What started as two guys on a couch dreaming up app ideas has morphed into a tech powerhouse, spread across three continents and 12 time zones to tackle global challenges. This only became possible because of the talent and dedication of our team. I am so extremely proud and thankful for their passion, vigor, and inspiration. From humble beginnings we found ourselves in frequent conversations, searching for an opening into a new technology bound to change the world, optimistic but unaware of where the future would take us.

Although the road may be windy, the path is clear for us to invent and reinvent the mobile future. It’s a thrill and blessing to work with the most innovative companies on earth, from VC-backed start-ups to Fortune 500’s; like Google, Redbull, and Harvard Medical School have entrusted us to turn their imaginative concepts into a digital reality.

Over our ten years in business, we’ve been honored to receive numerous accolades and awards including making the INC 5000 list for fastest-growing companies in America three years in a row and have been named a top mobile app developer on earth by Clutch Research every year since 2014. This emphasis on disruptive design has allowed Dogtown Media to help startups bring concepts to the market enabling organizations to go on and raise over $1 billion dollars in venture capital and create thousands of high-paying jobs across the country.

Outside of disruptive design, Dogtown Media has prioritized outreach and philanthropy, raising significant funds for charitable foundations, and promoting STEM education to thousands of students in the United States, Japan, and Latin America. Further, Dogtown Media has partnered with government institutions to formulate smart policy and accelerate the adoption of telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and digital health innovation within health systems across the nation.

I want to wholeheartedly thank our team, our esteemed clients, the tech community, and everyone who has helped make this journey so special. We couldn’t be more excited to see what’s in store over the next 10 years.

Onwards, and upwards.

Marc Fischer // CEO & Co-founder of Dogtown Media

IoT devices interact with our environment. They observe, analyze, and understand our surroundings in real-time, and they transform this information into useful data and actions for human comfort. As IoT continues to grow and expand, IoT mobile app development will become increasingly popular because mobile allows for flexibility when transmitting data and due to the ease of developing mobile apps. And as we see the roll-out of 5G across public areas and even within our cars, mobile apps will become nearly essential.

Here’s what we know to be the benefits and challenges of IoT app development, and we’ll also cover how IoT impacts mobile app development.

The Benefits

Mobile apps allow consumers to check-in and make changes on the go. Thus, mobile apps afford accessibility for consumers, letting them access any connected device from anywhere in the world with their mobile phones. Because of this flexibility, you should seek out an IoT app developer who will factor scalability and increased bandwidth into your device’s mobile app.

Because IoT generates so much data, it enables companies to reach insightful conclusions. Most IoT devices collect data in real-time, which opens up many opportunities to enrich your customer experience, optimize your products, adjust your marketing strategy, and improve business operations. The possibilities are limitless in how data can impact your business and how your customers view your products.

For companies who are willing to risk the initial investment cost, IoT often returns much more on the investment over time. Because of the uncertainties in how to apply IoT to a business and the upfront costs involved, many businesses will not mess with an emerging technology like IoT until they’re more convinced of its benefits. As a result, companies who do make the leap gain a competitive edge over their peers.

We expect to see these benefits become entrenched in IoT development as time marches on.

The Challenges

As with anything worth doing, there are challenges abound when implementing IoT technology. One of these is data collection and processing. Because IoT generates so much data every hour, companies need adequate storage capacity, whether that’s physically or on the cloud. With so much data, it’s impossible to know what questions can be answered and how to best utilize the data for maximum return on investment. This may require hiring data analysts and data scientists with knowledge of machine learning, which is another cost.

IoT is notorious for its security and privacy issues. The nature of interconnected devices leaves IoT systems open to hacking and cybersecurity attacks. For example, in 2016, the Dyn cyberattacks affected users in Europe and North America, as it took down popular websites like Amazon, HBO, Esty, and San Francisco-headquartered Airbnb in addition to hosting providers like HostGator, Github, Imgur, and Squarespace. At Dogtown Media, application cybersecurity is one of our top priorities from the beginning of the project to the middle and the end.

IoT systems that interface with mobile apps require a balance of hardware and software. As a result, both need to be working in tandem such that updating one doesn’t cause the other to crash. The two need to be linked closely and with regard for the future to ensure the best performance, the least amount of software patching, and a regular update schedule.

IoT’s Impact on App Development

IoT systems offer a lot for mobile app development. One of these benefits is the lowered cost for developing a mobile app: because IoT already is made up of multiple integrations including emerging technologies like machine learning, AR, and VR, adding a mobile app into the mix won’t take much time. And due to the data-heavy nature of IoT, it won’t take a lot of work to find the right data for the mobile app.

IoT also opens the door for more interactivity and personalization in mobile apps. Apps can allow users to control multiple devices and get information on their uptime and performance. Businesses can also use mobile apps to optimize internal operations by allowing employees to keep an eye on machinery and equipment, data generation, and device relationships. Some companies even use IoT-connected mobile apps to reorder office supplies and schedule in-office repairs automatically when needed.

