The Internet of Things and the (R)Evolution of Manufacturing

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Mobile App Development, Software & App Sales, Technology trends

Manufacturing is about to undergo a transformation that could have similar consequences as the Industrial Revolution, which took place from the 18th to 19th centuries and completely changed the face of, up to that time, rural Europe and America. That’s because the Internet of Things and smart manufacturing can create the perfect decision-making environment and help companies of all sizes optimize all aspects of their operations and maximize their revenue, as illustrated by King’s Hawaiian, producers of frozen entrees in a bowl as well as Hawaiian bread. The company managed to put out extra 180,000 pounds of bread every day, thus effectively doubling their previous production, as reported by Forbes.

The same story of success can also be told by General Electric. More than 10,000 sensors on their Durathon battery factory in Schenectady provides the company with non-stop stream of data. Using cutting-edge statistical approaches and Big Data analysis, General Electric can get an instant overview of their entire production and tweak it as they see fit. According to Industry Week, the Siemens’ electronics manufacturing plant in Amberg, Germany uses around 1,000 controllers to handle up to 75 percent of the value chain autonomously.

Given these fascinating examples, it may come as a surprise that “only 10 percent of industrial operations are currently using the connected enterprise,” according to John Nesi, vice president of market development at Rockwell Automation. What’s more, apparently, one in five factories today are completely cut off from the Internet, as discovered by SCM World’s recent survey.

However, this number is expected to drop to near zero in just the next five years, resulting in almost 50 billion connected endpoints. It won’t take a long time before every single instrument, machine, and part is aware of all other parts around it.

Benefits and Disadvantages of Hybrid Mobile Applications

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Mobile App Development, Software & App Sales, Technology trends, Uncategorized

Mobile marketing has become one the most important, if not the most important, parts of just about any marketing strategy. People rely on their mobile devices for just about any activity imaginable and any company that is not a part of this global trend seems to be out of touch. Traditionally, there were two main ways how to establish a mobile presence: one was to create a fully native application written in a programming language used by the targeted platform, and the other was to stick with a regular website and give up upon the native feel and look. However, now, in 2016, we have reached the point where more than 50 percent of mobile applications should be hybrid, according to Gartner’s 2013 mobile and wireless predictions.

With the imminent market domination of hybrid applications ahead of us, now is a great time to look at their benefits to see what exactly is behind their popularity. We, also, won’t avoid mentioning their main negatives, in order to get a clear, comprehensive picture of their role in the mobile market.

What are Hybrid Mobile Applications?

Let’s start with a brief background: native applications are built using a platform-specific programming language (Objective-C for iOS and Java for Android) and can use all native functionality of mobile devices and mobile operating systems, including the use of GPS, access to the filesystem, or common user interface elements. As a result, they usually have a consistent user experience, offer great performance, and are tied to just a single environment they were developed for.

One could say that hybrid applications actually have more in common with web apps than native apps. The reason is that they are actually just web apps wrapped in a native web view displayed via the smartphone’s native browser. What makes them so special is the particular framework using which they are built. This framework allows for an easy use native functions of each mobile platform using cross-platform APIs. Frameworks like Cordova require nothing more than a knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, tools which are very familiar to all web developers.

Main Benefits of Hybrid Mobile Apps

With the introduction behind us, it’s time to take a closer look at some of the main benefits of hybrid mobile apps. We are not trying to include every single positive aspect of hybrid apps; instead, we are focusing solely on their advantage over native and web applications.

Unified Development

By far the single biggest benefit that hybrid mobile apps can offer is the unified development. Companies can save a substantial amount of money that would otherwise have to be spent on developing and maintaining separate code bases for different mobile platforms. They can develop just a single version and let their hybrid framework of choice do the heavy lifting and ensure that everything will work flawlessly.

This, of course, directly leads to lower cost of development and, potentially, greater revenue. Many small businesses wouldn’t be able to afford to target all major mobile platforms, if there wasn’t the option to do so with a hybrid framework.

Fast Deployment

The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach necessitates the fast deployment of functional solutions in order to be the first to penetrate the market and gain a substantial competitive advantage. Those who need to have their app in the App Store as fast as possible should seriously consider using hybrid applications.

Low-Level Access

Basic web applications are cut off from smartphones’ operating systems and built-in functionality. Even though they are getting smarter every day, they still don’t come anywhere near native applications. Hybrid applications elegantly bridge the gap between the two other approaches and provide all the extra functionality with very little overhead. As a result, developers can realize the much wider range of ideas and capture the attention of their target audience.

