Xively by LogMeIn has announced the next generation of its ‘out-of-the-box’ Connected Product Management Platform, which it hopes will eliminate the risk posed to businesses developing a “DIY” IoT.
The latest version of Xively has several new features to provide clients with a quicker time to market and actionable insights for product and customer support. These include:
Connected Product Application Suite – A unified system of record that provides a real-time view of connected products in market, including product details, trend data, product health, connectivity status, device location, firmware versions, and events associated with the product. Easy-to-follow dashboards empower provide all the data needed to run a connected business.
Universal User & Device Management– Manage users and devices associated with connected products, regardless of the underlying IoT connectivity platform, whether it be home grown solutions, Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS).
One-Click Salesforce App & Heroku Add-on – Out-of-the-box integration with Salesforce allows a real-time view into the health, status and other key product details of a customer’s actual product from Xively into a customer record screen in Salesforce. Xively product data can also be delivered with one-click into Heroku to allow for rapid app development and new user engagement.
Xively Product Simulator – Allows companies to model and test connected product features, create rules to determine data flow, integration with third party systems and customer interaction. Put simply, this helps to validate business models, use cases and the ability to build business processes around a connected product.
Xively targets recurring theme of immaturity
In a report earlier this year, Nick Jones, vice president at Gartner, argued that a key hurdle to successful IoT implementation is inexperience. “The IoT demands an extensive range of new technologies and skills that many organizations have yet to master,” he said. “A recurring theme in the IoT space is the immaturity of technologies and services and of the vendors providing them. Architecting for this immaturity and managing the risk it creates will be a key challenge for organizations exploiting the IoT. In many technology areas, lack of skills will also pose significant challenges.”
It is widely held that companies attempting internal IoT development are held back by three challenges. These are lack of domain expertise, new customer expectations and a lack of a system of record for IoT.
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“There is a complex and unique set of challenges associated with launching and supporting an IoT connected product – many of which fall outside the core competency of a traditional product company. While many set their sights on a DIY strategy, they are finding that the cost and man hours associated with building, launching and running a connected product business can be overwhelming at best, and a failure at worst,” said Paddy Srinivasan, general manager, Xively by LogMeIn.
“The new release of Xively is designed to help put an end to the need for internal development by providing companies. It has everything an organisation needs to get products to market faster, make the product data actionable across the company and future-proof the IoT investment in a single platform.”