The Internet of Things and its Application by Industry

Introduction

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term coined by Kevin Ashton, a British technology pioneer working on radio-frequency identification (RFID) who conceived a system of ubiquitous sensors connecting the physical world to the Internet. Although things, Internet, and connectivity are the three core components of IoT, the value is in closing the gap between the physical and digital world in self-reinforcing and self-improving systems. The Internet of Things is much talked about and fast becoming a fixture in many industries. And the technologies for transformative business applications are at hand. Yet many companies are slow to recognize and act on the opportunities. To explore those business opportunities, the associated implementation challenges, and how companies can accelerate their progress it is critical to understand how IoT may be leveraged specifically per each industry.

IoT Defined

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the ever-growing network of physical objects that feature an IP address for internet connectivity, and the communication that occurs between these objects and other Internet-enabled devices and systems. Perhaps the closest to an Internet of Things official definition comes from the Global Standards Initiative: The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data. This is a very high-level definition and the IoT goes by other names as well. High capital asset companies like GE refer to the “Industrial Internet.” The “Industry 4.0” concept originating with smart factories in Germany includes IoT elements. Even Complex Event Processing initiatives from the early 90’s contained IoT-like objectives. “Smart City” initiatives – and connected cars, smart houses, wearables – they all largely fall under the IoT umbrella. For me, the essence of IoT resides in the source of the data, which are the sensors. Those smart devices generate data about activities, events, and influencing factors that provide visibility into performance and support decision processes across a variety of industries and consumer channels. It’s something that’s been in place for quite some time in many industries, but is a totally new concept for others.

Why IoT Now - Why is it Important to Businesses

The primary driver is the broader adoption and deployment of sensors and smart devices. Sensors are smaller, cheaper and they require less power and have more compute capacity. No longer are they limited to high capital equipment and factory infrastructure; they are literally everywhere, from the traffic signal helping to optimize traffic flow to the watch that is monitoring your vital signs. Sensors are pervasive in your everyday environment. Pair that explosion of data generation with the commodity storage options that the cloud provides and you have all of the ingredients necessary for businesses to drive tremendous value from insights that analysis of that data can provide. Another change driving traction is the availability of technology and analytical methods that can be applied to streaming data from the sensors, data in motion. You now have the option to push decision support and performance monitoring to the edge, the source of the data. This provides expanded options for businesses to monetize the IoT. With all this capability at hand, additional industries are starting to investigate opportunities for deploying sensors to better manage the performance of processes or machinery, as well as to track consumers’ behavior and anticipate their needs and intentions.

 

Applications by Industry

• INDUSTRIAL (IIoT) AND MANUFACTURING
• ELECTRIC UTILITIES AND SMART ENGERGY
• HEALTHCARE
• OIL AND GAS
• TRANSPORTATION AND LOGISTICS
• AUTOMOTIVE
• CONSUMER AND RETAIL
• CONSUMER ELECTRONICS AND SMART HOME
• SPORTS AND FITNESS
• WEARABLES
• AGRICULTURE AND FARMING
• SMART CITIES
• TELECOM

 

INDUSTRIAL (IIoT) AND MANUFACTURING

The highly anticipated Industry 4.0 revolution is already underway reshaping manufacturing processes and the Industrial Internet of Things is a primary catalyst for this transformation. With the industrial automation solutions empowered by the Internet of Things, manufacturing production facilities and products themselves can be outfitted with computing hardware and connected using standard networking means. This allows separate parts of a production line communicate with each other in near real time and makes the entire manufacturing process much easier to monitor and control.

