In Part 1, we explored the massive opportunity connected products represent for industrial OEMs—and the significant technical challenges that have historically held manufacturers back. The good news? The barriers to entry have dramatically lowered thanks to pre-built platforms and foundations that eliminate months of custom development.
Accelerating Connected Product Development with Pre-Built Foundations
A significant trend emerging in the IoT space is the use of pre-built templates and foundations to accelerate development of connected products. These solutions provide industrial OEMs with a head start, delivering connected product capabilities without requiring extensive custom development.
Losant's Connected Product Foundation (CPF) exemplifies this approach, offering a complete, off-the-shelf application template that includes the essential building blocks for connected product solutions. With first-class support for white labeling, manufacturers can have a fully-branded application ready to deploy in minutes—all without writing a single line of code.
The Connected Product Opportunity for Industrial OEMs
This approach delivers several critical advantages for industrial OEMs:
Reduced Development Costs and Time-to-Market
By starting with a pre-built foundation, manufacturers can dramatically reduce the time and resources required to launch connected product offerings. Rather than spending months or years building basic functionality, teams can focus immediately on the unique aspects of their specific use case. For product managers under pressure to deliver digital capabilities quickly, this acceleration can mean the difference between market leadership and playing catch-up.
Proof of Concept Acceleration
The ability to quickly deploy a functional connected product platform is particularly valuable for internal proof of concept (POC) initiatives. Product managers can instantly invite internal or external stakeholders to experience the solution, helping them understand its value proposition and potential impact. This rapid visualization capability can be crucial for securing executive buy-in and investment for larger connected product initiatives.
Standardized Architecture with Best Practices Built In
Over years of IoT implementation experience, platform providers have identified optimal web frameworks, resource organization approaches, and architectural patterns for connected product applications. Pre-built foundations encapsulate these learnings, providing an opinionated framework that guides development while ensuring security and scalability.
For operations leaders concerned about maintaining and scaling connected product platforms, this architectural guidance is invaluable. It helps ensure that applications are built on solid foundations that can support growth in users, devices, and data volume without requiring fundamental redesign.
The Importance of Open Implementation
One of the biggest differentiators in modern connected product platforms is the availability of open implementations that can be modified and extended. When industrial OEMs adopt a connected product foundation, every aspect can be customized to their specifications.
For product managers and operations leaders, this customizability translates to future-proofing. It ensures that as requirements evolve and customer needs change, the connected product platform can adapt without requiring wholesale replacement. This flexibility is particularly important in industrial settings, where use cases often have unique requirements that can't be fully anticipated during initial platform selection.
Building with Modular, Reusable Components
Modern connected product platforms are increasingly built using self-contained, modular components. Elements like device tables, event displays, and dashboard widgets can be easily moved, reused, and reconfigured to meet specific requirements. This component-based architecture creates significant advantages for ongoing development and maintenance.
For product managers, modular components enable rapid iteration and customization. New features can be added by incorporating pre-built components rather than developing from scratch, accelerating the evolution of the connected product offering. For operations teams, this modularity simplifies maintenance and updates, as individual components can be modified without disrupting the entire application.
The standardization of these components on common architectural patterns further enhances their value. It reduces or completely eliminates integration work when incorporating new functionality, allowing industrial OEMs to continuously enhance their connected product offerings with minimal development effort.
Continuous Evolution Through Platform Advancement
A key advantage of building on established IoT platforms is the continuous delivery of new, turnkey functionality. As platform providers develop new capabilities and components, these can be immediately incorporated into existing connected product applications. This ensures that OEM offerings remain current with technological advancements without requiring significant internal development resources.
For industrial OEMs operating with limited software development teams, this continuous platform evolution provides a multiplier effect. The manufacturer's development resources can focus on industry-specific functionality and unique value propositions, while the platform provider handles core technology advancement, security updates, and general feature enhancement.
Now that you understand the tools available to overcome technical barriers, what's the smartest way to put them to work? The key lies in strategic implementation that maximizes value while minimizing risk.
Learn More About Losant
Losant's IoT platform helps organizations of all sizes get their solution into market faster. Whether it's a new IoT application or to migrate an existing application, Losant is here to help. If you'd like to learn more, please contact us.