Breadware Marketplace Combats IoT Project Failure

Breadware, a three-year old company that bills itself as an online resource for all things related to product development and the internet of things (IoT), has a new marketplace for professional services.

The Breadware Marketplace aims to simplify the process of developing IoT products and become the go-to resource for all product development teams and designers. Businesses can go to the marketplace for assistance in planning, building and launching IoT products.

Breadware’s Daniel Price

“The goal of the Marketplace is to bring well-vetted and well-suited projects to the professional-services firms,” Daniel Price, CEO and cofounder of Breadware, told Channel Futures. “We’ve seen that, IoT being a frontier technology, has many companies raising their hands saying, ‘I can do that or figure it out,’ but reality is that they haven’t done a similar project before and a lot of learning is going to be learning on the client’s dollar. Also, projects take longer to deploy; maybe they’re not successful, and there [are] more dollars being spent. If you match a project to the company that has the right expertise, things run a lot smoother.”

Two years ago, a Cisco survey found that almost three-quarters of IoT projects failed. The reasons: Companies didn’t have the internal expertise; they chose the wrong partners; or underestimated security and compliance obstacles.

Today, there are about 50 IoT firms, primarily U.S.-based, but some global, listed on the Breadware Marketplace. These firms are industry leaders that fall into several categories within IoT – for example, industrial design for IoT products; marketing; crowdfunding for IoT products; and security and compliance for IoT.

Featured categories for launched products on Breadware include sports, smart building, smart home, transportation, medical and industrial.

“It’s not an open invite where companies can sign themselves up as a seller on the Breadware network,” said Price. “There’s a vetting process and firms have to be invited.”

The process for how a firm joins the Breadware Marketplace, gets vetted and gets a profile, involves a number of steps including: an initial screening by Breadware’s customer support team; deeper scrutiny by the company’s engineering, solutions and IoT deployment team into the prospects process, their technical approach, and competency within IoT, specifically; and request for customer references — which are followed up. Then Breadware works with the firm to put together a profile that’s posted on the marketplace. The profile should highlight the firm’s expertise and specific areas where they excel and stand out from the competition.

“We post the profile and train our marketing team on that vendor and incorporate that into our outreach operating as lead generation for them,” said Price.

Breadware positions itself as a guide and mentor within the IoT landscape.

The company was founded in 2015 by Price and co-founder Daniel Delaveaga, general manager at Breadware, as a specialized IoT product development consulting firm. Breadware soon had more projects than its internal team could handle, so it put together a network of solutions, technologies and services firms within the IoT landscape – from design and discovery to production, manufacturing and logistics.

“As we evolved, we help companies find the right firms and the right solutions for their IoT initiatives,” said Price. “I think of it as trying to create paved roads and set up street signs within the IoT frontier.”

Today, Breadware has two primary divisions: the solutions team, or a white glove enterprise solution team that helps businesses with soup to nuts development for IoT projects; and the marketplace team. In April, Breadware launched an events and media division.

Partner firms in the Breadware marketplace could be: IoT strategy firms, product designer firms, electrical engineering firms, mechanical engineering firms, firmware development companies, cloud application developers, mobile application developers or production management support firms.

Breadware is adding to this ecosystem; for example, firms that sell customizable solutions, cloud platforms, and plug-and-play connectivity.

Price said large enterprises also work with consultants to kickstart IoT projects.