The advert of Internet-of-Things(IoT) within consumer products, especially for smarthome and connected car segments is pushing the demand for integrated control platforms for the management of these devices. This does not come as a surprise, considering the increasing number of household devices that are beginning to offer M2M connectivity. With every additional connected smart home device, consumers require a separate online/mobile application, separate username and authentication, separate analytics, monitoring and software management.
Park Associates, a market research and consulting company conducted a research on US households with at least three smart home devices and found that 60% of these households see the need for multiple connected devices to work together as part of a system. At present, 13% of US broadband households own at least one smart home device.
What this means is that the home thermostat, the home lighting system, the garage, the doors/windows locking system and any other home device/infrastructure that features M2M connection has to be integrated onto a common platform to ease access, control, maintenance and upgrades.
Park Research is exploring the integration of connected home devices in its upcoming webcast "The Technology to Deliver Millions of Connected Homes", which it is co-hosting with AlertMe, a company providing connected home services.
"Smart home products are entering the market through a variety of channels, often separate from any system, but regardless consumers expect interoperability among devices. Multiple players, including device manufacturers and service providers, have a stake in the connected home, but their objectives are not always aligned. This webcast examines the technology and business challenges in this ecosystem and analyzes the solutions necessary to deliver a unified user experience."
- Tom Kerber, Director, Home Systems and Energy, Parks Associates
"The IoT and the connected home are about 'things' and software that need to interoperate and work together harmoniously -- at huge scale. Our focus is to provide relevant and intelligent services and manage the complexity and fragmentation of smart technologies to make it invisible to the end user -- it needs to 'just work' seamlessly."
- Mary Turner, CEO, AlertMe
