Clouds are cool, but getting bricked is not.

Have you ever had the experience of a smart home product's cloud service being disrupted or even discontinued? Often the hardware is functional and secure -- its only flaw is a strong dependence on private cloud services. Many smart home devices benefit from and provide their primary value via a cloud connection (think remote monitoring and control), but a engineering pattern has arisen in smart home technology that can hide a ticking time bomb inside many shiny new gadgets.

Any product that benefits from some cloud connection could potentially be made simpler, thinner and less expensive by offloading as much functionality, software and smarts to the cloud as possible. Such strong cloud dependency brings some strengths -- cloud software can be updated, maintained and made more secure to ever-evolving threats much more easily than onsite embedded software. Cloud backups and remote access are really handy when you need them. And simpler, thinner hardware is easier to engineer, qualify and scale.

But tight cloud integration comes with weaknesses too. The fragility of a system is often dominated by the weakest link -- and connected devices simply have more links than unconnected devices. Washing machines have had microprocessors and embedded software in them for 40+ years and a spotty WiFi signal hasn't affected most of them from delivering their core functionality. Especially for long-lived durable items like appliances or home infrastructure, strong cloud dependence introduces a heightened exposure risk to cloud downtime, discontinued software support and connection failures. It is not an uncommon smart home experience that something as simple as relocating an access point can 'brick' parts of your house (with apologies to the Commodores). And it doesn't have to be that way.

An interesting hybrid approach can blend both cloud independence with some cloud capabilities, if and when a cloud connection is available. Products incorporating what is known as edge computing have enough smarts to provide a cloud-like experience locally but can also offer remote backups, alerts and controls from afar when they are connected. With this, you can get the benefits of cloud connectivity without the liabilities. And if in ten years your connected washing machine's cloud goes down or the manufacturer stops supporting the firmware with security updates, you can disconnect it from the internet and your socks will still get clean. Off grid capability for durable connected products should be the expectation and not the exception.