Best IoT Devices for Your Small Business
IoT is already revolutionizing industries from manufacturing and logistics to agriculture and home automation. If you aren’t already using IoT in your workplace here’s a list of IoT technologies to get you started.
Before we get started, here’s a quick summary of what we will cover in this blog post;
1. What Is The Internet Of Things?
The internet of things (IoT) refers to the network of physical devices, which aren’t traditional computing devices but are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies that enable them to connect with the Internet. These devices are connected to the Internet for receiving and transmitting instructions as well as to collect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet.
The most important characteristic of IoT is that it brings the power of data processing and analytics to real-world physical devices. The connected devices learn from the collected data, improving the quality of life by requiring minimal human intervention in their operation.
2. Examples Of IoT Devices
Thanks to the huge advancement in computer chips and wireless technologies, almost any physical object can be turned into a part of IoT. Of course, it also helps that computer chips are becoming more and more affordable. So it’s possible to turn anything into an IoT device, from a tiny pill to an airplane, everything can be connected.
By 2030, it is expected that there will be around 50 billion IoT devices in use around the world. But you don’t need to search too hard for an IoT device. Here are a few examples of IoT technologies you might already be using:
Alexa-style digital assistants
A smartwatch or fitness band on your wrist
Motion sensor-activated lightbulb
A smart thermostat that can be switched on or off using your smartphone
3. How Does IoT Work?
As we mentioned earlier, all IoT devices are connected to the Internet. This allows the devices to collect data that is utilized to make improvements in quality of life, increase cost-effectiveness, and become energy efficient among other things. So data collection is the most important element of an IoT device. Here’s how a typical IoT device works:
Each IoT device is connected to the Internet, hence it has an IP address. While the device is running, it collects data. For example, your fitness tracker collects data such as the number of steps taken in a day, heart rate, running routes, etc. But this data in itself is of little use. To gain useful and actionable insights from the data, it has to be filtered, processed, and analyzed. So the collected data is transmitted via the Internet to a data center, typically in the cloud. The data centers have huge storage capacity and compute power and are responsible for processing the data.
The collected data is processed, analyzed, and insights or instructions are sent back to the IoT device. The end-user usually sees the insights drawn from the data on an app on their smartphone or a web application so you can interact with the IoT device without the need for an intermediary such as a separate keyboard and screen. In many cases, no human involvement is required as the devices directly receive instructions from the applications residing in the cloud data centers.
4. What Are The Benefits Of The Internet Of Things For Businesses?
IoT can be extremely beneficial for a business office when used appropriately. IoT devices can help make your business more efficient, more productive, and more cost-effective. By giving you access to more data, IoT helps you gain a better understanding of your internal systems and operations, and use that knowledge to make changes that drive efficiency and productivity.
Here are a few of the many advantages of IoT for businesses:
Reduced cost of operations
Increased productivity
Better asset utilization
Enhanced safety and security
Real-time analytics for better decision making
5. 7 IoT Devices And Technologies For Your Office
1. Security And Access Control
Smart Locks
A smart lock is a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth-enabled device that lets you lock and unlock doors using biometrics such as fingerprint, voice command, or mobile phone application. Smart locks can also be operated remotely, allowing you to unlock a door to let in a guest without moving away from your desk.
Here are a few of the benefits of smart locks for businesses:
Smart locks make it possible to automatically maintain entry and exit logs in real time. This gives you greater security and administrative control over sensitive areas of the office such as server rooms.
Employees may sometimes lose keys and this can present security risks. But with smart locks, you easily mitigate this security risk.
Smart locks allow you to use proximity unlocking, which recognizes you by connecting with your smartphone and unlocking your door as you approach. This is a useful quality-of-life feature, especially handy when people are in a hurry.
You can also create temporary entry codes for visiting guests, cleaning services, and repair services as well as set access limitations to certain days and times. This makes administration much easier without creating any new security risks.
IoT Connected Security Cameras
A smart security camera is connected to the cloud and has the ability to analyze live video content. The events captured by the camera can be analyzed instantly and can lead to defined actions. For example, as you walk towards a door the smart cameras can identify your face and send instructions to the smart door lock to open for you.
Smart cameras don’t require any human operator to continuously monitor the videos. The videos are analyzed by an AI (artificial intelligence), which sends alerts to users or directly sends instructions to other IoT devices when an intrusion or other such activities are detected. It, therefore, allows business owners to remotely monitor their offices, warehouses, entrances, and other areas easily and inexpensively.
Since the camera is connected to the cloud, you can practically store unlimited video footage without being limited by the capacity of your physical server. The IoT cameras usually rely on a Wi-Fi connection, which means that you don’t need cabling, making installation simple. This makes connected smart cameras a powerful, yet affordable IoT technology for small businesses.
