Business and Environment Analysis

In the case of IoT development, the standard business analysis that a software development and consulting is usually doing, will be reinforced by an in-depth analysis of the type of objects and devices that the business and its customers are using and intend to use. This is critical for it will dictate the type and structure of the IoT application or system.

Proof of Concept

The proof of concept for IoT development is a major turning point. Based on the acquired information in the business and environment analysis an actual working prototype of the intended application or system will be built, with specific devices and machinery, in order to test if it really does what it was intended for. It stands for a technical validation of the IoT solution in question.

Architecture Design and Specifications

After the technical validation of the IoT concept or solution, the specific architecture will be carefully designed. Four essential layers will be considered: the device layer, the network layer, the service layer and the content layer. It is a stage where the network architecture, the cloud architecture and the edge architecture will be decided.

Development

In an agile manner, the development will follow several series of sprints and milestones, depending on the complexity of the project. During development we will use different communication protocols, IoT platforms and programming languages. In order to increase velocity of the software development we will use DevOps tools and principles.

Testing

Before going to market, everything that can be tested will be submitted to testing. The testingstrategy depends varies according to the developed IoT solution or application. Nevertheless we will test the actual code, the integrations and the security. When necessary complex test suites will be automated and rolled. In addition exploratory testing can be designed and executed.

Launch

When both the development and customer teams agree the IoT solution or product is ready to launch, all due launch tasks will be carefully executed and controlled. For increased go-to-market speed, in recent years the MVP (minimum viable product) strategy was one of the key factors to acquire knowledge from actual users. Thus the road for further development are open.

Maintenance and scaling

After launching the IoT solution, application or system it is recommended to monitor it in use. Thus, it will be possible to analyze the efficiency and load on particular components, preparing the terrain for scaling mechanisms.

Challenges of IoT Development

Some of the biggest challenges in the majority of current IoT Development projects are:

• The massive quantity of data accumulated from end-points and users;
• The decision on how to process this volume olf data: with edge computing or reactive streaming?
• The design of a data driven architecture.

The IoT Development Expertise

10 years ago, we can say that we have contracted the first big dedicated IoT solution development project and we are still maintaining and further developing that IoT environment. Our team has used different IoT platforms and programmed a wide array of devices to be integrated in the designed IoT solutions. We now can say the IoT development is one of the core areas of software development at Codespring.

Now there are new communications channels rising with different devices, such as voice based communication and we are proud to state that Codespring team is ahead in this area too.