IoT’s ability to connect devices from all over the world into a single system affords it location independence. This works nicely with mobile apps which also tout location independence as a major benefit. This connecting feature has introduced IoT into homes and cars, allowing us to change the thermostat from the driveway or shut all blinds from the office. It also lets us see who’s at the door even when we’re at the grocery store.

IoT Is a Fundamental Part of the Mobile Future

We know IoT will be a major part of the future, but IoT-connected mobile apps will be present alongside IoT systems as well. IoT mobile apps give companies stronger relationships with their customers, higher decision-making power, more ways to optimize business processes, and a way to keep employees engaged. If your company is looking to level up its business value and reach more customers, consider developing a mobile app for your IoT system.

Another more imperative use case is telemedicine, which has exploded this year. In fact, Boston-based Forrester has forecasted that patients will schedule more than one billion virtual health visits this year alone. Where there is increased demand in data transfer, storage, and encryption, there have been major changes in how IT departments design the data storage that enables these use cases to work so smoothly for users; here are some ways the pandemic is changing and impacting IoT data storage.

Automation in Supply Chains

While many of these use cases will eventually become more automated with sophisticated software and robotics, the fact of the matter is that they remain largely manual today. The supply chain’s need for seamless distribution and fulfillment is incredibly demanding for data storage, especially during the pandemic. Pre-pandemic, data requests would enter a central data center that would handle where the request was sent to: usually to the data center closest to the consumer with the largest supply of stock. This enabled customers to receive packages with two-day shipping.

When the pandemic began, however, most retailers saw their shipping logistics become less reliable and more complex. Customers were irate at packages delivered a month and a half too late, not to mention the constant lack of toilet paper supply available to buy online. But as the pandemic has continued, online shopping has exploded, and humans have had a difficult time keeping up with technology.

Too many orders are coming through the system, and mail carriers, those who are responsible for carrying the package “the last mile” to the customer, are absolutely overwhelmed and exhausted from working overtime every day for the past eight months. With automation, robots can deliver smaller, less dangerous packages the last mile. But these new tools require more robust data storage at every step of the data journey.

Better Connectivity

Data storage is intimately connected to data connectivity. It directly impacts speed, bandwidth, and reliability across the entire network. Being able to access data whenever needed, for real-time analysis is critical and quickly becoming commonplace.

The closer to the source that the data is, the faster it moves for analysis, insights, and value. As a result, data infrastructure must meet the demand for data to be transferred, received, stored, and analyzed on demand. If your enterprise works with a variety of IoT devices, it’s important to consider using specific and specialized storage solutions so that your data is handled properly through the entire data journey. Edge computing is a great solution to look into, as it provides less latency, faster analysis, and savings on data storage solutions.

The Rollout of 5G

5G is one of the most exciting emerging technologies, and its rollout is imminent across the world. Many large cities are already benefitting from the ramped-up speeds that 5G brings, but many nations don’t have access to this technology yet. As work becomes increasingly remote across the world, reliable, high-speed, and low-latency connections are necessary, even if the person is on the road.

5G is also vital for industrial IoT needs, like autonomous manufacturing processes, factory floor machine maintenance, and more powerful processing requirements. Robots, cameras, and transportation routes are other use cases for industrial IoT enterprise data storage.

No More General-Purpose IoT Architecture

Many businesses implemented their IoT applications with general-purpose architecture. Pre-pandemic, this was the norm, and it wasn’t too bad of a solution. But these general-purpose architectures cannot meet the increased data transfer and IoT workload that each enterprise’s application has been inundated with since the start of the pandemic. General-purpose architecture fails to provide adequate enough scalability, reliability, accessibility, and capacity, all of which were impacted greatly by the pandemic.

General-purpose architecture also fails to account for the various tribulations that an IoT system can face due to external circumstances; it cannot adapt according to human-centered problems that overflow into the IoT system. On the other hand, purpose-built architecture utilized solutions, systems, devices, and platforms to maximize data storage for real-time hiccups to the IoT system. Data storage is at the heart of any emerging technology, and it’s imperative that IoT systems are designed with data storage in mind. It cannot be an afterthought. Data storage must be addressed early on and frequently during and after an IoT system’s implementation.

What’s The “New Normal”?

Data storage is the foundation of many of our new habits and hobbies, as well as an indispensable part of the “new normal” for healthcare providers and patients. Data storage impacts businesses, individuals, supply chains, human-machine interactions, machine-to-machine communications, and emerging technologies like AI, 5G, and IoT.

To stay pandemic- and future-proof, make sure you’ve got a unique data storage solution that can scale and adapt to your enterprise’s and your customers’ changing needs.

Young brunette woman traveling in Thailand on train during pandemic Coronavirus. 20s Hispanic in a protective mask wear summer sleeveless clothes and backpack in Asia.

Companies in the travel industry have a responsibility to care for and protect their customers during trips. They should do their best to keep clients out of harm’s way and help them get where they need to go safely, especially if dangerous situations arise.

