Firmware Strategy: The Hidden Complexity in Your IoT Product’s Success

Firmware Strategy: The Hidden Complexity in Your IoT Product's Success

In a recent webinar with our partners at Peridio, Very's SVP of Technology Heath Marvin joined industry leaders to discuss a critical yet often overlooked aspect of IoT product development: firmware management strategy. As an IoT services company that has guided numerous products from concept to scale, we've seen firsthand how firmware strategy can make or break a product's success.

Understanding the Stakes

When companies approach us about building IoT products, they often focus on hardware specifications and user experience. While these are crucial elements, there's a foundational aspect that deserves equal attention: firmware management. Think of firmware as your product's central nervous system – it's the software that brings your hardware to life, and once it's deployed, changes become significantly more complex than typical software updates.

Why Firmware Demands Special Attention

Unlike cloud software where you can roll back changes instantly, firmware updates are essentially one-way streets. When your customer's device updates its firmware, there's no simple "undo" button. This fundamental constraint shapes everything about how we approach IoT product development with our clients.

Heath shared three essential questions we ask every client at the start of an IoT project:

1. "Do you have CI/CD and if not, can we help build it?"
2. "What's your over-the-air update process?"
3. "What is your plan if a firmware update goes wrong?"

These questions might seem basic, but they reveal crucial gaps in many organizations' IoT strategies.

Moving from Development to Scale

Through our experience helping companies build and scale IoT products, we've identified several critical phases where firmware strategy becomes particularly important:

Early Development

• Building firmware for hardware that might not exist yet
• Creating flexible architectures that can adapt to supply chain changes
• Establishing development environments that support team collaboration

Production Launch

• Implementing robust testing infrastructure
• Setting up secure over-the-air (OTA) update capabilities
• Creating validation processes that protect against costly errors

Scale Operations

• Managing updates across diverse hardware variants
• Implementing staged rollout processes
• Integrating with customer success and product teams

Best Practices We've Learned

After helping numerous companies navigate these challenges, here are key principles we advocate for:

1. Start with Infrastructure: Build proper CI/CD pipelines early – even if you think you're too small to need them. We've seen how manual processes that work for one developer become bottlenecks with just 2-3 team members.
2. Think Forward-Only: Design your update processes assuming you can only move forward. This mindset forces better testing and validation processes upfront.
3. Partner Strategically: Work with partners who understand firmware's unique challenges. This is why we've partnered with companies like Peridio for firmware management infrastructure.
4. Plan for Scale: Design your processes not just for today's needs but for where your product will be in 18-24 months.

The Path Forward

As IoT products become more sophisticated, firmware management becomes increasingly critical to business success. Whether you're developing your first IoT product or scaling an existing one, having the right strategy and partners is essential.

At Very, we combine our deep technical expertise with strategic thinking to help companies navigate these challenges. Through partnerships with specialized platforms like Peridio and our extensive experience in IoT development, we ensure our clients build products that can scale confidently.

Looking Ahead

The future of IoT demands more than just good hardware or clever features – it requires sophisticated firmware management strategies that can scale with your ambitions. As Heath noted in the webinar, "The teams that I've seen be most successful have an element of scrappiness, but that's not what defines them."

Want to learn more about building scalable IoT products? Let's talk about how we can help you navigate the complexities of firmware management and build products that stand the test of time.