The amalgamation of Cloud and IoT has been radically transforming the digital era. Every appliance or device connected to the cloud is ultimately categorized under IoT. Putting to use, this amalgamation, reelyActive a startup based in Montreal, has devised a realtime location System (RLTS) to observe behavior in physical spaces.
reelyActive was founded in 2012, with the mission to create simple, accessible, cloud-based active RFID. Within four months since its inception, the company had a functional hardware and software platform which was formulated by a proficient team of industry experts.
Innovations that Empower
reelyActive’s core product is its Pareto Software-as-a-Service. The software delivers a real-time stream of WHO or WHAT is WHERE and HOW. It allows businesses to observe behavior in their physical spaces, in real-time. In order for Pareto to observe the real world, it requires sensor infrastructure in the physical spaces, thus the company also offers a line of hardware products to capture this data.
To facilitate an organization’s foray into the IoT, reelyActive has developed a Showcase Kit which includes both the hardware and SaaS which allow even a non-technical person to demonstrate a variety of features and capabilities out-of-the-box. These include traditional features such as asset tracking and environmental sensing, but also novel features such as anonymous occupancy measurement, real-time proximity interactions and even a live directory of who/what is where.
Moreover, Pareto includes one-click integration with Google Analytics so that businesses can measure foot traffic exactly as they would click traffic. The organization comprehends that businesses need to see tangible results in a proof-of-concept before committing to a wider deployment. reelyActive’s current line of hardware and SaaS products, combined with illustrative web application examples, make this a true plug-and-play endeavor.
An Intellectual Torchbearer
Jeffrey Dungen the Co-Founder and CEO of reelyActive is a computer engineer. He has been at the forefront of technological innovations at realtime location and machine-vision startups over the course of a 15-year career. At the first startup he himself co-founded, it became possible to innovate not only on a technical level, but also on a business and philosophical level.
In 2013, Jeffrey and co-founder Pier- Olivier Genest won a global startup competition in San Francisco, earning the title and trophy of ‘World’s Best Startup’. The pitch was focused on the ‘why’ of IoT. From 2014 onwards, led by Jeffrey, reelyActive developed a vast open source code base and publish tutorials on how to develop innovative IoT applications.
In 2018, Jeffrey became an exhibited artist, having created, in collaboration with internationally-known artist DJ Mini, generative art installations built on the open source code base.
Perpetual Distinction
On the technical front, reelyActive is a pioneer and a world leader of Bring- Your-Own-Device Real-Time Location Systems (BYOD RTLS). Where most IoT and RTLS vendors require the use of their own hardware products, the company embraces the fact that most people are already carrying radioidentifiable devices, and assets can easily be retrofitted with inexpensive third-party beacons.
“reelyActive is a subject to the vagaries in behavior of third-party hardware. We feel this is a fair tradeoff for the benefit of eliminating or minimizing change management. In other words, we are distinct in the ability to connect our platform and begin collecting meaningful data from the first instant,” states Jeffrey.
reelyActive has enshrined user opt-in within the architecture of its platform and emphasizes its mission to ‘unlock the value of the data the users choose to share,’ on its website, and in its documentation and educational outreach initiatives.
“We feel this is critical to widespread adoption as we have observed much higher success in projects where the end user was both aware of, and championed the initiative from the outset,” Jeffrey adds.
Learning through Efforts
When reelyActive was founded in 2012, its grand vision for the Internet of Things was dependent on a few key technological and business breakthroughs.
The organization was unaware of when these developments would occur or whether it could survive long enough to relish these breakthroughs. However in 2014, most of the company’s foundation was laid, taking advantage of the advent of technological developments. These developments made it possible for computers to identify and represent people, places and products in a standard way. The final breakthrough began in 2017, when pioneering commercial lighting companies included Bluetooth Low Energy radios and computing power in their lights.
“Within the next year or two we expect to be able to leverage existing lighting as a source for our Pareto SaaS. To be precise, our platform is beginning to support BYOI: Bring-Your-Own- Infrastructure,” says Jeffrey.
Envisaging Success, One Step at a Time
The IoT is nothing short of machines gaining the capability to understand physical reality, and in that sense, reelyActive is at the forefront of leveraging the existing standards of the web as a universal “language”, minimizing change management for organizations to transition to IoT, spearheading the BYOD and BYOI initiatives, educating and sensitizing humanity to the potentials and pitfalls of universal machine-contextual awareness through art, science and literature.
Essentially, reelyActive’s technology platform makes it possible for prominent businesses to leverage the power of the web to optimize what matters for their business. In other words, the organization is observing the real-world like the web and thereby re-appropriating the established tools of e-commerce.
“We’re only just scratching the surface of our big vision for an IoT future! Expect the division between online presence and real-world presence to blur and eventually disappear in a completely voluntary way. And expect the sharing economy to migrate from lodging and transportation to everyday products and ephemeral services. But most importantly, expect the human and humanity itself to remain at the center of it all,” Jeffrey states.