Despite this duty, varying guidelines and constraints have only served to stoke more fear among travelers during the COVID-19 pandemic. With this unprecedented level of uncertainty, what could help restore the public’s trust in traveling?

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies has yielded capabilities that many of us could never have imagined just a few decades ago. We can now monitor our health on the fly, attend medical appointments over our mobile phones, and order groceries through our smart assistants. Perhaps these technologies could also help us tackle some of the biggest issues facing travel today?

Troubling Times for Travel

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the travel industry upside down. Airlines have drastically reduced flights and limited the number of passengers that can board each plane. Hotels have had to implement meticulous measures to ensure proper sanitation and ensure that staff knows what to do in the event that a guest falls ill during their stay. But while these efforts have certainly helped during the coronavirus crisis, more long-term solutions must be instilled.

“Without guidance to promote the health and safety of travelers, there will be no travel, no sustainable reopening of our businesses and no revival of our economy,” according to the U.S. Travel Association’s May 2020 “Travel in the New Normal” industry report.

John F. Rizzo is the CEO of travel booking software company Deem. He believes the solution lies in data-fueled technology: “The only way to quell fear is to create transparency and have data that’s science-based be available to a traveler in real-time and have it curated correctly so that you can make an informed, data-based decision on where you’re traveling.”

According to Rizzo, this would allow us to not only build trust in travel again but also make the industry capable of automatically addressing problems as they occur.

4 Ways Tech Can Rescue Travel

It seems the travel industry already knows their future depends on tech. For instance, one company is already offering automated flight ticket exchange to quickly adapt to their customers’ ever-changing needs. Another has established a communication protocol that allows companies to quickly locate, communicate with, or reroute their traveling employees. They can even dispatch a response team if required.

But these examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Other technologies can evolve how we travel in novel ways.

1. Leveraging Real-Time Data

By collecting and analyzing real-time data from hotels, airlines, and other transit hubs, travelers can make better-informed, healthier decisions. For example, a traveler could easily see if his or her flight to New York City is booking middle seats or not. They could also gain insight into what safety precautions the airline is taking in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Real-time data could even be leveraged to produce a safety scorecard for regions that shine a light on viral outbreaks, political or social unrest, and even crime rates. This information could also be used to recommend specific transportation means and ensure that the traveler’s lodging of choice is in a safe area.

Obviously, personal privacy should play a paramount role in how we examine and act upon data in the travel industry. For example, companies like Google and Apple are hard at work to find ways to notify people that they may be in the vicinity of someone who was potentially exposed to the coronavirus. While this allows people to avoid this person, that person’s privacy must also be protected. Whether we get this right or wrong will establish a precedent for how we handle other health crises in the future.

2. Artificial Intelligence

AI and its subsets such as machine learning now allow us to seamlessly employ predictive analytics to understand likely outcomes of various situations. By combining historical information with real-time data, they can help us recognize and comprehend subtle but vital patterns.

Essentially, these technologies can empower real-time data analysis so that we can alert travelers faster about unusual activities. And they can even help in providing a useful solution to any trouble a commuter encounters.

3. Automation

Besides unparalleled insights, harnessing real-time data analysis and AI enables us to automate more things. And people are definitely ready to accept things that are more automated. A prime example of this is automatically switching planned trips without human intervention if any issue or obstacle arises.

As automation technology continues advancing, travel companies will soon be able to push a button to take care of travelers when unsafe situations occur. On the flip side, travelers will also be able to simply push a button to be directed towards safety if they feel that their well-being could be compromised.

4. Touch-Free Interfaces

The coronavirus pandemic has made it readily apparent that we must make travel as contactless as possible. Technology like the Internet of Things (IoT) is perfect for this. With IoT, cars can be opened with a smartphone — no key or touching door handles required. Why can’t we apply this to other methods of transit?

Soon, we’ll be able to open our hotel room door without touching the knob thanks to our smartphones and near-field communication (NFC) technology. Perhaps we’ll also be able to skip stopping by the concierge too. It’s not too outrageous to imagine a near future where we just walk into a hotel, get detected and recognized by geolocation, and have our credit card information filed away in a split second. The technology then guides us to our designated suite, which then opens its doors as we approach it.

This may sound farfetched, but similar concepts will be implemented in flight check-ins, ticketing, identification verification, and even ordering food while waiting in the airport.

Getting Where You Need To Go With Less Friction

Technology has shown us that it’s possible to have streamlined, efficient experiences in our everyday lives. So why can’t we have the same advantages when it comes to travel?

COVID-19 has undoubtedly wreaked havoc on the global travel industry. But it’s also forcing us to think of new ways to make our transits safer. We’re now considering what the most optimal approaches would be with regards to flights, train trips, and bus rides. And it’s becoming clear that technology will play an integral role in making these new ideas a reality.

