IoT (Intranet of Things) / Digital Enterprise

While the Internet is global public technology. An "Intranet" is ONLY your part of the internet for your staff, your employees, your own internal internet. If you allow some of your customers or suppliers to use your INTRANET then it could be called an EXTRANET. These subtle differences are important when it comes to IoT. We work with you to build your IoT Intranet.

Why do we think this is important?

  • "IoT will be the driver for cloud and Azure adaptation" - Satya Nadella, Microsoft.
  • “Purchasing 10-20 different services from 10-20 different vendors using 10-20 different apps with 10-20 different user interfaces. If that’s the way IoT goes, it will be a long tough slog to Nirvana.” — Bob Harden, Principal, The Harden Group.
  • “If you think that the internet has changed your life, think again. The IoT is about to change it all over again!” — Brendan O’Brien, Chief Architect & Co-Founder, Aria Systems.
  • "I see IoT as the sensory and actuator edge to AI" - Casper Abraham, Principal Architect of clextra.
  • "Expect the unexpected. The three biggest challenges to IoT will be: i. Vulnerability to Hacking; ii. Trust Consideration; iii. Data Protection. " - Replink

So at Frontier and Crimson Cloud we believe the best for our customers is a subscription commercial model where the expertise is entrusted to your IT/ICT/IoT Services Partner.

For IoT success an inherent requirement is integration and inter-operability. You may have to be more dependent on the cloud rather than captive data centres. Have multiple vendors providing hosting, computing, middle-ware, tool chains, IoT stacks. Hardware vendors have their own standards and associations while software seems to be an independent industry.

Bringing all this meaningfully requires plans. Technology architecture, engineering design, technology selection, scale, growth, cyber-security, cyber-risk, business model, analytics, management, accounting, ROC (Return on Capital), TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), cost of sale, response time, business continuity, service levels, redundancy, availability and a whole host of constantly changing considerations even as you initiate, deploy, test, add and subtract your "things" to the internet.

The Things for Industrial IoT are very different from consumer IoT. Call it b2b IoT vs b2c IoT if you will. m2m (Machine to machine) is an integral part of IoT and Industrial automation has been around for some time. Healthcare things are not the same as Automotive or Retail things. Agriculture will have things in fields and spread across rural landscapes. Smart city & smart communities are essentially IoT of urban things. Further - places have things, people carry things, things pack up, things are lost, things have to be found. Some things are important at certain times, others are not.

"Once you accept that IoT is an integral part of the CX (Customer Experience) of AI (Artificial Intelligence), you will look at the right real world integration, the right things, sensors & actuators, bots, input and output from Expert systems, decision support systems, business rules, policy automation, internal controls and financial internal controls automation, ML (Machine Learning), DL (Deep Learning), NLP (Natural Language Processing), ANN (Artificial Neural Networks) and AI (Artificial Intelligence). Words of today - but incorporated into everything IoT going forward." says Casper Abraham, Principal architect of clextra.

From your IoT partner you may also expect a genuine technology-agnostic approach and end-to-end services.

Any single-point 360 IoT provider must include ....

  • Advisory
  • Training
  • Technology
  • Last mile services

Advisory -

The complexity and catch-all of IoT requires you to select ONLY what you need at that point in time. The right technology of the right size from the right vendor at the right price. At Strategic, Tactical & Operational levels. What is applicable to your, your enterprise, your vendors, your customers your products and your business – The intranet NOT the internet.

Training -

The lack of awareness BUT customer expectations of easy, simple, quick user-experience means training of your back end staff, back to back support and a chain of training needs BEHIND your IoT to ensure our customer's customer experience is a focus. If you can’t hire or acquire then you must have an IoT services partner.

Technology -

IoT is complex. Hardware. Software. Things. Networking. Computing. Input-Output. Storage. Power. Bandwidth. Size. Wireless. Hosting. SUPPLIES are from a multitude of vendors with a range of brands, models and versions. The nuts & bolts, procurement side of IoT.

Last mile -

It has to work for you in the field. Is it working? Is it calibrated? Is it integrated? Is it inter-operable? Is the data quality good and what I need? Do I have a one-view? It is easy, simple, quick, value for money? At the micro-level to a macro-level? How good is the analytics and reports from my dashboards? Who is in charge? Authorised? Accountable? Responsible?

Trust us with your IoT. Leave all IoT technology volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity to use, while you focus on your core-business. Leave IoT VUCA to us with an on-going annual subscription contract or any other way you best see fit.