobile application development services, prebuilt solutions are cost-effective.
Use Ready-To-Use Industrial IoT Platforms For These Four Reasons
These IoT solutions are not only ready-to-go but also have other benefits:
These Allow You to Focus on Platform Integration Rather than Custom Development: Ready-to-use IIoT parts are available.
Before Industrial IoT was accessible in a wide range, building an IIoT platform appropriate for your specific use case required a lot of work. Even today, people who refuse to use the premade options will get bogged down in essential structures and features.
Your development team will be able to focus more on integrating adapters and connectors than on creating custom software by making clever use of existing IIoT solutions. Still, developing an Industrial IoT solution requires a lot of labor. Its not possible to ignore that fact. It takes less time, however.
Reduced Costs for Industrial IoT Solutions by Using Out-Of-The-Box Components: Time is more valuable than money.
It will take less time to plug in components proven to work well than creating your own. This will make it more affordable. These sites and resources are not free. This is slightly more expensive than upgrading to G Suite but less expensive than starting your airline to avoid Group 4 airport lines.
Although it depends on the individual parts, the cost will be less than developing each individually.
You Can Set up Access Control and Security Without Requiring Specialized Skills Without Requiring Much Technical Knowledge: We have been involved in the IIoT industry for many years.
We have seen it all. We recognize how challenging it may be to coordinate all the knowledge needed to make these platforms successful. To construct industrial IoT platforms, a business would need to train and hire experts in cybersecurity, mobile connection, API building, and other fields.
You would need your own Avengers squad to make it all work. The benefit of using pre-packaged access control and security solutions is that you only need access to some specialists.
This IIoT platform employs open APIs to make it simple to connect to both new and current systems and tools.
It is Much Easier to Aggregate Data and Content: A ready-to-use approach is best if you are looking for quick industrial IoT solutions and platforms, even though you have different applications, sensors, and databases.
Why? Because the format of data from various sources will vary. Have you ever attempted dressing a little child in pajamas? Combining data from various sources is simple.
Thats all there is to it. The Latin alphabet will format the data from source "A." Chinese characters are used in the data from source "B." On the other hand, data from "C" is like barking.
It would help if you combined them in a readable way that allows you to analyze them and create rules. Technologies like radio, APIs, and current databases are all applicable in the real world. The easiest method to examine this data is on an integrated dashboard that is simple.
DIY will require a lot more symbolic labeling and stamping. Youll also need to stuff the items into one pipe. Suppose youve ever attempted to cram a sleeping bag made of mummies into its sheath.
In that case, youll be able to appreciate how challenging stuffing and shoving may be.
Access To Out-Of-The-Box IIoT Tools Is Made Possible With Enterprise-Grade Apps
These enterprise-grade apps are not like your dads Apple Store apps. These robust platforms are made to integrate with popular enterprise software or software services and solutions.
These enterprise-level apps can be plugged into various component types and classifications. They accomplish this without using custom development. To use them, all you have to do is plug them in. Because industrial IoT initiatives entail a lot of data, these enterprise-grade applications can handle massive amounts of data.
Because there are many possibilities for ready-to-use smarter applications that can be integrated with other components, industrial IoT platforms are now more widely available than ever. Without this, developing a functional application could prove costly. Select the finest option for you, remove it from its packaging, and plug it into the proper outlet.
Or, you can understand what we mean.
Industrial IoT Solutions That Are Currently Available And Integrate To Create A Reference Architecture
1. Get Data From Sensors To The Data Center
You might begin by using the industrial data your sensors provide to:
- Third-party cloud service for industrial sensors
- A data communication platform like Sierra Wireless Octave, Firefox, or the chirp stack of LoRa WAN
2. Add An IoT Cloud Platform
Just a few instances of cloud IoT platforms include the following:
- IBM Watson IoT
- AWS IoT
- MS Azure IoT
This is required to make it easier to consume and analyze the massive amounts of real-time data generated by industrial sensors or processes.
3. Add A Processing/Rules Engines
It is necessary to use an engine capable of capturing high-volume, high-speed data, such as Apache Kafka and Streams.
After the data has been collected, you must be able to process it using a technology stack engine like Tick Stack. This makes a straightforward out-of-the-box rules engine accessible.
4. Add A Data Management System
A time-series or NoSQL database, such as InfluxDB, can be initially plugged into via a data management layer.
A secondary data lake, such as a data mart or data warehouse solution, can also be added. When working with high-volume and high-speed data, you must be able to dump historical data every 30 to 60 days to secondary storage.
You may control analytics performance in this way.
5. Then, Youll Need To Create A User Dashboard
A user dashboard is offered by the Digital Experience Platform and is easily adaptable to your needs.
You dont need to be concerned about security or access management.
Custom IoT Development - A Brief
As we just discussed the many benefits that prebuilt IoT solutions offer, it makes sense to understand the custom IoT web or mobile app development services and explanations a little closer.