How do you think technology can make travel safer? What would make you feel at ease while boarding a plane in the post-pandemic word? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Guy holds credit card and dials PIN code terminal. Acquiring services bank places in stores, at gas stations. Special payment terminals with which they accept payments by bank cards

The Internet of Things (IoT) has impacted several industries for the better over the past decade. Thanks to IoT, businesses in various sectors can cut costs, rapidly improve product quality, meet customer demands faster, and even forecast maintenance needs before a breakdown occurs.

For finance, IoT has made it so that you don’t have to be in New York City, the financial capital of the world, to elevate your company’s offerings. And for retail, IoT has helped struggling small businesses and new retailers make a splash in their markets without too much extra effort. Let’s dig deeper into the benefits for these two industries. Here are six ways that IoT is going to drive growth and expansion in the finance and retail industries.

1. Improved Point of Sale (POS) for Customers

POS is already much sleeker than it was ten years ago, thanks to companies like Square and Stripe. But the POS industry is a major one because it interfaces between the customer and the business and requires extra-strength cybersecurity to function in a trustworthy manner. The industry, which is projected to reach an estimated worth of $109 billion by 2025, will continue to evolve to meet and exceed customers’ expectations.

Some changes that we will see in the next five or ten years is the implementation of biometric POS, mobile POS, and digital product tracking that streamlines remote payments, among other major improvements. IoT will also bring about upgrades to the storage, processing, and transmittal of data in a more secure way, while also providing modern analytics that keeps a close eye on security attacks. As a result, customers can expect a more seamless experience, while businesses will save more money and effort.

2. Wearables as Credit Cards

Speaking of POS systems, wearables are going to grow in popularity as “wearable wallets” in the next few years. As the number of wearables in use continues to explode, we’ll see our smartwatches start to work for us in a multitude of ways. For example, if you enter your bank, its IoT system may connect to your wearable, which it can use to verify your information, allowing you to skip all of the boring stuff and go straight for the task you came to accomplish.

This will not only improve the customer experience, but it’ll provide the bank detailed analytics on what most customers come in to do. Using this information, the bank can develop an IoT application that provides the popular in-person service remotely and securely. According to a study by Markets and Markets, the global IoT market for banking and finance will grow to $2.03 billion by 2023, which is an eight-fold growth in five years.

3. Better Inventory Management

For retailers, inefficient inventory management can cost thousands of dollars a month in time and effort. Research shows that U.S. retailers lose around $45 billion every year due to a lack of inventory and $224 billion every year due to excess inventory. With IoT, automation is the name of the game in inventory management.

Real-time tracking of inventory will be a default method for managing inventory counts and projected sales figures. This IoT-enabled system will be connected directly to the POS system in each retailer’s store, generating up-to-date inventory numbers that are accurate upon inspection in real-time. This management system can even be extended to the retailer’s e-commerce store so that no customer is ever left sad that they were able to order an item, only to be notified later on that the item was sold out when the customer put in their order.

4. Automating Cybersecurity

IoT will help the retail and finance industries automate and fortify their cybersecurity protocols. Both industries utilize motion sensors and cameras in their facilities, and connecting these devices into an IoT ecosystem can fully round out cybersecurity efforts. The sensing and tracking technology can immediately alert staff and authorities to unauthorized third-parties and suspicious behavior, while also leading the effort to stop the threat by locking doors, shutting down specific systems, and providing information to identify the problem.

5. Smarter Asset Monitoring

Asset monitoring is becoming increasingly automated with IoT and computers, but it still, as of now, requires a lot of manual checks and processes. With more developed IoT applications, gathering information and real-time data can be automated. Additionally, this automated data collection will be automatically analyzed and compared to other data points to understand the current state as well as predict what is to come.

IoT can also utilize sensors attached to assets to track the assets and their environment (like temperature, proximity, humidity, and movement) from manufacturing to delivery at the customer’s house. Using this information, retailers can optimize their asset storage and movement procedures and processes for maximum efficiency and revenue.

6. Making Risk Assessment Easy

Risk assessment may sound like a harmless financial term, but it’s what led to the 2008 Recession. It’s a very important process in banking that is intertwined with subjectivity and predictive analytics. Using IoT and big data, lenders and bankers can compare vast amounts of information before determining a customer’s risk amount. With this data, there is a conveniently-calculated risk profile that can forecast risks for consumers and businesses.

The Future of Retail and Finance

Both retail and finance are growing rapidly, even throughout the pandemic, and experts predict that IoT will only speed up the growth of these two industries. According to Markets and Markets, IoT technology in retail is expected to reach $35 billion by the end of 2020. With that amount of growth, we can only hope that consumers will eventually see some savings from their favorite retailers!

The former consists of manual contact tracing, while the latter consists of social distancing, using masks, and frequent deep sanitation. But these measures aren’t sufficient enough to help people and children avoid contracting the coronavirus. We need a technology-based solution that makes things more streamlined and reliable.

What’s Digital PPE?

We can use Internet of Things (IoT) applications to reliably trace and monitor contact tracing and encourage social distancing between children and employees. This type of protection, being not entirely physical, is known as digital PPE (personal protective equipment). When left to humans, contact tracing is incredibly overwhelming, prone to errors, and time-consuming. What’s worse is that when a human makes an error, even if it’s small, it can result in a massive spread of the virus. By offloading this intensive task to technologies like IoT, we can focus our energy on other efforts.

