The Arrayent Blog

Despite years of connected product end-caps featured at Lowe’s and Home Depot, we are constantly surprised by the general lack of awareness about connected products, even among Arrayent partners and prospective customers. The good news is that times are changing. Last year Target went beyond the end cap to launch the Target Open House, an Apple Store-like experience that walks consumers though hero moment use cases room by room, and hands-on tables to touch and feel the product and app. These connected products are visually appealing and have instant recognition with early-adopters, but it’s when they can be experienced real-time […]

A recent article in E-commerce Times highlights potential security issues that are caused when IoT products are not connected broadly. This negatively impacts the ability to share valuable information. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has announced that it will begin sharing threat information with a small number of companies under the newly enacted Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act.  In the article, Arrayent CEO Cyril Brignone explains how IoT silos prevent more information sharing. “The IoT is not consumer friendly,” he said. “Right now, all these IoT products are done in silos. Breaking those silos is key to the success […]

Today we announced the availability of our new EcoAdaptor for Nest. This is huge news for global brands and product companies that want to IoT-enable products and have those products work with other connected devices. It will enable interconnectivity among products and will help drastically reduce development and deployment time for Nest and the Works with Nest product certification process. Nest is a well-known and trusted brand in the IoT space. As a provider of home automation devices like thermostats, smoke detectors and security solutions, Nest is a major innovator in programmable, self-learning, sensor-driven, connected devices. The Arrayent EcoAdapter will […]

Reducing purchase friction is a big opportunity in IoT deployments. While automated product replenishment is as old as PC printer, purchase friction remains a big issue in getting consumers to buy replacement filters. Arrayent customers such as P&G Febreze Connect and Whirlpool Refrigerator apps already feature product consumable replenish reorder functionality in their mobile apps. Amazon Dash Replenishment Services, DRS offers to build reorder functionality right into product, such as Brita. More and more product companies think of connectivity, not a user feature, as the best advertising money can buy. Manufacturers will realize that there is no better situation in […]

It’s cheaper for an electrical utility to offer rebates to save energy than it is to build a new power plant. It’s far more effective for a municipal water district to incent saving water than to find new water sources and transport water. There have been numerous efforts by utilities to encourage industrial, agriculture and consumer clients to save water and energy. For consumers, this usually takes the form of WaterSense or Energy Star product rebate at time of purchase, or enrollment in a demand response program. Utilities are beginning to ask why should the fund these programs, when there is […]

Devices know a lot about their owners, and that information is quite valuable to insurance companies because it is accurate and personal. Progressive Insurance’s Snapshot® Program was one usage-based insurance products. Driving style is used to assess the risk of specific drivers, not based on their life style. This concept will evolve to “insurance on demand”, that is pay for insurance when the car is driven. Drivers that drive more, pay more. In the coming years, expect automobile insurance flat rate plans to go the way of hand crank starter and manual choke. On deck is home insurance. For years, […]

We wish we could be optimistic about standards. Unfortunately connectivity standards in the home are diverging, not converging. In this case the abundance of standards is slowing down the market, not accelerating it. The noise generated of Thread, ZigBee, Z-Wave, ULE, BLE-mesh, is creating confusion among Arrayent customers. Holding many companies off. The new generation of “thing talking to thing” (e.g. Smart TV recognizing Wi-Fi speakers in the back of a living room) efforts – Open Connectivity Foundation (the unification of OIC, Allseen and UPnP), Apple HomeKit, Nest Weave, Google Weave are confusing suppliers about a problem we don’t even […]