Offline Support

Web applications are critically limited by their lack of offline support. This may seem like a less important issue for people who live in urban areas, where the access to high-speed Internet access is ubiquitous, but potential customers from rural areas and less developed countries could be cut off from access to the application. At the end of the day, one customer survey showed that 79 percent of consumers would retry a mobile app only once or twice if it failed to work the first time, and only 16 percent of consumers would give it more than two attempts. Local storage can also dramatically enhance the overall user experience by storing personal information and preferences for later use.

Scaling

Hybrid applications are limited only by the underlying framework. Companies who partner with a good provider can instantly target all major platforms without any additional effort at all. It the platform is popular enough, it can be expected that it will quickly add support for any new mobile operating systems and their respective incremental updates.

Main Disadvantages of Hybrid Mobile Apps

It would be unfair to ignore the main disadvantages of hybrid applications and paint an unrealistic picture that doesn’t tell the whole story. Because as much as hybrid apps can help small and medium sized business reach wide audiences, they are also limited in several critical ways.

Performance

Hybrid apps add an extra layer between the source code and the target mobile platform: the particular hybrid mobile framework, such as Ionic, Cordova, Onsen, Kendo, and many others. The unsurprising result is a possible loss of performance. It really varies from application to application just how noticeable the difference can be, but the fact that Facebook migrated their mobile application from HTML5 to native shows that there really can be a significant difference, at least for large-scale applications. Mark Zuckerberg even went on to say that “The biggest mistake we’ve made as a company is betting on HTML5 over native.”

After all, 84 percent of users consider performance to be an important or very important factor, according to A Global Study of Consumers’ Expectations and Experiences of Mobile Applications by Dynatrace, an American application performance management (APM) software company with products aimed at the information technology departments and digital business owners of medium and large businesses.

Debugging

That extra layer also makes debugging a potential nightmare. Developers have to rely on the framework itself to play nicely with the targeted operating system and not introduce any new bugs. Since developers are not likely to have a deep knowledge of the targeted platform, figuring out the exact cause of an issue can be a lengthy affair.

Features

It’s hard to believe that the first iPhone was released just in 2007. We have come a such a long way since then, and the mobile industry is showing no signs of slowing down. Mobile operating systems keep evolving at much faster pace than their desktop counterparts, and many people now use smartphones and tablets as their primary computing devices.

Companies who want to stand at the very apex of progress and use all the latest and greatest features and hardware capabilities are probably going to experience difficulties trying to achieve their goals using hybrid frameworks. It can take quite a bit of time before new features are implemented by providers of these providers of these frameworks.

Conclusion

Hybrid mobile applications have their place in every situation where fast development is the main priority or where the high cost of targeting each platform with an individual native application would be downright prohibitive. Big players and companies who need to stay on top of the latest development are not likely to sacrifice performance and control. However, it may be just a matter of time before hybrid application frameworks reach such a high level of maturity that all previously mentioned negatives will simply disappear.

Enterprise Mobility in the Cloud Era

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Mobile App Development, Software & App Sales, Technology trends

Mobile devices and their use for business and personal purposes have transformed our lives and changed the way we work. Companies that allow employees to bring their own devices to workplace have first-hand seen many advantages of this approach to personal computing, but they also have noticed a handful of potentially serious issues. In this article, we are considering the current state of enterprise mobility, and what kind of transformation it will have to undergo to successfully enter the cloud era.

As described by Tech Target in their extensive handbook on mobile application management, work habits are shifting, as more employees work from home using their own devices and the power of the Internet. Indeed, one in every five people are estimated to work from home at least one day a week, and the total share of remote workers could reach 63 percent by the end of the year 2018.

That’s because telecommuters are, again and again, shown to be able to accomplish more in less time and greatly decrease the total overhead cost. A great example is when Washington accidentally saved approximately $32 million during 4 official snow days, which forced federal employees to work from home.

But it’s not all about cost and effectiveness, either. One of the main reasons why employees themselves prefer to avoid office environments is the much lower stress level, according to a study by PGI, the global leader in web conferencing and collaboration technology. Employees who are not dreading their daily trip to work are 69 percent less likely to avoid work, they feel more connected with their work and colleagues, and can feel good about their positive impact on the environment.

