Company aims to bring IoT-enabled smart mail systems to small- and medium-sized businesses.
Global mailing technology company Pitney Bowes has announced the launch of SmartLink, a device that connects the company’s postage meters to their Pitney Bowes Commerce Cloud via an IoT platform. According to the July 18 announcement, this will enable customers to access a wide range of tools and services including automatic postage rate updates, the ability for the meter to automatically order more postage when it is low, AutoInk technology (for ink re-ordering), and real-time usage tracking and analytics.
“SmartLink is a smart, real-world IoT use case, capturing transformational business data and helping business customers avoid down-time – all while maintaining network, data, device and application security at high levels,” said Hugo Fiennes, CEO of Electric Imp, in the announcement. “Partnering with the experts at Pitney Bowes has been a great experience, and shows how our flexible platform can seamlessly integrate at scale with existing machines in the field.”
SmartLink allows real-time data collection from postage meters and other physical Pitney Bowes devices, which can allow companies to perform predictive maintenance, avoiding downtime. The device is compatible with the company’s low and mid volume mailing systems such as the K700 Mailstation2, DM100i ad DM200L. Going forward all new models of these devices will have the SmartLink device built in, the company stated.
According to the company’s press release, high-volume mailers have the Pitney Bowes Clarity solutions suite, a SaaS-based platform that uses the IIoT to collect and analyze data from sensors on production mail machines for real-time insights and predictive analytics. It’s built on the GE Predix platform. With SmartLink, small- and medium-sized businesses can now take advantage of many of the same benefits.