Manufacturing industries, especially high volume facilities, are leveraging sensor data and advanced analytics to increase yield. Early identification of process or product variance allows early correction, resulting in reduced defects and increased efficiency. Processes that require highly variable elements such as temperature, pressure, and viscosity, or industries that require precision placement of components are benefiting from the increased density of sensors and insights generated from the data. Use case attributes include:

 

• Production line remote monitoring
• Unified factory-wide interconnectivity                
• Predictive maintenance
• Failure mitigation and safety control        
• Gateway apps and edge analytics        
• Centralized config data updates        
• Workforce tracking
• Cloud-based data storage and analytics        
• Machine Auto diagnosis
• Third Party Machine Monitoring
• Monitoring for Toxic Gases and Indoor Air Quality
• Indoor Asset Location
• Monitoring for Ozone in Meat Operations
• Inventory Monitoring and Management
• 
  

ELECTRIC UTILITIES AND SMART ENGERGY

On the journey to the smarter, greener technologies and a sustainable planet, there is but one keystone area that is setting the framework for everything else — and that is smart energy. So far, the mass-scale implementation of smart energy systems has been rather cost-prohibitive and thus at a premium for even the best of modern cities. As a recent cost-relieving breakthrough in this slow-go area, the Internet of Things smart grid solutions have come up with a practical cure to balance out the increasing sophistication of the energy distribution networks and achieve real-time visibility into the consumption process.  The ideal energy IoT solution provides essential IoT functional blocks which allow assembling smart energy solutions with both speed and seamless interoperability. Various sensors, smart metering devices, controllers, smart energy monitors, and electrical grid assets can be, almost literally, plugged into the solution and managed in real-time over secure network connection. The solution must also handle large scale deployments and ensure mission-critical fault-tolerance and high availability during peak loads. For the local-scale IoT smart energy deployments, the solution should be able to act as a master IoT platform for smart building solutions, smart home energy solutions, smart lighting systems, connected heating and air conditioning systems, and IoT smart meters implementation. An API should also be available for integration with a broad spectrum of possible hardware, and that’s why it is effectively utilized for complex “brownfield” system integrations and the IoT-over-legacy projects. Electric utilities are also expanding the use of phasor measurement unit (PMU) data outside normal operational reporting. Initially the PMU data was used to visualize and report on parameters such as voltage, current and frequency. New capabilities in streaming analytics allow them to use the data to identify events occurring within the power grid. The response to a lightning strike is quite different than a transformer failure. Being able to discern the difference in near real-time is critical to formulating and deploying a response. Use case attributes include:

• Smart metering solutions
• Fault detection
• Smart lighting
• QoS data collection & analytics
• Smart grid asset monitoring
• Smart appliances
• Remote infrastructure maintenance
• Smart building energy management

Smart meters are essential to efficient energy consumption and a key part of the smart grid infrastructure. Smart meters help consumers stay fully informed about their daily energy use and eliminate wasteful routines or get rid of inefficient appliances. For utility companies, the real-time visibility into energy consumption process translates into accurate billing data and the ability to balance demand against supply via flexible pricing and other policies. The corresponding IoT solution allows for smart meters to be easily implemented to support these and many other smart grid features.

• Real-time smart home/smart building energy profile
• User apps for billing data accounting
• Smart metering over HVAC, consumer electronics, and industrial equipment
• Smart meter networks
• Smart meter data analytics
• Secure over-the-air configuration
• Fault detection

HEALTHCARE

The Healthcare industry remains among the fastest to adopt the Internet of Things. The reason for this trend is that integrating IoT features into medical devices greatly improves the quality and effectiveness of service, bringing especially high value for the elderly, patients with chronic conditions, and those requiring constant supervision. According to some estimates, spending on the Healthcare IoT solutions will reach a staggering $1 trillion by 2025 and, hopefully, will set the stage for highly personalized, accessible, and on-time Healthcare services for everyone. Healthcare IoT solutions must fully address the mission-critical nature of the IoT in Healthcare. This translates into verifiable reliability, scalability of the solution. Use case attributes include:

 

• Ability to manage virtually any number of devices
• Automated device-to-analytics data flow        
• Remote monitoring of patient’s health statistics
• Hospital asset management        
• Remote device configuration and tuning        Remote device configuration and tuning
• Data analytics applications for clinicians and patients
• Predictive device maintenance
• HIPAA-compliant data security

