First Line Software is a premier provider of software engineering, software enablement, and digital transformation services. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the global staff of 450 technical experts serve clients across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
The October issue of Digital Transformation Digest shares news about how the elections in one country will be run using Blockchain, multiple ways robotics are used in product distribution, the fast-food industry and retail locations, and road-testing self-driving vehicles in Australia and New Zealand.Do you still believe in the rise of machines? It’s not as far away as you may think! Robots are everywhere! And there are some industries where they operate even better than humans – for example, in logistics and automated warehouses. The rise of ecommerce has changed the way we shop; but many of the warehouses behind products we buy haven’t evolved at the same pace.
“In the next 10 years, the Internet of Things revolution will dramatically alter manufacturing, energy, agriculture, transportation and other industrial sectors of the economy, which, together, account for nearly two-thirds of the global gross domestic product. It will also fundamentally transform how people will work through new interactions between humans and machines. (from Global Economic Forum Report, Jan 2015)
To consciously step into the new reality we have to overcome a number of certain obstacles, which will be a challenging task. For those bold enough to do so the business and first mover benefits could be significant.
There is a wide spectrum of issues which will need to be addressed:
- Lack of common industry standards
- Lack of infrastructure. Fragmentation (separate industrial verticals, different platforms, lack of APIs)
- Big Data sharing
- Security and data control (authentication and authorization; encryption; software and firmware)
- Low energy consumption technologies
“The Internet of things and the technology ecosystem surrounding it are expected to be a $8.9 trillion market in 2020 with over 200 billion connected things and compound annual growth rate of 7.9 percent” (IDC)
“However, through 2018, there will be no dominant IoT ecosystem platform; IT leaders will still need to compose solutions from multiple providers.” (Gartner)
To seize the advantage of IoT reality and bring your business to a higher level, you have to be smart in tackling approaches, technologies and partners.
Nowadays, we talk about smart integration, which is based on R&D and the engineering approach to comprehensive software development. The smart integration of two different systems not only makes them work together in seamless interconnectivity but, what’s more important, creates a fundamentally new solution, a product or a service in the B2B or B2C sectors.
Such smart integration requires a broad-minded approach, a wide spectrum of expertise and skills (technological & industrial); agility, and out-of-the-box thinking.
First Line Software specializes in serving the most demanding clients and consistently delivering quality business applications and software products. We are known for our capability to solve non-standard complex tasks at the intersection of different industries and technologies.
Our experienced international team, Agile background, multiple technological and industrial stacks, knowledge of the complete production cycle (from hardware &firmware to mobile applications), understanding of the value chains together with appropriate engineering approaches give you a portrait of a Cool Vendor who can be an irreplaceable technology and development partner to bring your business to a new level of development.
First Line Software has broad experience in multiple IoT related technologies: hardware, including technical design and power consumption; development of web applications; on-device software; embedded software, big data, mobile development and UX design. Our mobile application designers work closely with the client’s team to translate the existing design assets into a workable, compelling and intuitive mobile UI.
With an R&D approach, First Line can always find the most efficient solution for our customers and have the capability to prove the concept quickly.
As a step to facilitate and simplify firmware and device development some specialized testing applications have been developed. Production testing suite automates the process of final testing of devices, both at the level of data transmission protocol, and at RF-level testing using specialized devices connected to the engineering bus GPIB. This approach minimizes the time to test each specific device and virtually eliminates operator involvement in the process of configuring and running tests and thus minimizing the amount of errors. This approach leads to 100% test coverage of all manufactured devices.
As a reliable technology partner, we actively participate in idea development together with our customers.
First Line finds the following Technologies relevant to the R&D approach to the IoT:
- Firmware: gcc, asm (arm), squashfs/jffs2
- Communication: BT4 LE, IEEE 802.11g/n/ac, NFC, PoE
- Geopositioning: GPS/GLONASS (NMEA. RTCM), signal-level triangulation (wifi/cell towers)
- Mobile: iOS, Android, Windows Phone
- Web: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript
- Backend: Redis, CouchDB, Hadoop