The IoT industry is growing by leaps and bounds. Innumerable devices and applications are being developed to deliver and support the breathtaking miracles that are arising all around us. Every day, we read about smart cities, smart grids, Industry 4.0, autonomous cars, smart agriculture and mining, smart retail and the super-advanced, connected military. In fact, virtually no industry remains untouched by the IoT revolution. Connection to the internet will soon be as pervasive asrunning water and electricity. However, despite all of the justified excitement, we noticed a peculiar phenomenon.
Home Alone
All of these rapidly advancing industries will have dedicated support teams to service their IoT devices and make sure they are well integrated, perform at top efficiency and operate smoothly together. When stuff breaks in an automobile factory, highly trained technical support staffers are Johnny-on-the-spot to analyze problems and repair malfunctions. The factory must operate smoothly and efficiently at all times.
The story is the same for mining companies, hospitals, traffic grids and, really, just everywhere else that IoT is making our lives better.
But there is one gigantic IoT industry—in fact, the largest of them all—that’s been left behind: the
connected home. In our homes, we buy our own smart stuff maybe from Amazon, Walmart or Apple Stores. We can order from anywhere in the world.
At home, we don’t have a Purchasing Department that advises us on integration issues before we
buy. We don’t have our own R&D that tests the compatibility of thousands of devices manufactured
on different continents by hundreds of different vendors. And most important, we don’t have
dedicated IT staffs who monitor our digital-lifestyle devices and jump in whenever something
malfunctions or breaks.
At home, we hook up our devices ourselves and contend with the numerous setup, configuration, integration, and environmental issues.
We are on our own.
Support on the home front
At home, we turn to our Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and smart-hub providers to service our
devices when they malfunction. After all, these are the companies that provide our internet
connection and interoperability in the home. But how can our ISP know if the smart thermostat is
interfering with the surveillance system? We didn’t know to ask our ISP if they could be connected
together and operated via the wireless router. We didn’t turn to the our smart-hub provider to find
out if all that home-theatre equipment is compatible with our smart lights and heating/cooling
systems. We just bought the stuff and started hooking it up.
So, who you gonna call when something breaks? Which ISPs are going to take responsibility for
billions of smart-home devices?
Veego gives eyesight to the blind
We founded Veego with the intent of delivering the vast benefits of artificial intelligence and other leading technologies to smart-home users and the people who are charged with supporting them. Veego perfects the customer experience within the home, keeping everything working properly the way that consumers want it. When there are problems that require support, we arm the support staff with all the information necessary to pinpoint the cause of the problem and to fix it quickly. Veego Outpost sits on routers and smart hubs. It discovers all connected devices and creates an accurate topology map. It monitors all the devices and their behavior, determining what’s working well and what isn’t.
Smooth customer experience profitably
Things break and billions of IoT devices break a lot. That represents a gigantic support responsibility and a lot of time, effort and money.
Veego detects malfunctions and behavior anomalies automatically and figures out their root cause. In many cases, Veego fixes the problems autonomously, preempting support calls. In some cases, we can’t, but we can direct the home-user to undertake a few simple steps to make everything work again.
When a problem requires a call to the service center, Veego provides the complete analysis of the problem with suggested remediation steps that enable support
technicians to quickly clear up the problem and make the customer happy again. Veego saves time and money, and keeps customers enjoying their smart-home
experience.
