Why Now Is the Time To Start An IoT Services Offering

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"As a service" -- those three words have formed the magic phrase that propels channel partners into recurring revenue business, forming a secure financial platform for their companies. And according to the Senior Vice President of New Growth Platforms at IoT company Zebra, the next big services play will be around the connected world.

Philip Gerskovich told a crowd of IoT enthusiasts in Cambridge, Mass., that IoT will completely revolutionize and improve the customer experience. He named examples of applications for infrastructure, health care and retail spaces.

The key to the timing is the high percentage of people utilizing smart mobile devices.

"When you take these mobile people and connect them to real-world information using IoT, you're going to create transforming experiences," Gerskovich said.

"We see these business models occurring even in B2B transactions, where businesses don't want to make big capital investments anymore. They want to pay for things as they use them," he said. "Again, it's an opportunity for the IoT, because the IoT enables you to remotely manage and monitor usage of things that you couldn't do before. So it's now possible to deliver as a service, whether it's to health care, retail, industrial applications, things that would otherwise have to be paid for as a capital expenditure."

PUBLISHED MARCH 9, 2015