With such amazing benefits to enterprise mobility, it’s paramount that businesses manage to overcome all current problems and allow customers and employees to seamlessly interact with the company using their own devices. Cloudbook suggests that “As 70% of the North American workforce is now mobile, cloud-based environments require a transparent mobile policy management strategy.”

Currently, most employees who are allowed to work remotely use a mixed approach, which combines company-provided tools and technologies with employees’ own infrastructure and habits. For example, an employee can use pre-configured remote desktop application to connect to his work computer, download company files on his or her own hard drive, transfer these files onto an USB flash drive, conduct the actual work from a desktop computer, where it is automatically backed up to the employee’s personal cloud storage solution, such as Dropbox or Google Drive.

Not only is the company put into a vulnerable position in terms of privacy and data security, but they also rely on the employee’s technical ability to navigate the vast jungle of technological solutions. Enterprises will need to go beyond the now traditional “mobile first” approach, and conduct a deep assortment of users’ needs, while placing the highest priority on data protection and security.

Several possible solutions already exist and include the use of virtual mobile infrastructure (VMI) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers. The goal is always the same: to run all applications remotely and store their data in a remote data center, rather than on computers and mobile devices of individual employees.

Companies can greatly decrease their informational technology spending by using pre-built tools as the foundation upon which they can expand and create their own custom-built tools and solutions. These can benefit from integrated monitoring and statistics gathering services to allow for Big Data analysis and subsequent optimization of all internal processes.

What’s more, with everything neatly stored under one roof, access control can be easily managed by a very small team of skilled support staff members, and employees can enjoy a much greater level of protection against their own mistakes, which could otherwise lead to security breaches and costly data leaks.

Given that the latest IDC report  indicates that mobile technology spending is likely to reach $1.2 trillion by 2019, we can expect to see a profound transformation in a very short period of time. Entire company networks are likely to migrate to the cloud, and employees will be given a tightly restricted access to a consistent set of platform-independent tools and applications to do their job.

The obvious winners are third-party companies like my firm OpenArc who specialize in providing and managing the necessary infrastructure and platforms. However, progressive businesses can also expect a great return their investment and high employee satisfaction and productivity.

4 Areas the Internet of Things (IoT) is Impacting Now

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development, Technology trends

The Internet of Things (IoT) is possibly the most used buzzword in today’s technology-driven world. Many leading consulting firms and analysts, such as McKinsey & Company, estimate that a total economic impact of the IoT could reach $11.1 trillion a year by 2025. That’s because there is expected to be more than 200 billion connected objects by 2020, according to International Data Corporation (IDC). Together, these Internet-enabled objects will change the way we interact with the world around us, how we drive to work, take care of our health, and shop for groceries, among many other things. Because this seemingly distant future is much closer than most people realize, now it’s a great time to take a closer look at a few main areas that are expected to change the most.

Home Appliances

If there’s one area where the IoT already put down roots, it has to be the home consumer market. People have quickly discovered just how useful smart thermostats, web-enabled security cameras, kitchen aplliances, or intelligent electric vehicle charging stations can be. Results of the consumer survey by GSMA, an association representing the interests of mobile operators worldwide, show that “there is already strong and growing demand for connected home devices, services and solutions.” They’ve discovered that one in four technology enthusiasts in Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US own a connected security system, connected lighting, thermostat, health monitor, and even a connected washing machine. Indeed, companies across the world are expected to ship 1.9 billion connected home devices by 2019, thus generating approximately $490 billion in revenue. Major players, including Google and Samsung, are investing billions of dollars, betting that the IoT home market will bring in insane profits.

Healthcare

While the use of the IoT devices in our homes can definitely make our day-to-day life much easier, the category with the most potential for a positive social change is healthcare. Imagine a world where doctors have an abundant supply of up-to-date, reliable data they can use to better diagnose diseases and provide their patients with excellent treatment. These data can be further used for research, to help medical professionals discover new cures and raise the global health standard. The best current example of this is the ResearchKit, presented by Apple at their highly anticipated “Let us loop you in” event. Jeff William, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, said that the technology is already “used to solve some of the biggest problems facing medical research.” This open-source framework has allowed researchers to conduct the largest study on Parkinson’s in history, discover asthma triggers across the country, and find new types of diabetes. Apple is also extending this framework to individual customers, calling it CareKit. With CareKit, patients can monitor their health and receive individualized treatment plans to increase the speed of their recover and general quality of life.   At OpenArc my team has been partnering with researchers across various higher education institutions to help enable health care related products and services leveraging wearable sensors and backend interfaces supporting clinician decisions.