Health experts have stated that sanitation, masks, and contact tracing aren’t sufficient enough to safely return to work. With digital PPE, we can utilize network protocols, which are already highly precise, to alert people who are standing too close to each other, provide etiquette reminders, and implement more accurate contact tracing.

It can work reliably and safely for an office that spans several cubicles or one that spans several floors to help prevent false positives and false negatives. If an employee is diagnosed falsely with COVID-19, the employer experiences two weeks of reduced productivity. Even worse are false-negative results: an employee could effectively infect their entire workplace if they’re misdiagnosed as not having COVID-19. This mistake could shut down an entire business, forcing all employees to quarantine for two weeks, and it could cause many more businesses to shut down.

Digitizing Contact Tracing

A survey conducted by Data Studio found that 40% of people leave their homes to go to an office. In that group, 31% don’t wear masks all the time due to discomfort or forgetting pandemic social etiquette. 38% of people surveyed admitted that they don’t social distance, and 20% of workplaces weren’t able to enforce or support social distancing. These numbers are concerning, especially for employees who have pre-existing conditions or live with at-risk family members.

With IoT, companies can digitize and supplement social distancing guidelines with contact tracing. There are two ways to digitize contact tracing: through Bluetooth low energy and through ultra wideband.

Bluetooth low energy (BLE)

The BLE method uses (you guessed it) Bluetooth connectivity to calculate the distance between itself and the nearest Bluetooth signal. The signal can be coming from a phone or from a standalone Bluetooth tag.

Google and Apple have already developed a framework called the Exposure Notification System that uses BLE to track contact tracing. This BLE solution is cheap and easy to manage, but it’s prone to error and has data privacy concerns. BLE, in general, can be prone to error: location distance calculations can be off by up to 6.5 feet.

Since social distancing mandates 6 feet, BLE is seemingly untrustworthy and could result in the spread of the virus if trusted blindly. Studies also show that Americans are distrusting of BLE software, not to mention their lack of trust in the tech giants. When utilizing a provider’s solution, we’re forced to trust their processes, privacy practices, and results blindly.

Ultra-wideband (UWB)

Ultra-wideband technology is a radio technology that utilizes low-energy for short-range, high-bandwidth communication over the radio. It can effectively calculate the distance between two parameters and report on the location. The best part? Its error is as low as 4 inches, making it much more accurate than BLE technology.

UWB is less likely to experience noise interference, which makes it perfect for indoor use, like in an office, factory, or school. For social distancing and contact tracing, indoor use is always going to be most important since the virus has less air circulation to move through. In most cases, UWB is the preferred and superior solution for digitized PPE.

Prioritizing Safety in the Return to Work

Both BLE and UWB solutions will incur a cost per employee or child, but many providers offer these technologies at a cheap rate: as low as $100/user. That cost, even though it adds up, is negligible compared to the cost of a false negative employee causing a major outbreak at the company. Experts say many companies spend more than that on keeping the office kitchen stocked with snacks and coffee.

Because the virus spreads so quickly and leaves the infected with permanent lung damage, we must mitigate the spread and risk of infection. By implementing technology like IoT, we can fortify pandemic requirements of social distancing, sanitizing, masks, and contact tracing. Digital PPE greatly reduces and organizes social contacting, while reminding people to socially distance, wear masks, and follow sanitization rules.

Have you gone back to work in the office? Is your company encouraging masks and social distancing? Let us know in the comments below!

The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) has ushered in a variety of advantages for businesses both big and small to leverage. These myriad benefits help to drastically reduce the gaps between users and the digital world. IoT development has consequently become an integral technology for successful digital transformation. In fact, the technology has played a role in bringing digital transformation to almost every sector.

As devices become more intrinsically connected and learn how to push, pull, and act upon data more efficiently and effectively, they are increasingly able to generate new revenue funnels. Thus, IoT technology actually makes it possible to create viable business models.

It must be noted that IoT is constantly evolving. For companies to use it properly, they must stay up-to-date on the various changes and improvements occurring in this field. This is the key to identifying the correct IoT usage for your business endeavors. With that said, here are some of the most popular IoT applications currently being used for accelerating growth and increasing revenue.

1. Platform-Based Business Model

While not the newest type of IoT-based business model, platforms are one of the most useful entries on this list. Platform-based models connect producers and consumers of a niche to streamline symbiotic marketplaces. Product creators can generate revenue directly from transactions, and consumers get access to a multitude of leading options.

Interoperability and interconnection are essential to platform-based business models. Since many tech titans are comprised of several systems both inside and outside their companies, the platform business model is a popular choice to unite endeavors and insights. This is illustrated best by examining Seattle-based developer and e-commerce giant Amazon.