A few important factors that encourage several organizations to consider custom IoT development services are discussed below for reference. There are several reasons why businesses pick specialized IoT products and services:
- The size of the deployment is massive.
- Data streaming to the cloud is enormous.
- Either the company provides technology-driven solutions/services or specializes in technology.
- No solution in the market is available to fit the business goals, project requirements, and needs.
If you can relate to these, custom IoT development services and solutions are probably right for your business.
Why? They help you get the correct answer from scratch by considering even your minutest specifications and expectations. You end up with an ideal one-stop platform that meets all of your requirements for features and functionality. Some of the benefits of custom IoT development services and solutions include the following:
- Custom IoT development services and solutions are highly personalized and provide all the required capabilities and features you will expect when connecting devices.
- Organizations can benefit from the in-house development expertise of their custom IoT and AI development company for building and deploying a custom IoT app/solution.
- The IoT solutions may reflect the brand to offer an improvised and highly refined user experience.
- The mobile app development company that gets the custom IoT solution developed fully owns it and is, therefore, able to update, maintain, and upgrade it as and when required and desired.
Internet of Things Solutions: Server-side solution: The Server-side or the backend of IoT development enables the platform to gather data and push it to the cloud, where users can view and store it.
The backend supports communication, processing, and analytics for unearthing valuable and relevant data. For your knowledge, some of the pros and cons of writing your own backend are discussed hereunder. Suppose you want to create a corporate-level Internet of Things system with countless devices connected to it.
In that case, writing your backend is highly recommended. The pros include:
- It can be deployed to corporate data-center servers.
- It can be modified when required to support different IoT devices.
- Allows customized selection of programming languages and frameworks.
- Uses modern architecture.
However, just as a coin has two sides, custom IoT development has some cons too, including:
- A lot of time is required for deployment.
- Development and support are pretty costly.
- Constant issues such as fixing bugs and attending to performance are a headache.
However, if you use an existing backend for your IoT development right from scratch in a minimum period with a small budget, then using a current backend solution is the best option.
The current solutions are offered as cloud services. The pros include:
- Its fast and relatively cost-effective.
- Monitoring, support, and administration of IoT protocol standards and millions of IoT devices.
- High scalability for connecting as many AI-powered IoT devices as required.
Besides this, it is easy to integrate with other services with the help of API. But again, this approach has its cons, such as a lot of time is required to adapt the system to the business custom requirements.
Also, adding unique IoT devices is complex, and many problems may occur if a custom software module is integrated. With custom IoT solutions developed by your AI development company, you get the flexibility and freedom to focus better on app/product development with no distractions.
Advantages Of Custom IoT Applications
Customized IoT apps offer many benefits beyond enhancing scalability for rapid business expansion.
They can be a great help to you and your company.
Efficiency Increases: Businesses can automate and streamline their operations with customized IoT apps.
They can also access real-time data. This can dramatically reduce the time and manual labor required to complete tasks and improve productivity.
Cost Savings: By utilizing IoT technology, business owners can save labor, energy, and inventory expenses while boosting efficiency and accuracy.
This can result in significant cost savings and improved profitability.
Increased Client Satisfaction: IoT applications allow businesses to gain valuable insight into customer behavior.
This will enable them to personalize their services and provide a better experience. This can improve customer experiences and satisfaction and commitment.
Enhanced Security: Businesses can create custom IoT applications to address their security requirements.
This allows them to protect their data and assets from unauthorized access. This will help protect customers data and data integrity. With these facilities help, your company can expand its customer base and access new markets.
How To Pick The Best Firm For Developing Custom IoT Applications?
With so many options, picking the best business practices for your app development project can be challenging.
Before you make your final decision, be sure to review these aspects:
Experience
Consider the companys prior expertise in developing IoT applications. Hybrid teams with more experience will be better able to comprehend the technological challenges involved in creating a unique IoT app.
You should expect them to have the expertise to develop an app that suits your needs. They must also be able to guide you through the procedure and guarantee that your app is successful.
Technology Expertise
Examine the technical skills of the dedicated team. Ensure the staff is educated on the newest IoT technologies, including cloud computing platforms, embedded systems, hardware and software integrations, and cloud computing platforms.
You will need to have the team proficient in creating custom applications that meet your needs.
Cost
It is also essential to consider the cost of development. Consider the costs involved in developing the application.
Make sure you get competitive rates from your company. It is necessary to consider the long-term cost of maintenance and support for the application. This will ensure transparency and openness from the company.
Reputation
Make careful to look into any app development business processes you are considering the reputation.
You can get a good idea of past customers quality and customer service through reviews and testimonials. It is crucial to confirm that the business requirements you select are up to date on all IoT trends. This will assist you in finding the ideal solution for your IoT application.
Conclusion
To conclude, you must go for custom IoT development if you have a reasonable budget, are willing to hire a reputed AI development company, or hire the resources in-house.
In contrast, prebuilt IoT solutions are ideal for businesses with a limited budget, less time to work on the IoT solution development, and fewer resources to engage in IoT development.