Retail

The potential applications of the Internet of Things in retail are virtually limitless. Everything from a simple inventory tracking to smartphone purchasing, in-store analytics of consumer behavior and choices, to smart advertising custom-tailored to fit each customer based on their purchasing history or social media activity. Customers are already in love with their smartphones and wearable devices, so extending their functionality to enhance the shopping experience will feel like a very natural transition. Bill Hardgrave from Aubrun University reports that retailers can expect up to 99 percent inventory accuracy and 50 percent reduction in out-of-stock items when they implement RFID tags for inventory tracking. These systems could be interconnected with home IoT devices to make it possible for stores to, for example, automatically suggest new clothes based on what the customer already has in his or her closet so that everything would nicely match.

Privacy

Not everyone is excited about the positive impact that the era of the Internet of Things could have on our daily lives. Some fear that corporations and governments won’t be able to protect users’ privacy and consumer data. That can be either because of lack of competency or because of purposeful misuse of private data with the intention to generate additional profits. A study from the Altimeter Group tells us that average consumers are not comfortable with companies collecting their personal information. Older people, in particular, show very low trust that companies use their data in a safe and ethical manner. The omnipresent nature of the Internet of Things devices means that consumers would have only very vague idea about what type of data is being collected and what the company does with the collected information. Retailers and all customer-facing businesses, in general, will have to find a way how to ensure that data will not fall into the wrong hands, if they ever want to be trusted and not just tolerated.

Conclusion

As you can see, the incoming technological revolution brought by the Internet of Things could have a similar impact as the introduction of the Internet. It’s exciting to have the opportunity to be able to witness how humanity manages to use this technology and push innovation beyond what we can currently imagine. One thing is certain: the world will look very different just 10-20 years from now.  Being at the forefront of this revolution gets me stoked and feeling fortunate to be an experienced rider, paddling hard into this wave.  

Do You Have a Diet Mobile App?

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development

These days there’s a mobile app for just about everything, so it figures that diet and nutrition trackers are becoming a big hit. They let you log your nutrition intake, shop for healthy foods and pick and choose healthy eating plans. Take a look at these 5 apps worth trying.
  1. Fooducate (iOS, Android)
This mobile app helps you to both shop and eat healthy. It lets you quickly pull up nutritional information from the barcodes on food products and can help you make sense of those nutrition labels that otherwise come across as gibberish. The app shows you a letter grade from A to D, and offers up a quick summary of nutritional information in easy-to-understand language. It will also suggest healthier alternatives. Whether you eat out or cook, you can manually enter nutrition information. The mobile app also doubles as a calorie, exercise and intake tracker.
  1. Shopwell (iOS; Android)
Shopping well is definitely the first step to eating well. That’s the idea behind Shopwell that will scan barcodes and rate groceries according to your nutritional needs. The app creates a personal profile and will select from various nutritional goals while also implementing necessary dietary restrictions, like food allergies or vegetarianism.  The app takes all these elements into account and uses them to score the items you scan while offering easy-to-follow nutritional pointers.
  1. Calorie Counter Pro (iOS, Android)
This mobile app is an all-in-one exercise tracker, food scanner and nutrition log. Users can scan barcodes for nutritional information and input recipes and custom foods. The exercise tracker lets you enter over 500 different activities and you can also manually enter calories burned, distance and time for walking. What’s more, there are planning features for dieters wishing to set a target weight or plan their exercise and eating.
  1. Diet Point Weight Loss (iOS, Android)
Another mobile app that helps users select the right weight loss program for their needs. There are over 130 diets programmed under various categories as well as complete meal plans and shopping lists. The app will notify you that it is mealtime and help avoid those cravings or overeating. Whether you’re going low-carb or full-on caveman, the app will have the plan for you.
  1. Nutrino (iOS)
This is a meal planning and nutritional goals mobile app. It’s been designed to work with other devices and apps to track physical activity and adjust food recommendations accordingly. Users are able to set their nutritional goals – be it muscle building, weight loss or healthy eating – and also set dietary restrictions such as halal, gluten-free or lactose-intolerant. The app will build a personalized meal plan based on the information and users can further customize the plan by inputting preferred foods or swiping for alternatives. Water intake, sleep and exercise can all be logged. Mobile Apps for Diet – Would You Use Them? Would you use these kinds of apps for your dietary and lifestyle requirements? Have you had any experience with them? Feel free to share in our mobile app section.