Environment Sensing Solutions: An Opportunity To Address Urgent Customer Needs
By Derek Peterson, Soter Technologies
Adding essential, cutting-edge services can translate to recurring revenue for MSPs and tighter end-customer relationships.
Safety, security, and wellness have never been more top of mind. In schools, airports, shopping malls, office buildings, places of worship, and other public spaces, maintaining a safe and secure environment has taken on new urgency. As those who manage facilities look to improve safeguards and mitigate potential risks, they also understand the need to maintain a sense of normalcy that is unobtrusive, yet effective. Reliable, yet discreet.
Savvy solutions providers are already taking note of this escalating need and are adding compelling environment-sensing solutions into their portfolios. These services offer MSPs, IoT providers, and other channels the opportunity to deliver robust environmental sensors and software that serve both immediate and long-term business needs, and also provide high margins, recurring revenue, and low operating costs that should resonate with most channels.
Awareness of health and safety in public facilities has become more acute. Sites that regularly host large groups are a perfect fit for these technologies. From identifying real-time changes in air quality that can warn of hazardous materials, to detecting sound anomalies that can indicate a threat by an unauthorized gathering of people, environmental sensing can fit into a multitude of locations and facilities. Educational facilities ranging from local public schools to large university campuses are prime candidates for this technology. Facilities management, warehousing and logistics, agriculture, and healthcare venues are just some of the other sectors that pay close attention to maintaining healthy, safe, and secure environments.
Environmental sensors serve a range of needs—from keeping facilities safe and secure to mitigating risk, and even reducing liability. These offerings can detect temperature, humidity, occupancy, and light levels that enable the automated adjustments to HVAC systems to accommodate or mitigate environmental changes. They also can pick up ambient noise when groups of people quickly congregate—in a school or shopping center for example—and trigger notifications to the proper authorities.
Implementing and managing these low-touch systems is straightforward. Environment sensing solutions can be quickly installed by channel partners with little training. The signals can traverse ubiquitous Wi-Fi connections, or LoRaWan and 5G wireless when available or preferred. The most effective sensor solutions can satisfy settings as diverse as small offices and classrooms, warehouses, campuses, and outdoor plazas. In addition, these sensors can be seamlessly integrated with existing security and maintenance systems, allowing MSPs to serve any type of end customer, including greenfield opportunities, businesses with legacy video surveillance deployments, and organizations that have hybrid infrastructures. Certain environmental sensing vendors offer solutions that can comfortably scale and integrate with practically any infrastructure, eliminating the headaches associated with new technology deployments, and accelerating time to revenue.
The stark reality is that the need to maintain safe and secure environments continues to be the highest priority of any organization. But maintaining an appropriate level of monitoring without invading privacy or inviting panic and fear among staff, customers, and other stakeholders is a real challenge. Channel partners that provide advanced, sophisticated, and differentiated environmental sensing technology will not only tap into a new revenue stream and strengthen customer relationships but also will reposition the partner as an indispensable resource for addressing this most critical need.
About The Author
Derek Peterson is the Chief Executive Officer of Soter Technologies, a New York-based provider of innovative environmental sensor and software technologies used in industrial and educational settings.