Utilities find that building edge Internet of Things (IoT) applications is complex for many reasons largely revolving around the ecosystem’s immaturity. Suppliers have been taking steps to ease the process. They created development kits, improved software functionality, and focused on delivering turnkey solutions, improvements but more advances are needed for these systems to become simple to install.
IoT meshes with mobile development because it moves processing closer to the source. When building an IoT application, energy companies encounter many hurdles. Because the technology is new, development tools have been immature or not available. This shortcoming forced energy companies to spend a lot of time creating the infrastructure needed to link different components and less time adding features that users desire. IoT vendors responded.
One step is creating application development kits. Here, they layer software on top of items, like radios, sensors, and microprocessors, so writing applications becomes easier. Utilities now find toolboxes and application development suites that ease their IoT development work.
Another change is IoT software has become sleeker. Legacy IoT development software was bulky and lacked functionality. In many cases, energy companies found that their prototype software ran differently when it was installed on their network. As a result, development time increased before a solution was finalized.
Today, developers can use IoT development kits with smaller sizes, lower costs, more functionality, and improved performance. These enhancements help to ensure that pilot mobile applications more accurately reflect a finished product’s capabilities.
Another hurdle is the mobile solutions came in a piecemeal fashion. Therefore, energy companies had to tie them together for each deployment. New solutions are becoming more turnkey and require less custom work.
IoT Software Development Better But Not a Panacea
While progress has been made, challenges remain. The IoT landscape is broad and offers utilities many options. Consequently, energy companiescan quickly feel overwhelmed.
These systems are complicated, and energy companies lack experience. An energy company has to be sure that it understands all of the pieces that need to be put into place and the ongoing maintenance required with each system. They do not want to take on more development work than they can handle.
IoT delivers intelligence in areas that previously had no processing power. Security becomes a concern. When deploying these new features, energy companies need to put strongsecurity checks in place.
IoT offers energy companies ways to improve their mobile workforce. The technology pushes intelligence out into new end remote points, so they can monitor their equipment and infrastructure proactively. Deployments have been difficult. Lately, the tools have become easier to deploy, but development and maintenance challenges remain.