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Most people associate drones<\/span> with troops and mad scientists tinkering around in their backyards.<\/p>\n Thanks to technological breakthroughs \u2014 including longer and safer flights \u2014 and new federal guidelines<\/a> enacted this year, drone<\/span> use is expanding beyond military and consumer markets and is seeping into the enterprise<\/span>. Analysts at PwC forecast<\/a> the emerging global market for drone<\/span>-powered business services to be valued at more than $127 billion.<\/p>\n DJI<\/a> has ushered technical innovation into the mainstream with its popular Phantom series of off-the-shelf drones<\/span>. The newest models now have enhanced gyro-stabilization capabilities and the ability to fly for triple the duration of what was possible only a couple of years ago \u2014 at a digestible cost of $1,000.<\/p>\n Simply put, the cost and hardware have reached a point where drones<\/span> are easily accessible for most enterprise<\/span> use cases. The tipping point, however, came with the Federal Aviation Administration\u2019s decision to pass Part 107<\/a> in June \u2014 now, anyone with an online certification can operate a drone<\/span> for commercial purposes. Previously, the industry was limited to having individuals with a pilot\u2019s license operate drones<\/span> (both costly and cumbersome).<\/p>\n We\u2019re seeing a wide range of mainstream business applications for drones<\/span> crop up, the breadth so esoteric it becomes hard to track. Intel<\/a> just unveiled a drone<\/span> designed specifically for industrial use-cases like construction site and field inspections. Oil and gas companies are using drones<\/span> for rig safety and maintenance, and Amazon<\/a> has made its aspirations for drone<\/span> deliveries known.<\/p>\n Seed companies marketing to the agriculture industry are giving farmers free drones<\/span> and training them to survey their crops. UPS<\/a> recently used a drone<\/span> to deliver medicine to an island near Boston. I also recently spoke with a company that mapped whole swathes of freeway in Mexico to identify sections that needed the most repair. Resolution was not high enough with satellite imagery and car-based mapping would have taken too long, but drones<\/span> completed the project in a matter of days.<\/p>\n There are a ton of niche applications too \u2014 from insurers assessing hail storm damage on crops to cities surveying storm water drains.<\/p>\n The new enterprise<\/span> drone<\/span> market has created the need for an ecosystem to support it. On-demand \u201cdrone<\/span> entrepreneurs\u201d are working as consultants to companies that need drone<\/span> pilots and service providers \u2014 think Uber for drones<\/span>. For example, companies are contracting with drone<\/span> operators for remote facility inspection rather than risking the safety of an employee or hiring a specialist solely for the assignment.<\/p>\n This cottage industry of drone<\/span> specialists will<\/span> be essential to the viability of the enterprise<\/span> drone<\/span> market. Nobody has yet aggregated the number of these service providers, but I have no doubt it is already in the tens of thousands.<\/p>\n Early on, off-the-shelf hardware solutions from producers such as DJI weren\u2019t enterprise-<\/span>ready (as highlighted above). Therefore, first-mover enterprise<\/span> vendors such as Airware<\/a> and Kespry<\/a> built their own hardware in addition to the software ecosystem. This is shifting. More recently, the biggest development in the drone<\/span> market is companies like DroneDeploy<\/a>, Skycatch<\/a>\u00a0and Propeller<\/a>, which are only focused on software.<\/p>\n These companies benefit from having to only focus on the software and the growing surrounding ecosystem of many software vendors. I expect a trend to play out similar to the commoditization of hardware within the smartphone industry \u2014 engineering your own drone<\/span> hardware will<\/span> rarely be worthwhile. A few promising categories for the next wave of enterprise<\/span> drone<\/span> software are for managing drone<\/span> flight and managing drone<\/span> behavior and compliance, as well as real-time data analytics processing.<\/p>\n The media likes to tell a futuristic story of drones<\/span> whizzing through our cities, clouding our skies. While not unrealistic, this reality is quite a ways out. Less talked about is how millions of drones<\/span> are already in use, the value that they\u2019re creating in the enterprise<\/span>\u00a0and the outcomes they\u2019re opening up that were previously cost-prohibitive or impossible.<\/p>\n Drones are making a real impact on a number of industries, and quietly transforming the enterprise<\/span> as we know it. Much like personal IP-based telephony quietly became ubiquitous overnight, the tailwinds are such that we will<\/span> soon see drones<\/span> in every aspect of our lives.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Featured Image: Bryce Durbin<\/small><\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/j5WgHjaPEOY\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most people associate drones with troops and mad scientists tinkering around in their backyards. Thanks to technological breakthroughs \u2014 including longer and safer flights \u2014 and new federal guidelines enacted <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-1562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t