Thanks to IoT, Amazon’s Alexa voice recognition allows the company to collect both third-party data and partners. As a premier voice recognition platform, Alexa enables Amazon to charge companies for application development. This, in turn, increases Amazon’s revenue and reach. While voice recognition has now been present for a few years, it’s only expected to grow and mature in the near future.

2. Outcome-Based Business Model

Paying for the end result is the main thought behind outcome models. This is a popular choice for transportation services. In these cases, an outcome-based business model enables a consumer to obtain a vehicle without having to purchase it completely on their own.

If you’re not planning to utilize a vehicle for its entire life, why spend a significant amount of money for the short time you’ll have it? For example, instead of buying an electric scooter, you can rent it for a specified duration of time.

Here are the main benefits that an outcome-based business model brings to the electric scooter rental industry:

• Versatility in application
• Lower communication costs
• Reduced battery cost
• Secure payments
• Green policy promotion
• Asset distribution

3. Asset Tracking

Asset tracking is the primary reason why IoT technology has been heavily adopted by supply chains. Why, you ask? Because it allows both shipping and logistics businesses to cost-effectively optimize their supply chain visibility.

IoT-connected devices are able to identify, monitor, and track practically any type of asset in real-time. As a result, it essentially eradicates any chance of item loss or theft. And because IoT allows the supply chain to be constantly updated, asset tracking also helps to drastically reduce inefficiencies. After only a few weeks, many supply chains can analyze their operations to elucidate where bottlenecks or obstacles are occurring.

4. Preventive Maintenace

Besides giving supply chains insight into their operations, IoT can also help protect assets in terms of maintenance. Equipment is one of the biggest expenses for numerous industries. Before, maintenance needs for these costly assets had to be identified through on-site inspections. But this process isn’t perfect, and it can often lead to decreased efficiency and financial loss.

Thanks to IoT, businesses can check on equipment maintenance needs virtually any time they want to. IoT-connected devices can be deployed to constantly monitor equipment remotely and track maintenance schedules. This can radically reduce downtime by preventing any potential malfunctions.

Perhaps best of all, this IoT niche is improving with each iteration. Current offerings in this space are much more sophisticated than their counterparts from only a few years ago. Building a foundation for this now can set you up to become an expert in a type of business that will flourish with more time.

5. Compliance Monitoring

Each year, manufacturers spend millions of dollars on compliance. Quality assurance checks to comply with safety, economic, and environmental regulations can quickly multiply expected costs. Fortunately, IoT is helping businesses mitigate these expenditures to a great extent.

As with asset tracking and preventive maintenance, IoT allows companies to check in on and monitor compliance metrics. With IoT in the picture, the process of compliance not only becomes much more responsive but also reduces costs. A constant flow of real-time information means that safety, economic, and environmental measures can be rapidly refined to prevent any penalties and preserve the well-being of workers.

How Will You Use the Internet of Things?

We hope this short guide has given you some insight into how you can apply IoT to your business endeavors. Remember, IoT is a versatile, adaptable technology — this list really only scratches the surface of what it’s capable of.

Which IoT use case are you interested in applying? If you need help deciding, take a good, hard look at your business holistically. Consider your operations, market, and long-term goals. Doing this should help clarify which IoT application can benefit you the most.

Embracing change and adapting to newer paradigms is essential to surviving and thriving in the tech industry. When Dogtown Media first opened for business in 2011, we knew that the Internet of Things (IoT) was something special. Since then, we’ve striven every day to establish ourselves as a leading IoT app development organization.

Well, it turns out that hard work and perseverance pays off — TopDevelopers.co has named Dogtown Media as a leading IoT app developer!

IoT is evolving fast. It’s imperative that developers in this space keep up with the latest trends and rapidly become efficient at implementing them. We understand the importance and urgency that often come with business augmentation. Whether you’re a fast-growing startup or a large enterprise organization looking to add new capabilities to your fold, consider working with us.

Of course, you don’t have to take our word for it. Check out our portfolio! We’ve worked on everything from cardiac arrest emergency protocols and mobile education technology to apps for better road trips and sleep. Our varied array of work experience, dedication, and proven track record of happy clients are why leading organizations such as Google, YouTube, The United Nations, Lexus, and RedBull have chosen to work with us.

Landing on TopDevelopers.co’s list of top IoT app developers is no easy feat. They meticulously evaluate numerous organizations in this field across the world, not just in our hometown of Los Angeles or even the United States. After narrowing down their list, they trim it even further by examining the experience of every candidate and their history of consistent client satisfaction. With all that said, it’s an amazing honor to make the cut!

Besides being dubbed a top wearable app developer, Dogtown Media was also recently named a top U.S. mobile app developer by TopDevelopers.co. We were also fortunate to be lauded as one of California’s leading app developers by Clutch!

Thanks so much to TopDevelopers.co for recognizing our work. And thanks to our clients, team, and community as well. We often say, “If you can dream it, we can build it!” But you’re really the ones who make this mantra possible.

Who is TopDevelopers.co?