Healthcare IoT solutions should enable at minimum the following:

• Connect any wearable or portable device to the cloud, pull and analyze collected patient data in real time
• Monitor patients at home using live video and audio streaming
• Monitor vital health indicators collected by portable devices such as smartphones and tablets
• Set intelligent emergency notifications sent to a physician or family
• Charts and diagram visualization based on data collected from health monitoring devices
• HIPAA-compliant authorization processes and data exchange

 

OIL AND GAS

An industry with a history here is oil and gas, specifically production and refining. Downtime incurs huge risk and cost, so the industry continues to improve and expand how it uses sensors, networks, and analytics to generate predictive insight into the degradation of equipment performance and predict failures in oil fields, pipeline networks, and refineries. The result is expedited identification of possible equipment failures and optimization of the entire production process. Extracting or transporting oil and gas is a complex process, to say the least. And to continue to improve the processes that will cut costs and increase efficiencies, these industries are evolving toward the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. But building an IoT oil and gas network for an area that is sparsely populated or isolated can be quite challenging. You likely don’t have the consistency in node placement for a mesh network, cellular coverage is often unavailable, and satellite and wired connections are very costly.  Use case attributes include:

• Offshore Oil & Gas Rig Monitoring
• Refinery Monitoring
• Pipeline Monitoring
• Wellhead Monitoring
• Oil & Gas Cargo Shipping
• Operational Optimization - Well and Field Work
• Surface and Subsurface Exploration
• Equipment Maintenance
• Predicting Production
• Remote Performance Monitoring

TRANSPORTATION AND LOGISTICS

With its ever-increasing demand for smarter supply chain management solutions, the logistics & transportation industry has been a key force behind the IoT upswing. Also, if compared with many other IoT use cases, “smart” logistics operations show faster ROI and do a remarkable job in terms of reducing core management complexities which are bothering a large number of companies from different lines of business. For most companies, bringing IoT technologies to supply chain management will bring their enterprises to a new, leaner level. Heavy truck industries are using streaming data from the engines and subsystems to identify potential break-downs and then use that data to schedule efficient maintenance visits outside of operating hours. The technicians are pre-notified as to the potential problems and are equipped with the right repair parts for the quickest turn-around possible. Sensors are also deployed to the trailers or actual loads being transported. Heat, vibration, and sound frequency can all be used to monitor the safe transport of freight. 

Utilizing its components for IoT enablement, logistics providers can achieve high levels of operational efficiency in regard to fleet management, cargo integrity monitoring, and automated warehousing operations. The IoT transportation and Logistics solutions should offer a unified, hardware-agnostic IoT architecture for connecting all possible assets — sensors, items, containers, equipment, vehicles, and employees — so that the entire logistics infrastructure can be tracked and managed as a consolidated business unit. Use case attributes include:

• Real-time fleet management
• Smart labels        
• Predictive maintenance        
• Storage conditions control        
• Cargo integrity monitoring        
• IoT Logistics Solutions        
• Optimized warehouse workloads        
• End-to-end visibility into delivery process        

The ideal Transportation and Logistics solution augments widely available fleet management capabilities with accurate telematics data collection across vehicles in real-time, thus enabling complete visibility into the location, productivity, and technical condition of every connected vehicle. The Transportation and Logistics IoT solution should enable at minimum the following:

• Unify the view of vehicles, machines, and equipment across all locations
• Collect and analyze vehicle telematics to ensure proper performance
• Track and optimize traffic, parking, workloads, and delivery schedule
• Implement sensor-based predictive maintenance for trucks and vehicles
• Implement maintenance and repair planning solutions
• Ensure full visibility into the cost of delivery, comparative analytics
• Strengthen driver’s safety with fatigue detection systems and wearable applications
• Manage equipment firmware

