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Why use ObjectSpectrum instead of an IoT SaaS company?

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ObjectSpectrum is primarily a software engineering company, focused on creating IoT solutions. We are more like a traditional software outsourcing company than a SaaS provider. An IoT SaaS company is primarily looking for a customer that wants to do it themselves and is willing to operate within the constraints of their software. The closer you get to a tool that can be used by non-software engineers (i.e. application designers and developers), the more you will have to play by the rules they have created in their software. Their software will let you take your knowledge of your warehouse, for example, and combine that with their software to connect and monitor this thing and that thing, and that’s great. But by targeting that kind of a user, you are going to be putting constraints around what you can do. And for some people, this may be completely fine. That might be the best choice for them and their situation. 

If you are an enterprise customer, and what you need is to collect data from a hundred different sensors in your factory, or GPS trackers on your hundred different pieces of heavy equipment, then an IoT SaaS company could be okay for you because it will let you build a functional application. But the problem is that you are still going to be working within those constraints. To be clear, we are not knocking the idea of you working with an IoT SaaS company. We are just stating what’s different about that type of company and ObjectSpectrum. It’s important for you to understand the differences so that you can make the best choice for your specific situation. 

But the dirty little secret of any SaaS company is that if you need to go beyond the scope of capability that they deliver to you, you either a) have no choice because they didn’t provide you with a way to extend it, or b) you now need to bring in the hardcore developers that are necessary to go beyond that set of functionality provided with the software. If you’re trying to build an application that is going to be offered for sale, either as a standalone service or as part of something that you’re selling, you want something that is a lot closer to from-scratch software development. You want something that doesn’t have those constraints; you need something that isn’t designed for a non-technical user. Because you’re going to run into issues with the SaaS products where they simply don’t meet your needs, and then what do you do? So the target audience for this is typically someone who is using it internally and they’ll tell you, “oh no, you can white label it, put your logo on it and offer it to your customers,” and that’s all great. If what you actually need is what they thought you needed, you’re in good shape. But as soon as you cross that line, you’re now into having to bring in the technical people to actually get the job done. 

The bottom line is that an IoT SaaS company is not in the business of IoT solutions engineering. It is in the business of licensing a piece of software. ObjectSpectrum is in the business of solutions engineering. Tools like an IoT SaaS company can be a great prototyping tool. Because once you learn how to use their tool, it can be very quick and easy to set up, “okay, we need to monitor these five sensors and we need to test this thing over the next two weeks” and that type of stuff. It can be a great prototyping tool. Unfortunately, with most IoT SaaS companies, it comes with a pretty high price tag just to license it. So that makes it kind of an expensive prototyping tool. That’s not the case for every single one of them (IoT SaaS companies), but it is with a lot of them. 

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