Given the breakneck pace at which the “Internet of things” is evolving, it won’t be long before our smartphones are ordering our appliances to turn on, chill the Chardonnay and simmer the soup, all before we get home from the office. Arrayent, which offers service providers, manufacturers and retailers a platform for building Internet-connected systems, is betting that consumers are ready for the IoT, especially if companies make it easy to engage by flipping a switch or speaking a command.
“We really believe that the complexity in most of these systems is in the wrong place,” Arrayent CEO Shane Dyer says. “Devices themselves should be very, very simple, and we should, with a technology called device virtualization, move the complexity from the devices themselves up to the cloud.”
That allows service providers to aggregate offers from a variety of popular brands and have their collective connectivity function under a single mobile application.
As Dyer points out, there are plenty of earth-bound technologies, such as Wi-Fi, Z-Wave and ZigBee, available to connect home appliances and machines. But not every product uses the same technology. That’s where Arrayent comes in with the idea of creating an oasis of compatibility up in the cloud.
“It doesn’t matter how those things connect,” he says. “They’re still going to work together very well in the mobile app.”
Whether or not consumers are embracing the notion of the IoT is another matter. According to a Forrester Research study done in mid-2013, only 1% to 2% of those polled actually used a smartphone to manage their home appliances and services, while another 28% expressed interest in being able to do so. But 53% said, “no thanks.” That could be because the IoT is still a fairly new and young movement residing largely in the realm of ideas and what-ifs. Concerns about privacy and the data generated by all that inter-connectivity are also floating to the top of the conversation.
Even so, Arrayent must be onto something because its client list includes appliance giant Whirlpool, garage door manufacturer Chamberlain and toy maker Mattel, among others.
In November Arrayent announced that it had raised $11.9 million from three venture capital firms to add to the initial investment of $1.5 million. For Dwyer, the new round of funding is simply confirmation that consumers are ready to make the transition to Internet-connected systems, whether it’s the thermostat, the security system or the stove.
“These are all products with real emotional resonance, and when you get that emotional piece with these products, the app becomes a must-have,” he says. Failure to add connectivity could send some appliances down the same path as analog TVs and rotary phones. “So if you’re a thermostat company now and you’re not producing a connected thermostat, then you’re planning on exiting the industry,” said Dyer.
As for the next big development, Dyer believes that compatibility tops the list. Despite efforts to develop a single land standard, there are still multiple ways and technologies that products can use to connect to each other. Ideally, those different technologies and protocols should be speaking the same language, a sort of Esperanto for appliances.
“Compatibility in the cloud is one big trend that’s coming this way,” he says. “We’re betting big by putting together technology to make these products work well together.”