AUTOMOTIVE

The Internet of Things is breaking fresh ground for car manufacturers by introducing entirely new layers to the traditional concept of a car. This upgrade — the connected, smart car — comes as a revolutionary way for us to drive and stay in touch with the world around at the same time. By offering a fancy-free variety of infotainment services and connected car applications for drivers, the automotive industry has the potential to become an IoT champion among other industries and fuel the IoT cloud services adoption among car owners and walkers alike. Onboard diagnostic data is being leveraged for early detection of equipment failure, safety risks, and defects. This information can be evaluated for insight into single vehicles or across fleets. The “connected car” also provides topline growth opportunities. The trend of integrating mobile devices with in-car infotainment systems provides endless opportunities for consumer promotion. All necessary components are in place: the customer profile, geo proximity to retail or service outlets, and the channel to deliver the message to the consumer. Use case attributes include:

• Connected car systems monitoring        
• Smart driving assistance
• Cloud-based infotainment solutions        
• Automated emergency management        
• Real-time fleet management        
• Driver safety systems        
• Optimized logistics        
• Predictive maintenance        

Automotive IoT must ideally include elastic, enterprise-grade scalability and be applied to monitor and manage up to millions of vehicles in real time. Successful implementation must also support end-to-end fleet management and vehicle health & telematics solutions by addressing each part of a typical use case scenario — in-vehicle data collection with embedded applications, in-cloud data management, and user analytics and specifically support:

• Connected vehicle sensors
• Real-time car telematics tracking
• Vehicle location tracking and scheduling solutions
• Fuel tracking
• Speed control
• Vehicle usage analytics
• Car leasing solutions
• Fleet and driver management
• Traffic management, workload management

 

CONSUMER AND RETAIL

Retailers are adopting IoT solutions across a number of applications that are improving store operations, reducing theft, increasing purchases through cross selling, enabling precise inventory management, and most importantly enhancing the consumer’s shopping experience. The IoT is enabling physical retailers to compete more strongly against the online challengers, to regain lost market share and continually attract consumers into the store, thus making it easier for them to buy more while saving money. The ideal retail IoT solution allows you to quickly implement necessary applications for tracking goods with RFID tags, ensure items on-shelf availability, utilize Bluetooth beacons to provide customers with personalized mobile shopping experience, and set up digital signage in the store to attract visitors and help them navigate through your products, discounts, and loyalty programs. IoT retail solutions should help you ensure that customers have thorough information on everything they might like in a store and bring them closer to a buying decision. Retail IoT solutions should featuring enterprise-grade security mechanisms which support mobile payment solutions, mobile POS systems, and smart vending machines. Mobile payment applications should be compatible with all modern mobile devices and easily integrated with a retail management system to enable automated items inventory processing. Many retailers are investing in IoT programs. In-store promotion opportunities can now be targeted to individual consumers. Advancements with beacons and in-store video tracking allow retailers to deliver targeted customer-specific messaging based on their exact location and proximity to products within the store. The process: First the consumer opts into the retailer’s app. As the customer passes end-of-aisle displays or other areas of potential interest, the store can generate an instant promotion based on his profile and purchase history, and deliver the message or coupon to his mobile device. Real-time analytics are assessing (based on the consumer profile) what promotions to present, and at what frequency and timing, as the consumer moves through the store. Though such tracking might be "uncomfortable" for some consumers, the Enterprise Research Service benefits reported from some early pilots suggest that retailers will continue to expand deployments. Use case attributes include but are not limited to:

• Interactive digital signage screens
• Mobile shopping applications        
• Sensor-based items tracking
• Tailored digital marketing
• Optimized inventory management
• Mobile payment solutions
• IoT-enabled beacons
• Customer preferences analytics

Using RFID tags, conductive ink, and other technologies for inventory tracking, retailers can expect up to 100% inventory accuracy, eliminate unexpected out-of-stocks, reduce thefts, and, as a result, increase sales margins by up to 10%. The ideal Retail IoT solution provides all necessary IoT features to enable end-to-end store inventory management, with no fees for the amount of connected assets.

