Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023. Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
IoT Development and Industry Trends
By François
Baldassari, CEO, Memfault
2022 has seen
acceleration of the IoT due to new edge use cases and improvement in hardware
capability. As the industry matures, IoT businesses are looking at ways to
support long-term viability that can take advantage of continual innovation in
both hardware and software. Beyond innovation, developer teams have to dedicate
much of their time and talents to getting a product in the field and, more
importantly, ensuring that it works - and works well - all the
time.
As IoT
products penetrate nearly every consumer and industrial area, user patience for
poor design or operations has plummeted. Glitches that users were once willing
to put up with during the IoT's nascent days now drive those same users to
purchase a different brand's product. Along with dependence on connected
devices comes rising demands for functionality. As we head into a new year,
there is no shortage of examples of device failures. Designing to respond
quickly and fix those issues has become a critical consideration for product
teams.
Even more
important than functionality is device security and the need to design with
adequate protections in place. Maybe it's a breach of third-party code or an
attack targeting an unsecured network, but it's not enough to address security
issues after they've risen. Today's device manufacturers and developers must
build products with security and functionality in mind and focus on device
health long after a product has hit the shelves.
Below are five
predictions that IoT companies should consider over the coming year.
1. Talent shortage will drive faster adoption of tooling and
automation.
If 2022 was
the year that supply chain issues vexed IoT companies, 2023 is the year talent
shortages will be a bottleneck. As devices become more complex, more engineers
are needed, and they're expected to have a broader skillset than ever. As
a result, hardware businesses will struggle to find engineering talent and will
turn to better tooling and automation to make the best use of the engineers
they have.
2. The transition to recurring revenue business models will
accelerate.
Hardware
products increasingly rely on software and the cloud to deliver value, which
cannot be sustained with hardware sales alone. Recurring revenue is required to
support the rich experiences that customers expect and to create predictable
revenue streams.
3. An uptick in adoption of higher-order programming languages.
While C and
C++ are known for application performance, they're often affected by memory
management bugs which have led to the rise of other programming languages. Rust
is poised to grow in 2023, largely due to its ability to flag security issues
early in the development process and save a lot of time debugging in
production. I also expect to see growth in embedded runtimes for languages like
Python (MicroPython), Javascript (Jerryscript), and Lua.
4. Rise in popularity for open-source chip design
RISC-V will
see a big breakout as it gives companies of all sizes the kind of design
freedom previously only available to businesses with big budgets and design
teams. While it does not directly threaten ARM yet, RISC-V is making headway in
the low cost Bluetooth and WiFi MCUs, with the ESP32-C3 leading the
charge.
5. Developers
will look for better ways to prepare for in-field operational issues
As use cases
expand, competition increases, and price points drop, companies will turn to
derisking processes during development to differentiate. Part of the product
life cycle will include device reliability engineering, anticipating the
inevitable bugs and glitches that will surface post-launch.
Many IoT
companies have successfully balanced increased customer demand for stability,
capability, and low cost. As competition intensifies, I think we'll see
widespread adoption of these new developments in business and development
approaches to the IoT as companies seek to differentiate and achieve long-term
success.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
François Baldassari is the Founder and CEO of Memfault,
the first observability platform for IoT devices. An embedded software engineer
by trade, it was his powerful passion for tooling and automation in software
engineering that drove him to start Memfault. Previous to Memfault, he ran the
firmware team at Oculus and built the operating system at Pebble. François has
a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Brown University.