Academy for LoRaWAN®

By its very nature, data has value when it comes to business. It often has value beyond whatever purpose you may originally gather it for, especially when combined with other data. In the consumer world, we are familiar with the fact that merchants collect contact data from their customers so they can fulfill orders. We are also familiar with the fact that those companies may also share or sell their customer data, such as email addresses and phone numbers, to others who want to solicit sales from that same customer pool.

Another example is the tracking of local environmental conditions, such as temperature, humidity, rainfall, hours of sunlight, etc. You may choose to collect this type of data for your own purposes. Additionally, this data will likely have value for others as well. It is possible that you might sell such data gathered in an agricultural region to farmers, to help them decide whether their fields need to be irrigated. Those same farmers might also be interested in historical data to help them determine reasons for low crop yields.

Similarly, you might sell information you collect in an urban region to building managers, so they can determine whether or not a building’s heating or cooling system needs to be turned on or off. With a little thought, it quickly becomes clear that there are a wide variety of use cases to consider when you first begin to collect data. These use cases cover everything from smart homes and buildings to smart retail, from agriculture and metering to smart health care and logistics.