2. Climate Control With Smart Thermostats And HVAC
Smart thermostats are probably the earliest IoT devices to gain popularity. Smart thermostats connected with your building's HVAC system give you the ability to easily manage the environment and maintain a pleasant climate in your office without blowing up your utility bills.
These devices allow you to manage heating based on preset temperatures, external temperature, as well as the number of occupants. Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning can all be monitored as well as controlled centrally and even remotely for added convenience. These climate control devices can even implement machine learning to maximize energy efficiency and greater cost savings without any human intervention.
3. Intelligent Lighting With Smart Lights
Smart lights offer a wide range of benefits for small businesses- from meeting sustainability goals and reduction in electricity bills to security and employee well-being. Smart, connected lights can help create an intelligent lighting system to help improve your office environment in the following ways:
Motion-triggered lights to save on electricity bills and achieve sustainability goals.
Automatically switched on lights improve staff safety, especially in parking lots and warehouses.
Smart lighting can learn user schedules and automatically turns on or off.
Smart bulbs can adjust brightness and color balance throughout the day to minimize eye strain, stress, and discomfort.
4. Workspace Efficiency With Voice Assistants
Due to the massive improvements in natural language processing, voice assistants are becoming increasingly effective. Even basic voice assistants are now able to set reminders, take notes, and deliver alerts. Advanced voice assistants can interact with other IoT devices to perform certain tasks such as turning on smart lights or smart appliances, reading out your schedule, controlling security devices such as locks and cameras, as well as shopping online.
The list of functions that a voice assistant is able to execute is constantly growing. At the very least, voice assistants help improve individual productivity but on a larger scale, they have the potential to elevate sales and services as well as to deliver efficiency in customer support.
5. Improve Printer Maintenance With IoT Printers
Printers are probably the most hated device in most offices. But you can now improve your relationship with printers by using IoT printers. IoT printers have the capability to monitor their paper and ink and deliver alerts to a support staff when they are running low. More advanced printers can even connect directly to inventory systems, check on spare ink and paper as well as order more without any human involvement. Some IoT printers can also deliver alerts for maintenance. With smart printers, you or your staff won’t have to deal with broken, out-of-paper, or out-of-ink printers ever again.
6. IoT Sensors For Office Planning
An interesting and not-so-common use of IoT is to track the activity of devices within your office. There are software that can track the devices connected to your IoT system and monitor their movement in your office premises. This tracking data is used to create a heatmap of the activity in the office areas such as break rooms, hallways, etc. to identify usage patterns or congestion. This information can then be used to reorganize the floor plan or for office expansion.
7. Smart Coffee Machines For Employee Productivity
There are few things that are as devastating for employee morale in the morning as finding the coffee pot empty. Coffee is probably the unsung hero that fuels your staff. Your staff no longer need to worry about keeping the coffee machine stocked, share brewing duties, or worry about restocking the cupboards. Smart coffee machines ensure that your staff always has access to a warm cup of coffee without any human involvement.
6. IoT Security Risks
When it comes to security, IoT devices have earned a poor reputation because of their vulnerability to compromise. Computers and mobile devices have been in use for a long time and over the years they have received several built-in security features, antivirus, anti-malware, and automated patching. But the IoT devices are in no way near the same security level as your computers and mobile devices.
IoT devices are usually simple gadgets with sensors and running stripped-down operating systems designed for executing a limited set of tasks and minimal human interaction. Due to this reason they are often not monitored, patched, or updated. And because of their vulnerabilities, IoT devices are a soft target for hackers with cyberattacks using IoT botnets becoming increasingly common. The IoT security scene is improving but not fast enough. This means that IoT users need to put in a lot of work to secure their IoT infrastructure.
It isn’t that you need to only secure the IoT devices, you also need to remember that there’s an ocean of data constantly being collected by your IoT devices, which is perhaps more important than the devices. A hacked device may just be a small disruption, but a hacker gaining access to user data can be devastating.
Conclusion
Advances in IoT technologies are rapidly turning science fiction into reality. Using a voice assistant connected to an array of smart devices and appliances, you may feel like Tony Stark using JARVIS to control your entire office. IoT devices are continuously collecting data about us, reacting to our needs,learning, and improvingto make us more efficient and save us money. It’s quite possible that in the near future, all of the smart devices communicate with each other and run entire business operations independent of any human involvement.
However, along with all the convenience and benefits of IoT come substantial risks. But with the increase in attack vectors and digital entry points to your business, it is critical to make cybersecurity considerations a part of your office upgrades.
Do you need help securing your office network? We have extensive experience in working with small and medium businesses and keeping their IT infrastructure safe and secure. Contact us today for any and all support for your IoT or general IT infrastructure.
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About The Author
Hari SubediMarketing Manager at Jones IT
Hari is an online marketing professional with a focus on content marketing. He writes on topics related to IT, Security, and Small Business. He is also the founder and managing director of Girivar Kft., a business services company located in Budapest, Hungary.
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