How selecting the right Linux OS expedites IoT time to market

With a proliferation of related hardware, software and solutions being rushed out to capture the promise of a multi-billion dollar IoT industry, vendors are under pressure to decrease their development time and speed up their time to market. Choices such as selecting the right infrastructure from the outset become even more important during the development stage to avoid friction once a product is market ready, or worse, out in the field.

One way to reduce time to market is to select the right operating system (OS) from the start, ensuring it is maintainable, scalable, and of course, secure. Linux based operating systems still remain the most popular across the IoT ecosystem according to Eclipse’s IoT Developer Survey 2018, with Raspbian and Ubuntu/Ubuntu Core as the top distributions used in the internet of things.

Rigado, a commercial IoT gateway manufacturer, encountered this OS selection choice when looking to build its hardware. Initially opting for Yocto, an open source Linux OS, it soon became apparent that this would require customers to invest a substantial amount of time to maintain the OS, security and other updates. For most of Rigado’s customers, this was a distraction from its core business objective.

Rigado turned to Ubuntu Core, snaps and Canonical’s private brand stores to take this headache away from its customers. Speaking of Ubuntu Core and snaps, Rigado’s CEO Ben Corrado explains: “Here is a ready to go solution that uses containerised technology and secures your intellectual property. Through the relationship between Rigado and Canonical, we can provide these updates in a secure, seamless and managed fashion.”

Rigado found that by making those changes in how people adopt its gateway infrastructure technology, their time to market becomes much faster. Customers can go from concept to production in three to six months, shaving up to a year off of their development and go to market times by using Rigado’s Cascade platform.

The impact on Rigado’s business of making the shift from fixed-function gateways to a package based, centrally maintained solution has been monumental with customers. “We’re able to leverage lessons learned from one customer across all customers…through a documented, methodical process enabling them to rapidly deploy that into the field,” Ben explains.

For more insight into how Rigado have reduced its time to market with Ubuntu Core and snaps, Ben’s full interview can be viewed below.