Enterprises battling inefficiency, poor customer insight, and inability to track money and make decisions have managed to find a solution in IoT apps.

IoT app development companies’ claims are high in this regard: the new interconnection of technology, IoT, is heralded as a next industry revolution by them-an entirely new paradigm with the capabilities to resolve the challenges faced by the modern enterprises.

From improving the efficiency level to providing accurate data to gain the insight, by enhancing capabilities to tracking the funds to enabling organizations to improve business decision-making, IoT apps capabilities are unchallenged at the moment. In fact, technologists associated with IoT app development are highly confident to expose more benefits of IoT apps for the enterprises in future.

Considering the industry’s confidence and the capabilities of the technology, it is not surprising that the global Internet of Things market is projected to grow $8.9 trillion in 2020. Since 2014, its compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is expected to be 19.92%, which is an indicator of growth for the IoT technology and other technologies surrounded by it such as data analytics and tools, Internet and connectivity, security systems.

But before you reach out to an IoT app development company for developing an app that optimizes your critical business-workloads, here are the 5 questions you must ask to yourself and your technology partner.

5 Must-Ask Questions Before Beginning an IoT Development Project

Enterprises looking to get the aspect of IoT or willing to move forward with IoT development project, the checklist goes as this:

#1. Does the mobile device have hardware compatibility with IoT device?

This is an important consideration for your business as hardware capabilities of mobile device is essential for creating an IoT app. The list may not be exhaustive but is highly critical. A number of things that need to be considered include: USB devices, Bluetooth dongles, cameras, audio, and other hardware peripherals such as storage media, sensors, port expanders, and so on.

The entire hardware system of mobile and IoT device should be compatible to achieve capabilities such as:

• Data processing and storage
• Data acquisition and control
• Connectivity
• Power management

For example, the processing power and storage of the mobile device used in IoT application largely depend on how much data is processed and how much data is consumed by the IoT app. It is the specifications of the processor and capacity of the memory determines the rate at which data is processed.

#2. Who owns the data collected, as it determines how secure the collected data is?

Among the many challenges of IoT, one that is dreaded of all is security. The consequences are so threatening to the entire IoT community that security in every aspect from applications to data is considered a priority.

However, since Internet in itself is not safe at all, often the concerns are put under the cover. But not all things can be ignored. So, for enterprises, it is important to know about the owner the data, as through the data, the real benefit of IoT is realized.

According to IBM, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is generated every day by IoT technology. Most of the IoT application development companies do not keep the data, rather they just want the access, so as to extract necessary information out of it.

Ian Hughes, an analyst at 451 Research, says that “sharing of data across silos and multiple companies can provide significant new insights” and so a cross-correlation of data can be established, after analyzing the risk, to better manage the responsibility of data security.

#3. What programming protocols are being followed to support IoT?

For making an IoT device work with a mobile device, IoT application development companies use a series of programming protocols. An external accessory framework, widely known as common code chunk, to inform the mobile device that another object is attempting to communicate with the device.

Next, the protocols are declared that must be standard to link the IoT device with an IoT app, so that device can be effectively linked and communicate with each other.

#4. Which one you are going to choose between off the shelf IoT platform or build from scratch?

IoT has many layers that makes it workable and useful for the business. A few layers unfold as this:

• Operating system with single or multiple protocols for communications
• Connectivity either through Internet or to an Internet gateway
• Software and infrastructure operating in the cloud or on-premises that organize the data stream
• The software manages the things and update the firmware, if required
• Organization receives the data and process it
• IoT app that end users interacts with

Most of the IoT app development projects revolve around the last 2 layers: receiving organized data, processing the data, and users using the app to complete a task. An off the shelf IoT platform helps in performing time series for archiving for data received, while also provide capabilities for data management and activation, a message bus in real time, and last but not the least, an API for communication to take place between IoT app and the platform.

By creating off the shelf IoT platform, an IoT app development company can save time by simply creating a dashboard and APIs that connects to the data.

#5. Are the business cases for IoT is defined?

IoT is the latest in the business, and so having the app should be focused on realizing its true potential, using the data to generate customer insight, and further using the insight into decision-making. All these require effective change management strategy that would help a business to realize the value of process transformation.

IoT development companies need to be ready with use cases to help enterprises understand the monetization process of the IoT apps or enable them to generate value of the application.

Bottomline Considerations

IoT needs an ecosystem of its own, whether it is related to application to function or to the manage and usage system to realize its value. So, it is essential to create a fully defined process to measure the contribution of IoT into the processes and the business.

This article is contributed by Siya Carla, Solution Consultant at Finoit Technologies