Phillip McCoog is a Chief Technologist and HP Fellow at Hewlett Packard, and I am pleased to welcome Phillip as a guest blogger today. He’ll be sharing interesting details about the launch of the HP Print channel on IFTTT.
Before Phillip gives you the details on this launch, let me tell you a little more about him. As a Chief Technologist and HP Fellow, Phillip combines his technology expertise with his business skills to develop partnerships, strategies, services and apps. Throughout his years at HP, Phillip architected and led the development of printers, web and cloud services, and mobile solutions. Phillip led the architecture of HP Instant Ink solution.
He is also a co-founder of Mopria Alliance, a non-profit membership organization of leading global technology companies with the goal of providing simple wireless printing from smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.
Okay Phillip, the floor is all yours.
HP recently launched a new channel, HP Print, on IFTTT. This channel makes it easy to create solutions that integrate to over 150+ channels including , Instagram, NY Times, Box, Fitbit, Digg, and many more. The solution lets you tag Instagram photos and print them. You can print out new articles from the NY Times that are in the Wine and Dining section. You can print out the most Dugg article of the day. You can print out your weekly Fitbit digest. You can print out your driving log from Automatic. This makes HP printers the first Internet of Things (IoT) home and office printers. Printing is a key first step, but the integration with other parts such as Instant Ink are natural future extensions. Of course, not all those IFTTT recipes are for everyone. That is the beauty of launching a channel on a system like IFTTT, it lets the user integrate and create recipes to meet their needs.
IFTTT symbolizes the new type of integration, “Hyper-Integration”, which will be the hallmark of IoT systems. It is no longer the responsibility of each device, service, or app provider to integrate with all possible other devices, services, or apps. End users who are comfortable with technology can create new integrations, or in IFTTT terminology, recipes. Recipes take less than 2 minutes to create. Many users will use recipes suggested by the channel provider, while other users will adopt and contribute their favorite recipes in a crowd-sourcing model. It is taking mash-ups to the next level. Just like mash-ups allowed for web page developers to quickly create a powerful web solution by combining web elements into a new solution, IoT solution engines like IFTTT combine powerful existing “triggers” and “actions” into “recipes” which enable explosive growth of solutions. This end-user creation of homegrown solutions is the power of integration that will allow IoT to realize its predicted growth. This new style of “Hyper-Integration” is not the sole purvey of IFTTT. There is an explosion of industry efforts to make integration of IOT components simple and easy by creating platforms for integration. Besides the usual suspects vying for ecosystem ownership, there is a strong movement for standards such as Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) and AllSeen Alliance. The landscape is dynamic but the need and opportunity for “Hyper-Integration” is blooming.
One of the keys to having this sort of easy integration is that everything needs to be represented as a service. Beginning in 2010, HP made the leap that network printers would be web-enabled via ePrint. Since then the terminology of the industry has evolved from web-enabled to cloud-enabled to everything-as-a-service to IoT. All HP web service enabled printers starting in 2010 are now IoT printers since they can all be integrated using IFTTT to many other cutting edge IoT services. This means immediately there are over 40 million HP IoT printers in households, businesses, and enterprises making HP printers one of the most widely deployed IoT devices.
HP’s leadership stems from their early recognition that by cloud connecting a network printer the world of solutions can be opened up. The need for solutions span consumer segments and business segments alike. Cloud connection allowed for many HP solutions such as ePrint, scan to cloud repositories, and automatic firmware updates. This system has also allowed HP to pioneer entirely new business models such as Instant Ink, where new ink is delivered to a user’s doorstep just before it’s needed at up to 50% savings to the user. It has enabled HP JetAdvantage Pull Print that protects document confidentiality in a shared print environment. Yet even these solutions are the tip of the iceberg. HP’s industry and technology vision along with its commitment to that vision has created a powerful install base whose potential is just being recognized.
We have not seen the end of the evolution of IoT solution “Hyper-Integration” engines like IFTTT. The HP Print channel has just begun. There are many more triggers, actions, and recipes to come, and the most exciting part will be to see comes next from other channel providers and end-users. The IoT solutions that get created will undoubtedly be like nothing we predicted, and that is the fun of the IoT space.
