In order to effectively handle and gain insight from the data, businesses need to find ways to automate the process. “Flying the drone and capturing the data is not a time-consuming or a complicated exercise. It is how you capture and catalog the data after the fact,” Bernstein said.
There are cloud-based drone software providers like EagleView and DroneDeploy that make it easy for businesses to collect, process and analyze data by taking the information, storing it in the cloud, and sending back the results.
But Bernstein believes businesses should build their own services and datacenters in house to get a competitive advantage in the market. “For example, if you and I are competing for crop surveillance and we are both using DroneDeploy or some other service, we are going to get the same results. On the other hand, if one of us brings that capability in house, we can arguably have a competitive edge and return more value to our customers over time,” he said. In order to bring this capability in house, businesses will have to find experienced IT people who know how to bring that knowledge into a new emerging market.