Building a Remote Monitoring Service to Boost Revenue

Building a Remote Monitoring Service to Boost Revenue

If you’re an OEM and pursuing the Internet of Things (IoT), one of your biggest opportunities is to offer an IoT service that extends the value of the equipment you sell. A remote monitoring service gives your customers instant visibility into the performance and health of their equipment, and simultaneously provides you with a new recurring revenue model.

Five Steps for Building a Remote Monitoring Service

Step 1: Understand Your Equipment’s Controller

The first hurdle is gaining access to your controller’s data. Nearly every controller exposes some form of communication. It could be Modbus, CAN bus, OPC UA, or any number of other protocols. Your equipment may be using a third-party controller (e.g. Dynagen) or it may be something you’ve developed in-house. In either case, the first step is to contact the appropriate representative and get access to the communication protocol for your controller.

Step 2: Choose Your IoT Platform Provider

Delivering an IoT service requires a large amount of platform technology that sits underneath what your customers experience. This includes edge computing, data ingestion, data warehousing, real-time stream processing, batch analytics, visualizations, and finally an end-user experience tailored to your brand and customers.

It’s called a platform because it’s an application-agnostic base of technology not specifically tailored for any single use case. An IoT platform provides the foundational technology that underpins nearly all IoT products and services.

It’s a “buy vs. build” decision. The reason buying an IoT platform is recommended is because building this technology is a significant cost and time investment that does not directly add any value to your customers. IoT platform providers also bring a unique skill set to your organization when it comes to developing secure and scalable cloud services.

Read the full post from Losant for the remaining three steps on how to build a remote monitoring service.

 

About the Author

Brandon Cannaday has 15 years of software engineering experience in chemical detection, telecommunications, cloud services, and The Internet of Things. As CPO of Losant, Brandon works directly with enterprise customers to help bring to life their own IoT products on top of Losant’s platform. Brandon is an avid board game player, constant tinkerer, and enjoys learning and experimenting with new technology.