What is IoT Platform and Why IoT is Important?

In today’s blog, we shall dive into one of the most interesting techs which fascinate all of us i.e., “Internet of Things and its vast platform”. Yes, you read it right. Just giving you a brief outline, we shall initially try to understand what the word IoT defines and then move into the IoT platform, why we should use it, and its advantageous features. In the second half of the blog, our blog will be more focused on how IoT works, characteristics of IoT, some real-time applications of IoT, and finally with the summarizing paragraph. Hope you all can discover new insights by reading this blog.

What is IoT Platform and Why IoT is Important?

What is IoT? Network of physical objects, connected devices, collect and transfer data, wireless network without human intervention. In a nutshell, that’s what we mean by IoT or Internet of Things. In basic words, the Internet of Things, an arrangement of interrelated figuring gadgets, alludes to the quickly developing organization of associated objects that are prepared to gather and trade information progressively utilizing installed sensors starting from brilliant urban communities to computerized vehicles, and then from shrewd stethoscopes to canine restraints, the globe is getting more interconnected to each other step by step. The word ‘thing’, within the context of the Internet of things (IoT) refers to an entity or simply an object that features a unique identity of its own, an embedded system and is able to share data over a network.

What is IoT Platform? Yes, now we have got an idea of what is meant by IoT. Now, the next question arises what is meant by the IoT platform which is one of the vital topics of our today's blog. In layman’s language, what we can say is an IoT platform is a bunch of various components that permits designers to fan out the applications, distantly gather information, secure availability, and finally execute the sensor management system. Moreover, this platform oversees availability of the gadgets and permits designers to fabricate new versatile programming applications.

Some of the common IoT platforms which provide development tools and cloud services include AWS IoT platform, Thingworx 8 IoT platform, Salesforce IoT cloud, Cisco IoT Cloud connect, Microsoft Azure IoT Suite, Kaa IoT platform, Google Cloud’s IoT platform, IBM Watson IoT platform, Oracle IoT platform, Thingspeak IoT platform.

Why Use an IoT Platform?

The software platform that makes an Internet of Things solution work by providing data storage, communication, device coordination and control, data access, cloud, and device software deployment and the important foundation for the entirety of the above-mentioned aspects is what we define by an IoT platform. Every IoT platform incorporates its own particular arrangement of remarkable highlights and systems. Various stages range from different pieces of the stack. A few stages/platforms incorporate their own equipment, while others run on a wider scope of a variety of equipment variations. Others are tied just to a solitary cloud supplier, while some allow the clients to pick where the backend programming is facilitated.

So, what are the benefits of the IoT platform which has moved it forward to become the top most trending technology? An IoT platform is intended to diminish the improvement time required by our IoT project by giving instant innovation stack. In any case, there are more reasons why we prefer utilizing IoT platforms other than the reduction in developed time:

● It assists us to improve and grow our business case early. Validating the business case and finally demonstrating it to our stakeholders should be the first goal of our project.

● It helps us to keep progressing with market advertising rapidly as early customers are always eager to start our product as early as possible.

● It might incorporate instant programming, devices, and materials that we can utilize for our own project.

● It allows us to keep away from bunny openings such as security, accreditations, and consistency.

● It includes features that could be fundamental for our tasks in projects.

● It lessens our risks and unwanted expenses.

How Does IoT Work?

Curious to know how IoT works? The working of IoT varies according to its ecosystem or what we know as architecture. However, the key concepts of their work are somewhat similar as the entire working process of IoT initially starts with the device themselves, which can be our smartphones, electronic appliances, or digital watches.  They safely and securely connect with the IoT stage which further gathers and investigate each of the information present in these various gadgets and platforms. It then moves the most significant information with applications to gadgets. The most important aspect is that these IoT devices have the capability to complete most of the work without any human involvement, no doubt we can interact with the devices anytime we want, such as setting up the devices properly or maybe giving the necessary instructions to access the data.

Characteristics of  IoT Platform

Just understanding the theoretical definition and working of IoT won’t really work for us. Let us try to grasp some knowledge about some crucial IoT characteristics:

1. First comes connectivity. A quite familiar topic that doesn’t need a deeper amount of explanation. It is quite important to establish a proper connection between all the levels of IoT devices and their automation platform starting from the server, cables, sensors, and cloud too. Good connectivity provides high-speed communication between the devices and the cloud.

2. Next comes analyzing the things. Once we have completed connecting all the essential devices, now comes real-time analyzing of our collected data and using them effectively to build business model solutions. Once we gather a good insight into our system, we can then call it a smart system.

