Firmware is becoming the new software. If you believe that, as Bob Scaccia, President and CEO of USA Firmware does, we are at the beginning of a new era, and we had better be prepared for it.
Losant interviewed IoT ecosystem partner USA Firmware, and their CEO Bob Scaccia, about how expert engineered firmware and software integration can reduce the complexity of IoT development.
Firmware is the software that engineers use to control or communicate with electronics. It's typically embedded in a device or 'thing'. Think of it as the bridge from 'soft' software to 'hard' hardware. How did we get here?
Software has brought us huge technological advances. The world can commerce, communicate and connect like we could never have imagined.
Firmware controls the electronics which then connect our 'things' to the internet of 'things'. As a result firmware will reside on, well, everything. So what’s the dilemma with the current state of Firmware?
IoT (Internet of Things) is going to be part of your customer's future, and better be part of your product portfolio. However, incorporating IoT is hard and done wrong can destroy your brand and worse yet your business.
The most accepted definition of firmware is something like, programming stored in 'memory which cannot be modified during run-time.' This kind of memory is called 'non-volatile' memory. It's the opinion of the author and several other firmware engineers that this definition, although true, is lacking. It only conveys two things.