Music and podcasts soundtrack and enrich people’s lives. Whether they’re listening while cooking, focusing, working out, or simply chilling — streaming is personal and reflects the moment. And while all of these moments are still happening, they might look different than they used to. Working might take place at the kitchen table while also juggling childcare. Cooking might be happening a lot more often. And chilling? Very necessary right now.
Ensuring that you’re reaching your target audience in the right moment — and that your messaging matches — is always important. But now that routines and priorities have changed, it’s essential to update your advertising to stay relevant and sensitive to your audience. As a business, ask: How can we show up in useful, non-disruptive ways right now? It starts with being hyper-sensitive to the context in which your message will be received and how that moment is different now. The message you sent to your listeners when they were working out in a gym might not strike the right tone when those listeners are getting in reps from the living room. The streaming generation is savvy, and they might be especially critical right now on how businesses and brands rush to weigh in on the current event.
Being culturally relevant doesn’t necessarily mean addressing events head-on. It's about tailoring messaging to a personal listening moment within the context of a larger cultural moment. What sounds clever under normal circumstances might sound insensitive right now, especially in an ad. People lean on audio to fill very specific needs: to stay informed, grounded, and entertained. Businesses can play a role in filling those needs by easing up on the hard sell, and focusing on providing something useful. What information can you give that they’re looking for? What’s your business doing differently right now to help people? What kind of practical wellness advice, home hacks, or parenting tips could your brand provide? Audio is a uniquely flexible format that can be produced remotely and executed quickly.
Our IoT gateways offer connectivity for both brownfield & greenfield environments. Application-ready building blocks are available to speed time-to-market. And we build intelligent middleware for remote monitoring into all of our boards and modules. Our rugged specifications are ideal for meeting the extended lifecycle requirements of industrial applications. And our standards-based design ensure system compatibility and solution scalability.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most exciting phenomena of the tech industry these days. But there seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding it as well. Some think about IoT merely as creating new internet-connected devices, while others are more focused on creating value through adding connectivity and smarts to what already exists out there. We would argue that the former is an oversimplification of the IoT concept, though it accounts for the most common approach that startups take toward entering the industry. It’s what we call greenfield development, as opposed to the latter approach, which is called brownfield.
In software development, greenfield refers to software that is created from scratch in a totally new environment. No constraints are imposed by legacy code, no requirements to integrate with other systems. The development process is straightforward, but the risks are high as well because you’re moving into uncharted territory.
In IoT, greenfield development refers to all these shiny new gadgets and devices that come with internet connectivity. Connected washing machines, smart locks, TVs, thermostats, light bulbs, toasters, coffee machines and whatnot that you see in tech publications and consumer electronic expos are clear examples of greenfield IoT projects.
Greenfield IoT development is adopted by some well-established brands as well as a lineup of startups that are rushing to climb the IoT bandwagon and grab a foothold in one of the fastest growing industries. It is much easier for startups to enter greenfield development because they have a clean sheet and no strings attached to past development.
Again, to take the cue from software development, brownfield development refers to any form of software that created on top of legacy systems or with the aim of coexisting with other software that are already in use. This will impose some constraints and requirements that will limit design and implementation decisions to the developers. The development process can become challenging and arduous and require meticulous analysis, design and testing, things that many upstart developers don’t have the patience for.
The same thing applies to IoT, but the challenges become even more accentuated. In brownfield IoT development, developers inherit hardware, embedded software and design decisions. They can’t deliberate on where they want to direct their efforts and will have to live and work within a constrained context. Throwing away all the legacy stuff will be costly. Some of it has decades of history, testing and implementation behind it, and manufacturers aren’t ready to repeat that cycle all over again for the sake of connectivity.