TopDevelopers.co is a widely respected directory and review platform for B2B IT service providers. They take a neutral approach to analyzing companies. The team of analysts at TopDevelopers.co vets organizations through stringent parameters which ensure that only the most competitive firms, businesses, enterprises, and entrepreneurs are filtered through their process. This helps service seekers find the most appropriate solutions for their needs.

These changes aren’t just part of a trend, however; they’re expected to bring patients benefits for a lifetime, and they have the potential to significantly change how we interact with medical systems. One major upgrade IoT has brought to healthcare is medical connectivity, facilitating a stable and seamless link between devices, networks, and patients.

The importance of medical connectivity

IoT-enhanced healthcare companies are using the coronavirus as fuel to improve their products and solutions. With medical connectivity, we can possibly slow down the virus spread. But it depends on medical labs developing vaccines, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and health insurance organizations working together closely and swiftly to save lives. Connecting the entire healthcare ecosystem also has a financial benefit: It carries the taxpayer’s dollar further by reducing the amount of back-and-forth between all of the system’s components.

Medical connectivity is also popularizing telehealth for patients; they can get in touch with their doctor on a secure platform without leaving their home, obtain test results remotely, and even view their electronic medical records with attached scan images and test results. This is all possible because of enhanced cloud storage, fast transfer of massive amounts of data, and secure communication platforms. Here are some other ways IoT is improving medical connectivity and patient outcomes through the development of novel medical applications.

Quarantine tracking

In medical facilities where patients are in close quarters, interactive medicine can help with social distancing through constant monitoring. For the public, sustaining quarantine measures and self-isolation is important to reduce the risk of infection and slow the spread in the general population. IoT is helping officials track people who are infected, showing symptoms, or have tested positive with connected drone monitoring and thermal heat sensors and scanners.

Other technologies used to monitor populations wirelessly are cellular positioning systems and GPS-enabled devices. The IoT system then sends any data generated from the scans to the appropriate local government or healthcare sector.

Automation in healthcare

The 5G rollout was imminent before the pandemic started, and the coronavirus has only catalyzed innovation with this technology. This is great news particularly for medical connectivity and healthcare automation. 5G-enabled medical robots can work in instant real-time, scanning temperatures, disinfecting hospital rooms, and delivering drugs as soon as the command is given. By employing robots instead of humans for these tasks, we can protect more humans from being exposed to the virus. Robots also don’t need personal protective equipment, saving more for doctors and nursing staff.

In China, hospitals were able to use 5G-enabled healthcare automation with a 5G+ remote consultation arrangement for medical connectivity across multiple hospitals. It allowed medical personnel to consult patients in other hospitals remotely while opening the door for doctors across different hospitals to network and share findings and new ideas.

AI-enabled robots and chatbots

When COVID-19 cases grew across the world, healthcare systems were inundated with phone calls from patients asking about symptoms and strategies to reduce exposure to the virus. It was overwhelming for staff to take care of everyone’s queries in a reasonable amount of time. Boston-based Partner Healthcare’s hotline topped an average delay time of up to 30 minutes, which caused more panic and distress for patients waiting on the other line.

Healthcare startups saw an opportunity to create AI-enabled chatbots for the websites and mobile apps of organizations like Partner Healthcare. These chatbots helped patients with their questions about the coronavirus, symptoms, and treatment options. The chatbots first asked a series of pre-set questions to screen concerned patients and then provided personalized recommendations based on the severity of the patient’s medical history.

In Wuhan, smart hospitals were set up by the government to help medical providers by utilizing AI-enabled robots in monitoring heart rate, scanning body temperatures of patients, and disinfecting the hospitals. These facilities were a great example of AIoT, which is IoT enhanced by AI, and the robots performed incredibly well in their assigned tasks.

Medical classrooms

Medical school students are dealing with uncertainty in returning to school for hands-on training. As a result, medical schools are creating rotating schedules wherein third- and fourth-year students take turns in remote learning and in-person practice. Some options include step-by-step videos that teach smaller tasks like inserting an IV and virtual case reviews with patients’ medical history.

Anatomy is one class that’s difficult to learn in-person, let alone remotely. But new sophisticated 3D software is replacing dissection at many medical schools this year. At other schools, instructors are wearing body cameras while taking students through a dissection. At home, students can zoom in on any part of the dissection video and even view it from different angles, giving them more quality learning time with the cadaver.

Medical school is an immersive and interactive experience that hones students’ bedside manner and personability, but with the pandemic still in full-swing, school administrations are trying their best to keep classes engaging and effective while prioritizing students’ safety and health.

A more connected future to look forward to

America’s 5G download speeds are atrocious compared to countries across the world. According to an August 2020 report by Opensignal, the U.S. has the lowest download speeds at an average of 50.9 Mbps, while Saudi Arabia and South Korea are reaching 414.2 Mbps and 312.7 Mbps, respectively. We’ve got no real excuse for this. But the good news is that America’s 5G progress is spreading quickly over the entire nation. Hopefully, as infrastructure is built out more, our speeds will receive a nice boost.