Retail IoT solutions should enable at minimum the following:

• Eliminate items loss or theft incidents
• Ensure items availability on shelves
• Trigger timely ordering to avoid out-of-stocks
• Analyze effectiveness of promotions and best-selling items
• Optimize inventory according to customers' preferences
• Allow customers to check and order items from other locations

 

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS AND SMART HOME

With a renaissance of the Internet’s glory on the currents of the Internet of Things techno cyclone, we have now entered into an unprecedented era in which consumer products and electronic devices — these so called connected devices — communicate bi-directionally with each other without human interaction. This development has resulted in a myriad of such connected devices becoming available from different manufacturers and, naturally, a need for a middle layer that can elegantly bind them together into, for example, a custom-fitted smart home IoT solution or a smart office IoT ecosystem. What is required is a middleware platform for managing, collecting, analyzing, and acting on every aspect of communications between connected devices including virtually any modern consumer product or microchip — smart TVs, smart home appliances, HVAC systems, wearables, and micro computer boards. Consumer IoT products will allow for hassle-free remote monitoring and control, event-driven operations, user context awareness, and even autonomous cross-device collaboration on specific tasks. Use case attributes include but are not limited to:

• Device profile management and inventory
• Remote provisioning and firmware distribution
• Configure events for smart interaction
• Monitor and analyze activities of devices / users / groups
• Monitor device performance
• Collect user experience and use data
• Smart house and smart office solutions

 

SPORTS AND FITNESS

Nearly the most prominent effect that the Internet of Things has had on our daily routines is changing the way we exercise and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Activity trackers and fitness applications are becoming our personal coaches, helping us thoroughly with both instruction and motivation. Smart sportswear allows us to transcribe body data into training advice, and all kinds of sports equipment are increasingly capable of measuring our performance and reporting it to our smartphones. The ideal Sports and Fitness IoT solution delivers all these capabilities into your smart sport & fitness products as production-ready features and can automatically collect data from virtually any sensor, fitness trackers and smart sporting gear, then analyze it and visualize on equipment consoles and mobile devices, in this way delivering end-to-end training solutions for the customer. Ideally this IoT solution with be a highly customizable and scalable platform with a feature-rich toolset for building IoT applications for sport & fitness solutions of any scale - ranging from activity tracker apps to infrastructure management systems for sports venues. Use case attributes include but are not limited to:

• Fitness trackers to mobile devices integration
• Data integration from different sports gear        
• Configurable alerts and notifications for the user        
• Near real-time analytics over collected data
• In-cloud data storage for easy sharing
• Support of tiny sportswear sensors
• Sports equipment predictive maintenance
• Remote equipment control for gyms, sports venues, etc.

 

WEARABLES

Wearable technology is a hallmark of the Internet of Things and the most ubiquitous of its implementations to date. The efficiency of data processing achieved by various smart wristwear, hearables, and smart glasses is gradually dispelling inert skepticism among the public and is getting closer to where wearables will bring exceptional value to our lives. Wearable technology should support superb ready-to-use IoT functions and applications and should be easily integrated with tiny microchips in wearable devices and enables instant interoperability, profile management, data collection, notifications, security, and other features. The solution should also provide scalable backend functionality to ensure loss-free communication between wearable devices connected with data analytics and visualization tools.  Use case attributes should include but not be limited to:

• Multi-device data exchange
• Broad sensor hardware support
• Data integration across apps/devices
• In-cloud data storage
• Topic-based notifications
• Controlled firmware updates
• Customized data analytics and reporting
• Autonomous interoperability

AGRICULTURE AND FARMING

For farmers and growers, the Internet of Things has opened up extremely productive ways to cultivate soil and raise livestock with the use of cheap, easy-to-install sensors and an abundance of insightful data they offer. Prospering on this prolific build-up of the Internet of Things in agriculture, smart farming applications are gaining ground with the promise to deliver 24/7 visibility into soil and crop health, machinery in use, storage conditions, animal behavior, and energy consumption level. Use case attributes include:

