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IoT Device Management: What, Why, and When

The Internet of Things (IoT) has certainly improved our lives. We mean, you don’t even have to move if you don’t want to. Just ask Amazon’s Alexa, and you got total control over your home entertainment, temperature, online shopping, and much more.

You can also count on IoT devices to recognize your face and voice, remember your preferences, and make recommendations based on your profile. However, we need to gather more data to get the most out of this technology. Collecting more data comes down to deploying more smart sensors and devices with more connectivity and applications. But we are just scratching the surface here.

To bring it all together and make it work, we need better IoT device management and maintenance protocols in a hyper-connected world. But surprisingly, most organizations neglect this part of the process until they encounter significant challenges.

To work with oceans of data in a secure and organized manner, we need to ensure that all the IoT devices work properly. For example, you must know if they are connected, updated, secure, and so on. This is where IoT device management architecture and tools come in.

As such, it’s not surprising that the global IoT device management market is forecasted to be worth as much as $19.77 billion by 2030 (growing at a CAGR of 34.2% from 2022 to 2030).

Contents

What is IoT Device Management?

IoT Device Management, as the name implies, describes a number of processes and tools used for registering, configuring, provisioning, maintaining, and monitoring smart connected devices.

The major challenge in IoT development is the sheer number of connected devices and the cost of maintaining them manually. As the number of smart devices grow exponentially and with advanced network capabilities, IoT device management protocols will play a critical role in Industry 4.0.

So, enabling remote configuration or downloadable profiles to any device immediately will save overall deployment costs and make the operation more efficient. Your IT team will also thank you for replacing this mundane and time-intensive task with something more challenging.

What are the Key Features of IoT Device Management Software?

IoT device management solutions enable more innovative business models through smarter analytics, more seamless automation, and internal efficiencies.

Smart device management is also important because every new device on the network adds a new endpoint, increasing your risk exposure and unnecessarily burdening the entire enterprise network.

Bulk Device Onboarding

Software is key to onboarding devices using network keys and identification credentials. However, it’s essential to ensure that it can be done remotely through a secured endpoint device and an IoT device management service.

Robust Integration

With several different generations of IoT hardware on the network, seamless integration is a must. With the right IoT device management solution, you can quickly connect with enterprise apps and downstream data servers to optimize integrated workflows.

Reports and Analytics

The present generation of IoT devices come with edge analytics capabilities out of the box. In this scenario, the IoT device management software provides detailed analytics and insights in real-time.

However, as turnkey solutions don’t cater to every individual company and industry niche, it’s always best to adopt a custom solution to generate more comprehensive reports.

Remote Troubleshooting

Remote troubleshooting is another must-have feature because it helps quickly resolve issues with little manual effort. If you add an integrated governance protocol, you can quickly resolve issues across multiple endpoints.

Enhanced Security

IoT device management software provides detailed device logs. This makes it easy to identify suspicious behavior and unauthorized access quickly. With the benefit of the dashboard, IT teams can easily investigate, diagnose, and conduct a root-cause analysis.

 

 

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Why is IoT Device Management Important?

More User-Friendly Management

IoT device management was never an easy undertaking. This is because most enterprises have a sprawling network of interconnected devices that demand regular maintenance, updates, and reconfigurations to adapt to an organization’s changing needs.

Highly Cost-Effective

At the same time, corporate IoT architecture is also constantly evolving, and you can expect to keep adding new devices, applications, and analytics tools. So, if your organization is expanding nationally or internationally, costs can quickly burn through your budget if you try to do this manually.

More Security

You introduce complexity with every new generation of IoT devices, and with each one, you add to the network. Whenever this happens, threat actors strive to find ways to identify vulnerabilities and exploit them.

As IoT device management software manages device access permissions and offers real-time monitoring of connected devices, you can quickly be alert to irregularities in usage.

When Do You Need IoT Device Management Software?

IoT device management use cases are endless. Whatever your needs might be, if it involves collecting data, you can customize a smart device management solution specific to your needs.

For example, in healthcare, if you need a Smart Consignment Inventory Management (SCIM) platform to ensure the efficient delivery of consignment items to hospitals and clinics, you can do it with a custom solution.

In this case, the IoT device management software will allow you to optimize tracking, transporting, and monitoring consignment stock with a smart inventory tracking platform. This approach leads to better inventory management (including just-in-time inventory management) and allows hospitals and clinics to better manage their storage space and staff.

In the logistics industry, if you want real-time parcel tracking, you’ll need an intelligent device management solution for customers to track the location, condition, and security of the shipment (no matter where it might be in the country or on the planet).

With a customized inventory management tracker, customers will always know where their products are at any given moment. This approach helps boot customer experiences and increases efficiency across the supply chain.

Bottom Line

Before you start your IoT journey, it’s vital to formulate a comprehensive strategy and build robust architecture to support it. This includes planning on how you’ll manage different aspects of smart device management, infrastructure, integration, application, and analytics.

It’s also critical to build IoT architecture that best suits your present and future needs. This means communicating your company’s connectivity requirements (including networks, platforms, and standards).

Simultaneously, you also have to consider how you will securely manage and support IoT deployments. Ideally, you’ll want to commit to a comprehensive security solution that can secure smart devices on the field and on-premises. This makes it important to build security into your architecture from the ground up.

When choosing the right solution for IoT device management, make sure it has customizable dashboards, powerful and advanced APIs, and the ability to send custom scripts to be deployed on devices quickly.

Your IoT device management software should also be able to group and control device units and enable access to edge devices.

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