With improved 5G connectivity and speeds, we will see IoT-enabled medical connectivity stabilize and expand to reach more patients, at-risk areas, and infected communities. It turns out that when we improve device, sensor, and medical connectivity, we improve how humans connect with each other — and that, in turn, can make all the difference in our healthcare experiences and outcomes.

Over the past few years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has rapidly grown in numerous industries due to the immense benefits it offers. But many organizations still don’t know where to begin when it comes to their own IoT development endeavors. To clear up any confusion around this topic, we’ve decided to write about it!

Welcome to the second chapter of our two-part series on the essential components of a successful IoT ecosystem. In our previous post, we delved into what an IoT ecosystem actually is and the crucial role that embedded elements like sensors and actuators play in them. In case you missed it, you can catch up here.

In this article, we’ll cover connectivity, the cloud, data analytics, and end-user devices. Ready to begin? Let’s jump right in!

Connectivity

Numerous components comprise an IoT ecosystem. With interconnectivity, these elements are able to work with each other to decipher data and implement meaningful actions. Essentially, connectivity enables an IoT ecosystem to become greater than the sum of its parts. We can break connectivity down into two puzzle pieces: protocols and gateways.

IoT Protocols

As we discussed in our previous post for this series, sensors collect data. But after that, this information needs a medium to get where it needs to go. Put another way, IoT ecosystems require a communication channel between its sensors and the cloud. This is where IoT protocols come in.

Using an “invisible” language, IoT protocols transfer data online between two connected devices. They basically allow physical objects to “speak” to one another.

Power consumption, range, bandwidth, and data transmission should all factor into your choice of network protocol. Popular options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, DDS, cellular, ZigBee, and MQTT. These channels make information exchange in your IoT ecosystem seamless and secure.

IoT Gateways

To reach the cloud, the incoming raw data collected by the sensors must pass through a gateway. Remember that “invisible” language we mentioned earlier? Gateways translate network protocols so that all devices within the network can communicate efficiently. They’re an integral communication point and make data traffic management much easier.

Gateways also provide a much-needed layer of security by protecting the IoT ecosystem from unauthorized access. All of the information that flows through a gateway is protected by the latest encryption standards.

As if these capabilities weren’t enough, gateways also preprocess sensor data before transferring it to the cloud. New IoT gateways even have the ability to analyze and minimize sensor information so that the cloud only receives what’s relevant.

The Cloud

Think of the cloud as the place that ties all of your IoT ecosystem components together. A large chunk of your information processing, including data handling, storing, and even decision-making, take place in the cloud. This is even more amazing when you consider that the cloud does all of this for gargantuan amounts of information in a few milliseconds.

Time is a critical factor for IoT, especially for real-time systems being used in healthcare and safety. This means latency cannot be compromised. Thanks to enormous computing power, vast storage capabilities, and myriad networking options, cloud systems are able to cater to an IoT system’s time-sensitive needs while handling a ton of data. In essence, they form the brain of an IoT ecosystem.

It’s worth noting that the cloud isn’t always necessary for IoT; edge computing is a viable option as well. But the cloud is usually preferred due to its high performance, simple scalability, and cost-effectiveness. On the other hand, edge computing may be favored if your IoT initiative requires large amounts of data processing and storage on-premises.

IoT Data Management

Data is the lifeblood of your IoT system. But without proper management and analytics, you can’t make sense of the large amounts of information you’re collecting. Whether you want to hone in on key performance indicators of your system or identify errors in real-time, data management and analytics are a must.

Analytics revolves around converting the raw data of your IoT system into intelligent insights that can be leveraged to make better decisions. Unsurprisingly, this capability is useful in multiple situations; measuring a facility’s temperature or an equipment failure rate are both common scenarios.

Data management and analytics need robust computing power and storage to make sense of an IoT system’s information. But it’s well worth the investment since they help determine vital business insights, predict trends, and drive better efficiency. Many of the tasks involved in analytics can possibly be hosted on the cloud. This will ultimately depend on your IoT architecture.

End-User Devices

End-user devices provide an easily accessible interface that people can use to control various components of the IoT ecosystem. Basically, this is where users can set their preferences for the system. And the more user-friendly the interface is, the easier it is to interact with.

When it comes to the actual interaction, users usually have a couple of options: either interact with the device itself or do so remotely via other devices such as smartphones or tablets. An example of this would be the smart home devices developed by Seattle-based Amazon; these allow users to seamlessly communicate with a variety of “things.”

Design is key here. IoT devices can easily set themselves apart from competitors with better user interfaces. Colors, font, voice, and menus all play important factors here. Just remember that the goal is to remove as much friction as possible.

Time to Get Your IoT Ecosystem off the Ground!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this series on the essential components of an IoT ecosystem. These systems, as well as their use cases, are constantly evolving. And mechanisms can differ depending on industry use cases and budget. But each of the components we discussed usually remains the same.

Are you working on building out an IoT ecosystem or initiative right now? Let us know about it in the comments below!