Almond hub and IoT platform — How Almond is enabling IoT services for manufacturers and verticals

Recently, at Securifi, we have been working with several device manufacturers and players from the insurance and health sectors to help enable them to achieve their IoT service plans based on Almond, our router and smart hub. Almond is a consumer focused hub brand, but it’s strong and flexible smart home platform is increasingly sought out as a platform to enable other brands IoT service plans.

Enabling remote connectivity

A couple our partners were looking for an opportunity to expand their services. We delivered the remote connectivity and hardware infrastructure currently not possible with their devices.

The Internet of Things can be confusing terminology considering many of the smart devices in the market use standards that are not able to connect to the Internet directly — Zigbee, Z-Wave and Bluetooth. These standards need a hub capable of speaking to your router to get out to the Internet. These customers, for lower energy consumption, had launched their products based on Zigbee. But now they wanted to launch further services based on their consumers’ usage behavior. To do this meant they needed to collect data and connect with their devices remotely.

Almond smart hub proven time-to-market and market success

Our customers could have introduced their own smart hub product to link up with their cloud, but they had several considerations:

1. Time-to-market — Their expertise was in their product and the services around it. They also had aggressive launch schedules. To build out a team capable of productizing their own smart hub, and also connectivity solution to their cloud, would take too long.
2. Compatibility — Consumers don’t want a hub and app for each of their smart devices; therefore, smart home devices need to be part of an ecosystem. Unfortunately, in the present environment, with a multitude of different standards, it is necessary for smart device brands to create their own ecosystems. This task, which includes integrating and verifying all the other key smart devices in the market, is an incredibly time consuming and technically demanding one.
3. Market acceptance — A hub takes up space in the house and adds cost. If they could utilize a commercially proven smart hub, that had its own customer base and lots of added value services, it made the upgrade for their customers an easier sell.
4. Workforce expertise — Once they had decided to work with a smart hub partner they needed a company with a flexible approach to enabling other companies, who could deliver their product on time, and had the workforce that was able to carry out the necessary customizations.

Flexible and modular IoT platform

Helping companies get remote connectivity access to their devices is just one aspect of what we have been enabling with Almond. Almond is an extremely flexible, modular IoT platform that any company can quickly deploy in a number of ways to meet it’s business requirements.

1. Remote connectivity — Unable to get out to your cloud Almond can provide that bridge.
2. Services management and development — If you do not have your own cloud services platform Almond can also provide for you.
3. For larger industries and verticals such as insurance and healthcare. Almond can provide you with a full customized solution to deliver value-added services.

Brand value, infrastructure and product delivery expertise

Working with Securifi and the Almond IoT platform brings several advantages:

1. Brand value — Securifi is a Gartner Cool Vendor for 2016, and a brand known for innovation and ease-of-use with both consumers and geeks alike. It is one of the most successful router vendors on Amazon with more than 10,000 reviews.
2. Product delivery expertise — Securifi has been shipping its Almond hub now for almost two years. Our platform is proven in the market and well-received.
3. Unique IoT platform — Many IoT platform providers focus on software only. Securifi also brings its own branded hub to market meaning it has hardware supply chain expertise. It can use that expertise to advise on all aspects of successfully delivering smart devices to market.
4. Infrastructure — Enterprise grade, scalable cloud able to deliver on your service plans for any number of customers.
5. Feature set — Almond is both a smart hub and router, meaning compelling differentiation compared to other hubs in the market. It is one of the few smart hub platforms to enable local and cloud control. It also has a powerful automation engine able to handle multiple conditions to trigger an action.
6. Ecosystem — Almond connects with hundreds of sensors including most of the key smart device players like Nest, Philips Hue and even Amazon Alexa.
7. Engineering expertise — Incredible team of engineers who have been creating technology ‘firsts’ for more than 4 years. Including: integrating a touchscreen into a router, smart hub into a router, using smartphones as presence sensors and many more.

To discuss with Securifi how Almond can help optimize your smart device ambitions please contact us at partners@securifi.com. Or simply click here.

Originally posted by Securifi Blog