Helium wants to bring the Internet of things to the enterprise - Fortune
The Helium device and software.Image courtesy of Helium.
Helium wants to be the Android of the Internet of things.
With the potential for billions of connected devices and trillions of dollars in the next few years, the Internet of things has startups and established companies salivating over the opportunity. So it’s no wonder that Helium, a two-and-a-half-year-old startup that has backing from Shawn Fanning of Napster fame and Khosla Ventures, is ready to get in the game.
Helium launched Tuesday with a custom-built sensor network design designed around a custom radio technology and software designed specifically for corporate customers. What’s probably most interesting about Helium’s product is that it’s focused on the software, not the sensors.
The software focus gives the customer a lot of flexibility. So if the sensor is designed to measure temperature for example, the system can be changed to measure temperature once a day, and later, once every hour. An operator could also change the range when an alert might sound or otherwise adjust parameters in the software. For people used to dealing with today’s computer and mobile software this may not sound revolutionary, but for the embedded world of old-school sensors, such flexibility can still be rare because programming the sensors is so complicated. That’s where the Helium software comes into play.
Its nearest competition is probably the secretive Samsara, a startup that has $25 million in venture financing from Andreessen Horowitz. Helium however, has its own star backers. It’s raised more than $16 million from Fanning, Marc Benioff, Khosla Ventures, and FirstMark Capital.
Since selling sensors is tough work, Helium is launching with a product that measures refrigeration in hospitals and restaurants. Pilot customers (who Chandhok declined to disclose) are using the Helium sensors and cloud to ensure that staff are notified if the fridges containing food and drugs fall out of certain temperature windows. Stanley Healthcare offers such a product to hospitals, but Chandhok says that it is less flexible when it come to adjusting how the temperature monitoring parameters are set up.
Helium wants to bring the Internet of things to the enterprise - Fortune
The Helium device and software.Image courtesy of Helium.
Helium wants to be the Android of the Internet of things.
With the potential for billions of connected devices and trillions of dollars in the next few years, the Internet of things has startups and established companies salivating over the opportunity. So it’s no wonder that Helium, a two-and-a-half-year-old startup that has backing from Shawn Fanning of Napster fame and Khosla Ventures, is ready to get in the game.
Helium launched Tuesday with a custom-built sensor network design designed around a custom radio technology and software designed specifically for corporate customers. What’s probably most interesting about Helium’s product is that it’s focused on the software, not the sensors.
The software focus gives the customer a lot of flexibility. So if the sensor is designed to measure temperature for example, the system can be changed to measure temperature once a day, and later, once every hour. An operator could also change the range when an alert might sound or otherwise adjust parameters in the software. For people used to dealing with today’s computer and mobile software this may not sound revolutionary, but for the embedded world of old-school sensors, such flexibility can still be rare because programming the sensors is so complicated. That’s where the Helium software comes into play.
Its nearest competition is probably the secretive Samsara, a startup that has $25 million in venture financing from Andreessen Horowitz. Helium however, has its own star backers. It’s raised more than $16 million from Fanning, Marc Benioff, Khosla Ventures, and FirstMark Capital.
Since selling sensors is tough work, Helium is launching with a product that measures refrigeration in hospitals and restaurants. Pilot customers (who Chandhok declined to disclose) are using the Helium sensors and cloud to ensure that staff are notified if the fridges containing food and drugs fall out of certain temperature windows. Stanley Healthcare offers such a product to hospitals, but Chandhok says that it is less flexible when it come to adjusting how the temperature monitoring parameters are set up.