IoT is growing rapidly, but lingering connectivity, security, and data storage concerns will need to be resolved to guarantee its continued flourishing. There’s no question that the Internet of Things (IoT) is going to shape the future of virtually every industry. Like the personal computer, the internet, and cloud computing before it, IoT has the potential to kickstart a massive wave of corporate change. A survey found that 62% of corporate leaders believe the IoT’s impact on their industry will be either “very high” or “transformative.” The source of this broad-based enthusiasm is no mystery. From capturing new streams of data that can be funneled into increasingly mature analytics platforms to facilitating the automation of a range of routine processes, strategically integrated IoT devices will significantly elevate many companies’ bottom lines. However, to realize the paradigm-shifting potential of IoT, stakeholders need to find solutions to three major issues that continue to stand in the way of widespread IoT adoption: adequate connectivity, device security, and excessive data storage and processing requirements.
Connectivity is the very essence of IoT. While most IoT devices are compatible with both wired and wireless connections, the latter is currently the more popular choice. Unfortunately, this popularity has created serious bandwidth concerns. Consider this: As of 2018, there were just over 17 billion internet-connected devices in use worldwide. By 2025, this number is projected to balloon to more than 55 billion. Tripling the number of internet-reliant devices in the span of just seven years will place immense pressure on the world’s existing networking infrastructure.
Right now, 5G is the most promising solution to this connectivity challenge. The newest generation of mobile networking, 5G is a revolutionary technology that promises to provide more bandwidth and faster connection speeds than its predecessors. Encouragingly, some 5G networks are already being rolled out around the world, and 5G connectivity is likely to be widely available within a year or two. IoT stakeholders are testing a host of other possible solutions, as well. In Russia, telecommunications companies are using low-power, long-range wide area networks to improve IoT connectivity in the remote expanses of Siberia. Further, in certain circumstances, the strong connectivity delivered by the Bluetooth wireless communications standard will be able to lessen the burden placed on more traditional networks, though the standard’s limited range will preclude it from becoming an IoT connectivity panacea. That said, in a spatially-condensed context, such as a “smart home” ecosystem, Bluetooth represents an attractive short-term solution.
IoT deployment and security concerns
Cybersecurity is another major obstacle to IoT adoption. As a growing number of devices have come online, lawmakers, the FBI, and private cybersecurity professionals have all expressed concerns about the serious threat posed by hackers. As things stand, the best way to bolster the security of IoT is to follow all regulations and/or advice promulgated by both lawmakers and IT professionals. In practice, this means IoT device manufacturers will have to either assign a unique password to each device they sell or prompt users to create their own unique password before they connect their device to a network. While this degree of precaution is only legally mandated in some US states, it’s the kind of protocol to which every IoT manufacturer should strive to adhere. Similarly, after discovering that cybercriminals routinely exploit IoT devices to extract login credentials, infiltrate networks, steal intellectual property, and more, the FBI issued a public service announcement featuring a set of IoT security best practices. In addition, the FBI recommended rebooting devices regularly to clear malware residing in a device’s memory and patching IoT devices as soon as security upgrades are made available. Implementing strong encryption protocols and utilizing VPNs can also prevent malware that successfully compromises a single IoT device from impacting an entire organization.
IoT deployment and capacity demands
In many ways, data is at the root of both IoT’s connectivity and security issues. IoT produces a massive amount of data -- after all, the value propositions of many IoT devices rest with the devices’ ability to constantly monitor and interact with their environments -- and few stakeholders are adequately equipped to store and secure it. To accommodate the influx of IoT-generated data, companies will need to find ways to increase their current server capacity. Edge computing (for example, running data through micro data centers located close to a network’s edge, will allow companies to steer roughly half of the data generated by IoT devices away from their existing data centers. But supporting a robust IoT infrastructure will inevitably require a diverse portfolio of micro data centers, traditional proprietary data centers, and on-demand cloud computing resources. IoT clearly has remarkable potential. Provided industry stakeholders make a concerted effort to facilitate strong network connectivity, improve device security, and expand data storage and processing capacity, this potential is likely to be realized sooner rather than later.
(c) 2019, MEP Digital Systems (Pty) Ltd.
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