• Sensor-based field and resource mapping
• Remote equipment monitoring        
• Remote crop monitoring        
• Predictive analytics for crops and livestock        
• Climate monitoring and forecasting        
• Livestock tracking and geofencing        
• Stats on livestock feeding and produce        
• Smart logistics and warehousing

SMART CITIES

The rise of the smart city is a defining moment for the Internet of Things evolution as diverse technologies are amalgamated into large-scale, multi-layered solutions for the benefit of entire cities, and even nations. The corresponding IoT solution must be the essential glue for this transformation. The smart city solution must place specific emphasis on the efficient use of the road infrastructure, public service facilities, and smart buildings. Integrated smart meters, sensors, and device gateways must be leveraged for real-time monitoring of local and city-wide electrical power distribution, consumption of water, gas emissions, traffic load, and other city vitals. Oblivious waste of natural resources could be finally the thing of the past — at the same time, IoT-enabled public transportation, waste disposal, and public safety solutions could set a new standard of comfortable urban living. Smart parking, smart water management, connected waste containers, smart traffic lights for automated traffic balancing, smart street lights, and smart buildings. The smart city IoT solution must allow smart city integrators and device manufactures to build their smart products much faster and with full freedom to customize them or integrate with anything else. Use case attributes include:

• Smart meter networks
• Smart city lighting
• Smart grid automation
• Ecology monitoring solutions
• Energy-saving buildings
• Efficient public services tracking        
• Ad-hoc traffic balancing
• Smart public safety systems

As a keystone of smarter urban environments, the engineering infrastructure of the city will become increasingly retrofitted with embedded technology and IoT connectivity to enable its real-time monitoring and adaptable allocation of city resources such as electricity, water, transportation, public services and emergency staff. Smart City IoT solutions should enable at minimum the following:

• Smart meter networks
• Smart grid automation
• Pipeline infrastructure monitoring
• Smart road infrastructure
• Smart lights and Wi-Fi zones
• Emergency escalation systems
• IoT-powered waste management
• Ecology monitoring systems

TELECOM

As the Internet of Things continues to pervade the enterprise and consumer worlds, the Telecommunications industry stands at the crossroads of new revenue streams and new challenges brought by this revolution of connectivity. The fact is that IoT use cases in Telecom are going to flourish anyway - the only question is how large a role in this new business order will go to CSPs. Basically, there are three things that CSPs can do right when embarking onto the IoT initiatives. The first is to capitalize on their infrastructures to provide tailored consumer applications, wide-area IoT solutions and managed services. Using a highly versatile IoT cloud platform, any Operator can enter a particular business vertical with its own IoT solution. Uniquely positioned with unlimited access to network infrastructure, CSPs can provide better performance, wider scale, and - tapping into vast pools of user data - much better usability than competition. Another opportunity for CSPs is to open up new revenue streams by providing edge computing infrastructure for OTT service providers and application developers. Enabling cloud capabilities for network hardware such as modems, IP DSLMs, CMTSs or base stations will allow Operators to offer their infrastructure as a valuable service from which consumer behavior patterns can be extracted and acted upon. Finally, an incredible opportunity consists in minimizing Telco’s operational cost by applying IoT middleware for software defined networking and network function virtualization. Using the latest IoT technologies, rolling out new services and deploying large-scale IoT solutions can be done in a fraction of a time it takes today. This will provide a great edge to IoT-savvy CSPs, as they will abandon their mere “pipe keeper” roles for good and emerge as big players on the IoT field. Use case attributes include but are not limited to:

• Cloud enablement for Telecom services
• Hardware-agnostic IoT infrastructure        
• Wide-area IoT solutions        
• Edge computing and applications
• Vertical IoT applications
• IoT-powered asset management
• IoT managed services
• In-depth user data collection & analytics

Challenges of sourcing and managing all the new data

There are several challenges.

Volume and Velocity of Data

One is certainly the volume and velocity of the data itself, how fast it’s moving through these sensors, and being able to react to that. In the retail example I mentioned, there’s a need to understand the shopper’s location, direction, and proximity to products. You simultaneously have to match the shopper with a consumer persona for purposes of promoting specific items before the shopper walks away. So you can envision how data-intensive that process can be, and how fast you have to determine and offer the promotion.

