Take a Closer Look at the IoT with Vision-as-a-Service

Most of the output of M2M devices and sensors comes in the form of raw data meant to be compiled and analyzed for trend identification and actionable intelligence. Well, one developer has decided that IoT output should also provide immediate benefits for consumers.

Tend, maker of a developer platform incorporated by Kodak and other major brands, has set itself the mission of bringing IoT innovation into the service economy. Tend believes that businesses that want to jump into IoT are better off leveraging already existing services, rather than going to all the expense and difficulty of building proprietary solutions.

In particular, Tend is promoting the idea of “Vision-as-a-Service” (VAAS) as it applies to the company’s connected video cameras, which have been built into baby monitors, security systems and other home video applications.

“Once you have a service, which should be application-centric, and a customer asks for something, you can find a way to do it,” said Herman Yau, CEO, Tend. “We’re incorporating vision technology with our emotion recognition engine so we can help customers make more informed decisions.”

Helping connected home companies rapidly get to market with diff­erentiated products is how Tend envisions VaaS working in the industry. Tend’s VaaS platform provides access to industry expertise, camera hardware, firmware, mobile and web apps, vision analytics, live video streaming, cloud services and SDK/APIs to enable developers to accelerate vision-centric product development. Belkin, SingTel, and BT have already tapped into the platform to build solutions.

Tend sees itself as a cloud services company that happens to provide hardware and software within its vertical expertise. Other technology developers within the IoT would be wise to look at this kind of model, Yau said. “Products are turning into services,” he said. “You create something and then you turn around and continue to add services and features to it.”

Let’s hope that continues.