adminToday, if we observe the trend and business processes, we can express that IoT solutions are changing the way of doing business globally. However, saying that all solutions provide equal benefits would be wrong. We can say that an IoT solution that shares data without analytics is like a symphony playing Mozart without a conductor. This means music is there but with no structure and loses its purpose, beauty, and meaning. We all know that there will be immense flooding of data by IoT, but the absence of a process to properly analyze the data would just cause complexity and noise without proper output.
The Impact of Data Analytics on businesses
Data is compelling and empowers by giving insights into all aspects of the business. It can assist organizations in refining processes, locating missing physical assets for cost saving, or even helping in defining new use cases for already available products.
In the absence of data, a company can be just reactive or can assume future challenges and results.
With the data offered by an IoT solution, a company can anticipate the emerging problem before it becomes complicated and resolve it as soon as possible. However, there are IoT data solutions that only offer the data and no other context to make it meaningful. In such cases, IoT analytics comes in as a savior.
The capability to interpret the data before it comes in front of the user is compelling. For instance, data analytics can help alert a factory manager about the floor problem in real-time instead of waiting and then reading through reports on issues that have already happened. This can reduce time consumption and the possibility of errors.
Analysis software is available in many forms, from one-size-fits-all products to low-code/no-code solutions to solutions that demand an experienced engineering team to execute and maintain.
Each type of solution has benefits and expenses, and your enterprise must determine the best-fitting solution to get the maximum benefit.
Well-known IoT Data Analytics Solutions
We all are aware that technologies like AWS IoT Analytics, on the one hand, are sophisticated and powerful but, on the other hand, very complicated to execute and demand a highly skilled engineering team having domain expertise. The advantages of the analytics solutions are- it offers customization. Everything needed in your business and unnecessary things to be left out. You can consider AWS IoT products like building blocks: you can get maximum from them, but they demand a lot of planning along with maintenance and oversight.
All businesses cannot afford or consider hiring an expert engineering team to execute these solutions. These businesses are inclined toward adopting a one-size-fits-all solution like Azure provides IoT Central.
Azure even provides a solution analogous to AWS, but they are more successful in an out-of-the-box strategy. The straightforward analytics provided by this solution or any other one-sized solution can fulfill the requirements of many businesses. They enable businesses to connect promptly and design their dashboards and alerts within a few days or hours. If your business just needs simple alerting or has a limited number of devices to connect, then opting for this solution would be a great idea and cost-saving as well.
Customizable Solutions
The main challenge with the IoT data analytics solutions mentioned above is that they don’t provide customization options, are costly to scale, and might compel your team to do analytics using a third-party tool (which is no doubt another pricey option). Suppose you own a business having specific analytic requirements and many devices to be connected. In that case, a low-code/no-code solution, like the one proposed by Leverege (running on Google Cloud), could be a terrific middle-ground solution. This type of solution is customizable per the business’s requirement and, in parallel, does not need any technical expertise if it offers an end-to-end alternative and has analytics and an excellent alerting system, even without needing a dedicated and proficient engineering team.
Irrespective of whatever solution you choose for a business to implement, ensure that a third-party tool to be integrated gives you maximum flexibility and value from the data. Tools like Power BI, Tableau, and Looker can be the best option to support your company in familiarly visualizing your data. If your company has already made a preferred analytics tool list, then it will enable your users to harness their expertise of that tool with new data sources.
Valuable Insights
Till now, hope that you have understood the importance and contribution of Analytics tools. It is essential to obtain the optimum value from IoT solutions irrespective of the products the business chooses. Neglecting these core capabilities may take your business to the loss side as it may miss valuable insights and maximize value. We can simply infer that IoT solutions, no doubt, enhance business operations but remain incomplete.
Data analytics gives direction and beauty to the solutions as it analyzes the data and offers favorable data to businesses to boost operations and amplify outcomes. Today, most companies are embracing the Internet of Things but are unaware of the importance of data analytics and ignore it. They face losses and then switch back to their old processes and operations. Therefore using IoT and offered IoT solutions must be opted for after attaining full knowledge.
Today, IoT is making its space in almost every sector, from smart homes to smart buildings, from smart towns to smart cities, and from smart farming to smart logistics; one can see the influence of IoT in every sector.
Similarly, data analytics is also contributing from its end to add more value to every solution offered by the Internet of Things. For instance, in the baking process, the availability of raw ingredients is insufficient, and it does not come together without a recipe. The recipe brings ingredients together in a beautiful way and offers the best. So, if you are still untouched by the magic of data analytics, then you might be losing a lot of benefits and leverages offered by it.