You have to ask yourself a fundamental question: Where do we sit in the system, and who needs that position to exist?
Then the structure becomes a little more obvious. Another touchpoint is long-term value. We agree that it is practical for a long term institutional investor to invest in the tried and tested equipment. That is why many police departments buy Honda, BMW and Kawasaki motorbikes and invest in car fleet deals with excellent warranty and service arrangements.
Feature Set
Let’s take a simple example; the ubiquitous RFiD tag in retail outlets and stores. You may never have asked yourself; why is it so popular? Each tag is incredibly cheap, especially in bulk (cost/benefit). The technology is simple and rugged. It does what it does well. It is why RFiD is in common use for city apartment blocks; a lot of access in and out. One swipe tagging and tracking. The same technology works just as well in hotels, work environments and office spaces. So, abundant use cases and reliable equipment.
Best price ≠ Lowest price
When we talk about critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges and railways, these are physical network elements that exist at scale. There is a broad mix of factors to consider. The outdoor environment is one. Hot in summer, cold in winter, wet in the middle.
The county or the regional government have to work with partners that can match scale, supply and deployment needs. Organising tenders on “best price -lowest”) is a long-term failure, but councillors are political players, not usually engineers. This is where “critical” becomes critical.
Predictable failure rates
There has to be a tacit agreement somewhere among the parties, that we build stuff to fail in predictable ways. The line between bad roads and good highways can often be traced back into someone’s jacket pocket. The same pattern can be noted in forest fires, dam breaks and long term electricity outages; predictable failures with immense back-end cost. Surprisingly, or maybe not, places that experience consistently rough conditions usually build “better” infrastructure. Pay now, or pay more later.
Communications infrastructure
If you’re looking to scale IoT, or effectively a system to wirelessly stream data, you need certain things in place. A telecommunications infrastructure layer, a power source and a group of people to install, replace, and service your hardware. Once you’ve got those elements sorted out, you can configure your data requirements relative to those core constraints. All of those elements cost money, so it cannot happen without investment.
The cost of attrition
Maybe this is the core constant of IoT deployments at scale; money. It is not about money to build or deploy IoT resources. That is the easy part because there is momentum at any new beginning – you don’t know what you don’t know.
The bit that is more subtle is that you have to save more money than you are currently spending, by using IoT. There has to be an obvious shared goal (…or pain point), a value proposition to take you through the very normal teething phase. Just like a startup, most projects don’t fail because the idea is a bad one. They fail because the bulk cost in time, cash and energy is not worth the effort and the attrition.
