The cryptic way that things talk
Internet of Things (IoT) has transformed a lot of the ways that organizations behave, and perhaps the greatest change has been in the need to become omniscience, i.e., to be able to know all there is about the business. The pilgrimage to know is long, but the reward is satisfying, and there isn’t an industry that isn’t on this path today. Why? Connected devices are now talking, providing a lot of data at supersonic speeds. In the last five years, companies have increased their focus on the growing pool of data from their operations coining new terms to describe these volumes, then coming to terms with those terms, discussing what to do with them, then discussing how it’ll change the world.
Now, there is another layer of conversation which is happening in real time and allowing businesses to speak to things that they never thought could talk. Through IoT platforms, organizations are conversing with assets that have heavy OPEX. Imagine being able to talk to your fleet of trucks and one of them tells you ‘even though I travel less miles, my terrain is rough. You need to send me to maintenance more frequently than the other trucks to increase my longevity’.
However, the biggest challenge organizations are facing at the moment is crafting a linear pathway that starts with data collection from the asset and progresses smoothly towards tangible insights, then finishing with actual actions.
In the era of IoT, the opportunities for businesses to reinvent themselves, their industries, and the lives of their customers are huge - but not as huge as the numbers surrounding the movement itself which is incomprehensible to the human mind. This is exactly why we need to develop the cognitive mind for support.
Imagine having to observe a terabyte’s worth of data to assess the damage after a Tsunami, or a terabyte’s worth of data to understand when a door of a refrigerator was open for too long which led to food supplies being spoilt. That doesn’t sound too difficult to the layperson, but let’s put that into perspective. Imagine having a person looking at the temperature feed of the refrigerator all day to identify when it breaks down. How many people would you need if you ran a chain of grocery stores, not to mention the importance of having someone ready to receive a real-time message to close the refrigerator door. It’s clear that the data you need to consider has gone beyond comprehensive numbers for manual management.
Cognitive insight
Today, we require computer systems that work quickly, accurately, and flexibly enough to capture the data and action it in real time, while fixing problems for customers around the world. Cognitive solutions on platforms like IoT use machine learning capabilities, language processing and advanced imaging to completely and utterly exceed the limits of traditional data capture, processing and analysis. It is not enough to merely capture the conversations, you need machine ability to understand and react to it - all in real time.
For example, in milliseconds, a cognitive platform could automatically classify and draw data from hundreds of sensors. It can then analyze all this data to give actionable insights that can result in intelligent and automated business responses.
Even better, cognitive solutions learn and retain knowledge over time, so the more you use it, the quicker and more accurate it becomes.
Driving bright industries
This kind of computing power offers enormous potential for industries sitting on the brink of expert IoT function, many of which are making great strides here in the Gulf.
Transport and logistics: The region is renowned for some of the world’s largest ports, such as Port of Shuwaikh in Kuwait, Jebel Ali, Dammam in KSA and Abu Dhabi Port. Forester Research recently produced a heat map for most IoT opportunities and fleet management, inventory management and facility management in transportation and logistics scored in the highest bracket. This tells us that investments in cognitive IoT will allow businesses in the fleet management industry to reinvent the way in which ports and hubs operate. This will spur job growth, open entirely new employment opportunities and stimulate app development in this area, not to mention reduce costs of damage while providing the ability to identify inventory and fleet location.
Smart buildings: In the same heat map, smart products and asset management scored in the highest bracket for industrial and high-tech production. Smart buildings fall into this category. Managing buildings goes way beyond manual tasks and the amount of unstructured data it collects from its people, energy consumption and assets that live inside is huge.
Cognitive computing will enable buildings to understand, reason, and learn from this data, and in time, it will dramatically improve energy consumption, decision-making, and asset management. Take for example IBM’s IoT headquarters in Munich, designed to be a cutting edge vision of how the future of buildings will look like. Energy responsible entities such as DEWA are already considering designing state of the art, green buildings like this.
Retail: Intrinsic customer information has always been valuable to retailers; that’s nothing new. However, in the world of IoT, consumer behavior, spending patterns and movement provide the differentiation retailers need in a do-or-die industry. Shoppers can be timid, but on the other hand, they can often be impulsive. Using analytics to divulge information from realtime data allows retailers to better monitor the whereabouts of their customers, the location of potential customers and gives them the ability to engage with them directly at the right time when purchasing decisions are being made. Imagine being able to better serve customers with bespoke experiences, further strengthening brand loyalty. In 2013, Starbucks implemented a program that linked their coffee machines to the cloud. It fed information from each order to a database connected to its loyalty scheme which then gave baristas the preferences of each individual customer once they’d entered a store.
Embracing this era is going to significantly redefine the way we work on a day-to-day basis. It’s exciting. Aside from the industries highlighted above, there’s a huge web of industry areas doing great things in IoT.
IBM Internet of Things already combines intelligent cognitive computing with content analytics to dramatically alter the way you not only manage your business, but also talk to it. Come to talk to us! Note: Khaled Talaat is Branch Manager, IBM Kuwait