3. Now comes the most vital role of communication between the devices that get connected to each other so that they can communicate data and this data is often analyzed. The occurrence of communication can take place over short distances or sometimes extended to some specific or a very long range. Examples of such include LAN or MAN network over Wi-Fi connectivity.

4. The fifth characteristic is Intelligence. The aspect of intelligence is to make things smart through the use of IoT devices. For instance, if we have an automatic ice-cream parlor whose strawberry flavor is going to end, then the machine automatically informs us about the unavailability and again asks us to order the flavor from the remaining ones.

5. After intelligence comes action which is in simple meaning we can say the consequence of intelligence. This is normally a manual action where IoT provides more improved ways to manage and monitor remote business operations. The action is normally based upon debates regarding phenomena and automation.

6. The last comes the ecosystem. In simple words, we can define IoT as an ecosystem that connects and transfers data embedded with software, sensors present within the same network that integrate over the network, and cloud computing. Know about an embedded security!

The uses of IoT technologies are expanding at a rapid pace since it turns out to be practically flexible to any innovation that is equipped for giving significant data about its own activity, about the exhibition of a movement, and surprisingly about the ecological conditions that we would prefer to watch and control. Nowadays, almost all business companies from different sectors or domains are adopting this technology to improve, simplify, automate, progress, and control various processes. Now, we shall check out some of the real-world applications of the IoT which are commonly in use. 

1. Airbiquity is a software engineering company which runs on the principle of connected cars provides its over connected user’s updates and data management services over-the-air (OTA). These users are benefited in a way that their family or friends are automatically and immediately notified in case a crash or collision occurs. To date, its use is only restricted to Washington and some of its nearby areas.

2. Dash, the customer service app discovered by Mikolaj Dash is a free, user-friendly app for iOS and Android that receives data from a spread of sensors to keep us updated about our vehicle’s current status and prepare us for any immediate or future maintenance required. The company's app features a parental control operation that helps parents or caretakers permit and urge them with email alerts if a young driver exceeds set thresholds or tries to bypass them. This app is widely used in New York.

3. Raima Database Manager, the world's quickest and most efficient database manager for IoT and Edge gadgets with new geospatial capacities and Restful API. It requires ongoing reaction and empowers astute choices to be made at the gadget level within a response time of microseconds. It has diminished an opportunity to showcase, fulfills the market need for network safety, upholds a wide range of equipment and programming blends.

4. Zubie, an easy to install and use android app offers real-time GPS fleet tracking while monitoring vehicle health, driver performance, and optimizing business in one single and manageable platform. Often it happens that the trend makes the driver have the habit of speed driving, braking hard, drinking and driving, and even accelerating rapidly, then that information is often traced by this application. It will help to avoid dreadful accidents for the drives and thus benefits by increasing fuel efficiency further. Since these apps are in initial stages of their use, so it is used in Minnesota.

5. Queue Hop, the coolest creative stock following and robbery avoidance IOT carried out an android application. Savvy labels get appended to the things at a sale unclipped automatically once the installment gets finished. The framework speeds up the checkout interaction by offering versatile self-administration capacities and permits entrepreneurs to deal with their stock utilizing continuous investigation. Thus, this innovation has the capability of upsetting the whole shopping measure, subsequently permitting entrepreneurs to redistribute assets for better proficiency and improved client support.

6. Josh came into existence with the idea that our home should inspire and delight us by providing voice-controlled home automation with the use of many devices. Imagine a situation, the TV volume increases suddenly and at that very moment a crucial call comes in and you can't find the remote? Don’t worry. This is where Josh comes into play where we can turn down the volume using our watch, phone, tablet, or computer.

7. Eyelock, the most advanced indoor iris-based identity is an authentication technology on the market today. It is fast, accurate, and touchless being a suite of IoT products serving the business, financial, automotive, hospitality, mobile, and healthcare sectors for both indoor and outdoor security. It creates solutions that can be directly embedded in OEM products, simply redefining security.

Conclusion:

Are you fascinated like me learning more about various topics in this domain? Yes, right. Implementing the use of data analytics in IoT, allows the business sectors to flourish and gain insight as various information can be extracted from massive datasets and contribute to customer preferences and choices. Data analytics and statistics are somewhat interrelated topics and in order to carry out a proper analysis on any topic, we need proper knowledge of statistics and its two important sub-topics Correlation and Covariance. Ready to read more. Check this article out and be a tech lover!