With $11 million in fresh funding for its Connect Platform, Arrayent, Inc. has serious goals to nurture a burgeoning ecosystem around the Internet of Things (IoT) movement. Having helped global brands like Whirlpool turn everyday products into connected products, Arrayent is virtualizing the commercial world.

Investors on this round include Intel Capital, Opus Capital, DCM Ventures and Comerica Bank.

Arrayent currently provides connected product capability to brands like Whirlpool, Maytag, First Alert, OSRAM, LiftMaster, Pentera, Mattel and others.

With the new investment round, Cyril Brignone, CEO of Arrayent, said the company will be able to increase the number of use cases Arrayent enables for existing customers and add many new customers in 2016.

SiliconANGLE recently spoke to Arrayent founder Shane Dyer to find out how it works with high-volume product companies, the current state of IoT and its plans for the future of connected devices.

What is device virtualization?

Q: So many companies, big and small, want to be at the center of IoT development. How does one differentiate its IoT platform?

Dyer: We’ve been doing this a while with some of the world’s biggest brands. We tend not to work on the factory floor like General Electric (Co.), but we work more with companies rolling out high volume. We presumed everything that has electricity will one day be connected and knew that the architecture around connectivity would have to change.

Others that are emerging don’t have the same scale we have. The platform has really proved scalable. We help manage entire life cycles and those interested in connecting their devices. In fact, almost all our clients are global in reach.

Q: How do you connect an object without turning it into a computer? In other words, what is device virtualization?

Dyer: If you think about the easiest way to connect to the cloud, you can put a processor in a device (standalone computer) and hook it up to a cloud service. That’s very much a 2010-1015 approach to the problem.

More modern systems will be more streamlined. Device virtualization inflates the device model in the cloud — a 1-1 relationship between the sprinkler controller and the device in the cloud. So you can use fewer lines of code in the device itself. You want these devices to be dependable and secure. Don’t turn them into a big computer. I’m looking for my next smart fridge — I want a “fridge fridge” not a “computer fridge.” So we very much carry the flag to this thin-client approach to IoT. Others are doing things differently.

Removing complexity to enhance security

Q: You recently spoke about the security vulnerabilities introduced by complex computers in connected objects/devices. How can we simplify connected objects to make them more secure? Is virtualizing the device any more secure?

Dyer: You’re going to be attacked in the cloud — we have 15-20 years of experience defending resources in the cloud … imagine having an officer for each device watching your device 24/7, but in the cloud. You have doors and windows to protect. There’s too many ways in and out of a complex system. What we do by virtualizing is remove complexity so there’s less things that go wrong, allowing you to really pay attention to where it could be attacked.

Encryption is standard for manufacturers. It’s very hard to build an IoT platform from scratch and have all the security requirements taken care of in the first version. I’d recommend a company doesn’t roll its own security from jump. What we often see is that companies may do a decent job with security up to the point of firmware updates.

Q: How deep does your Big Data/analytics service go?

Dyer: There are two pieces. IoT analysis is based on common questions we see from manufacturers. Who’s engaging? What error codes and what frequency for when/where errors occur? Service and exhaustion of product? So we have technology on top of those core questions. We use Cassandra internally for those off-the-shelf offerings.

In addition to that, a company may have more specific needs. An appliance manufacturer may be interested in ball bearings — we can provide a stream of data going to their own data science clusters, or the raw data to run on their own Hadoop, etc., system.

A service model for IoT

Q: Your thoughts on the necessity to create a service model around connected things and where your company fits in?

Dyer: This is a hard thing for companies. As soon as you connect a product, you’re a service provider! With an IoT product, you’re never done. Expectation for improvement from consumers is ongoing. The product itself — software needs to be changed. Now you have a service connected to multiple pieces of software (i.e., tapping into Nest API).

It starts to rip up every department in the company, becoming a service provider. The engineering team is getting user function data, the marketing department is having different conversations with end users, ways to sell products. Customer service isn’t just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring and running a script but can reach out to customers when they leave their stove on, etc.

What we do is help companies transition — it’s one of the most exciting changes I’ve seen in business.

Q: How do you think the newly organized Google Alphabet will impact the Industrial Internet market?

Dyer: We’ll see. I think as they’re still sorting out what goes into Alphabet, it’s going to be interesting. What surprises me the most is some pieces I thought were more Google ended up in Alphabet. They’re definitely not just putting all the crazy ideas in Alphabet and real business in Google. So there may be more focus for markets like IoT.

They’ve been a great partner for us in connecting platforms. Now that there’s more clarity on how those divisions will be organized, I expect it will be an area that slows things down for a bit but will ultimately help accelerate it.

Lacking standards in IoT industry

Q: Without monetary incentive, how can industry standards become necessary to grow the IoT market? Have you noticed any developments in this area over the past 12 months?

Dyer: I’m mad as heck at current standards. As soon as the market got hot, everyone wanted to do their own standards. Now we have too many, and we’re not seeing enough coalescence. A lot of companies are not working together as well as they should.

A bright spot is people are creating clouds that can talk to each other — so we’re really working on API standards to enable this cloud-2-cloud interactivity. Sylvania has created a cloud platform in Arrayent that can talk to Google Cloud. These sorts of connections in the cloud is where we can fight back and develop systems that work best for consumer needs.

It will probably be five or six years before this all shakes out.

Photo via Morguefile