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Consider it is as a competitive advantage. An API that is public, well-documented, and easy for other systems to securely integrate with would mean that custom
by mabbo 4y ago
Consider it is as a competitive advantage.
An API that is public, well-documented, and easy for other systems to securely integrate with would mean that customers get the integration they want. If someone builds a better way to utilize your system, then you just got value-add on your product at basically zero cost.
Amazon can hook Alexa into it. Google can hook their Home thing into it. And whatever comes next, whatever doesn't even exist today, should have an easy time integrating, continuing to add value.
- RicDan 4y agoCompletely agree on this point. I've worked over half a decade with smart home systems, and it's just so much easier (and cheaper!) to integrate well documented, open APIs (and please make them secure, I have nightmares of all the open, unencrypted UDP based alarm systems) that is purely local. This means we would highly recommend these products even tho we made zero money off them, and customers would actually prefer them as well - it's well beyond the time of people naively buying this stuff, and they know that clouds can just "go offline". What also can't be underestimated is the tinker community. Many people in the smart home business are tinkerers themselfs; create a great product for them and they will inevitably try to use it at their job. But this really isn't only applicable to integrators, really.