Prioritizing My Projects for 2015

The calendar will flip over to the year 2015 in just a couple of weeks, and if B+B’s resolutions for the new year are as successful as they were in 2014, it’s going to be a wonderful ride.

I’m not talking about any of my personal resolutions, mind you. My garage, for example, is still a packrat’s dream home.  Ditto for the attic. And I could probably think of at least 20 other home improvement projects that never came to fruition in 2014. But in my own defense I can offer this excuse: things were so exciting at B+B that we all put in a lot of extra hours. 2014 was the year we created and launched our Wzzard Sensor Platform, a complete connectivity stack for M2M and IoT applications.

If you’ve been following my blog you already know that the Wzzard platform uses intelligent edge nodes to provide wireless connectivity for industry standard sensors. The intelligent edge nodes send the sensor data to our Spectre network gateway via SmartMesh IP mesh networks, and the gateway provides Internet connectivity via either wired or cellular connections. It’s a complete solution that carries data all the way from assets out at the network edge to the applications that can use it to make informed business decisions.  Way more fun than cleaning out the garage.

That was 2014.

Now Wzzard has become a reality. Our goal in 2015 is to help people use it to accomplish great things. We’re going to help customers reduce energy consumption by monitoring power hungry equipment and processes. We’re going to help people reduce unplanned downtime by monitoring the temperature and current consumption of motors, allowing faults to be identified before production lines shut down. We’re going to help folks decrease costs and increase compliance by tracking temperatures, sensing for contaminants and monitoring other environmental factors. We’re going to help customers make smart decisions by bringing them data about their assets and resources, with a platform that’s remarkably easy to install and integrate.

We’re also going to make a lot of new friends. Because we can’t do all this alone, we’ll be introducing new technology partners to our customers in 2015. B+B provides the connectivity stack, but it will be our partners who provide the dashboards, the software platforms, the integration, and all of the other services that derive the full value from raw data.

As I mentioned last month, the Wzzard platform is going to need a trophy case of its own. The awards keep coming in, and we’ve just collected yet another, for “Most Innovative Connective Solution” at the Internet of Things Awards (IoTAs).  You can view a You Tube video about Wzzard at the IoTAs at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MXaBJeo_1M.

If it sounds like I’m bragging, what can I say? If you’ve got it; flaunt it.

It’s hard to envision all of the ways in which Wzzard will be put to work in 2015. Our partners are already setting up Wzzard mesh networks in everything from factories to theme parks. Wzzard can do its job anywhere there’s a need to collect and transport data from sensors, whether its the ammonia detectors that monitor the plant-wide refrigeration system in a creamery or the temperature sensors in a food processing center. There’s no single application or single industry that suits Wzzard best. (And I’d love to hear your suggestions for applications that we haven’t thought of yet.)

We won’t be sitting our on laurels in 2015.  We’ll continue to introduce new M2M and IoT solutions, and to expand the capabilities of our existing products. Look for new additions to the Wzzard family, enhanced routers and IoT Gateways.

And I don’t want to overlook enhancements to our existing products either. Like the support of AWS on our existing Spectre routers, which increases available cellular carrier bandwidth by making use of some of the spectrum that was formerly allocated to wireless cable broadcasting. Most cellular routers don’t do that yet, which seems crazy. Now that the spectrum has been reassigned to the cellular networks, why wouldn’t you jump on it right away? Weird. At any rate, it’s shaping up to be another busy, exciting year. There will be many new projects and new opportunities to pursue, and if nobody manages to get around to organizing my garage this year, hey, it’ll keep.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.