Moving Computing to the Edge

One way to speed up data-driven processes is to move computing to the “edge” – the devices closest to the action or event. But the devices at the edge, especially when it’s a consumer’s smartphone, may not offer the capability or access for large-scale processing and instant decision making. What can be done at the edge is continually changing, and there’s been a lot of progress in the last 12 to 24 months, but keeping up is a challenge in itself.

Sheer Volume of Data

Another challenge relates again to the sheer volume of data. What data should be transported and what data should be stored, given that there’s cost associated, and that the vast majority of the data generated from most sensors is not important? For example, the data related to a potential fault in machinery is much more important than all the ongoing “everything is fine” data. So it’s challenging to determine, as early and as close to the source as possible, what data should move through a business process.

Security

Finally, we all see the news stories of cybersecurity breaches. Remote sensors and other devices and large-scale data transmissions extend the computing environment and hence the security risk. So organizations have to be able to maintain secure integration from the source of the data through any central point of analysis and decision support and back out to the local sensor or device to close the loop. We find in all customer surveys that security continues to be at the top of the list of ongoing challenges.

IoT "Blind" Spots

As a variety of customer and analysts surveys have revealed, the biggest blind spot is thinking about IoT as predominantly a data management initiative – how to access and store all the data. But to achieve results, you need to address and manage what I call the full life cycle of IoT initiatives. Access and storage is important, but the value comes from the insights generated from the data. Any complete IoT solution also needs to provide an environment for data analysis, model development, and model maintenance. Sadly, many IoT projects do not factor in the operational elements required for sustained value. Another element that is missing from many plans is the full consideration of data latency implications to decision support. Some applications require decision support in real-time, while others are “batch” in nature. The technology and business process for each of those scenarios varies greatly. I find that most use cases require a hybrid approach that includes both. So fix the blind spot and recognize that we have the technological capability to manage the full life cycle, deploy IoT applications at enterprise scale, and create new business opportunities.

 

IoT Progress

The overall rate of progress is very slow to date. Gartner currently lists IoT initiatives at the top of the “hype cycle.” There’s a tremendous amount of business interest, however, relative to the next level of understanding, about plans and initiatives underway, and about results to date, most companies haven’t progressed very far. The opportunity is there, and people aren’t seizing it yet. However, the situation may be starting to change. New use cases keep surfacing and many pilots with IoT infrastructure are being built upon integrated platforms for the full life cycle – data management, analytics, decision support. A sense of urgency and the launch of serious pilots supporting important and well thought out use cases is critical for companies to truly take advantage of all IoT has to offer. With the realization of the positive impact of IoT in play, we can expect to see adoption spread rapidly within and across industries. Projections about the coming pervasiveness of sensors are astronomical. We’re talking billions in five to ten years. The ubiquitous IoT age is just around the corner, and the decisions companies make now are critical to positioning them for competitive advantage.

3 Things Business and Technologies Leaders Should Know about IoT

• The opportunity to leverage IoT as a competitive advantage is here now. There are opportunities across all industries. The slow progress of others can create opportunity for your business today. But if you’re not working on IoT, you may fall behind quickly.
• Taking advantage of IoT requires different ways of thinking – about how data is used, how much of it we can handle, how fast we can process and analyze it, and ultimately where and how decisions are made. This is not just a chance to better inform and automate business processes; it is a step change in capability that provides unprecedented opportunities in business integration and customer connection.
• On the technical side, the definition of “edge” is changing. Compute capacity once available on servers has moved to routers and gateways, and what used to be available on routers and gateways happens on local devices and the sensors themselves. Analytics is moving to the edge as well. You no longer need to land the data for analysis; you can now take analytics to the data, while it is in motion. To take advantage of these trends, the technical architecture for IoT must be adaptable – at the same time that it serves the full life cycle of data, analytics, and decisions.

Reference

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