Gearing up for the Internet of Things
Innovation is widely perceived to be the ultimate goal of the ongoing quest for digital transformation that is shaping technology investments by enterprises of all sizes. At its heart, digital transformation is both a technology- and information-centric business strategy, and it is without doubt an essential mandate for all businesses that wish to survive and thrive in the digital economy.
Indeed, whether a business is looking to create additional value, implement transformational business models, build new relationships, introduce new products and services, enhance its customer experience, or simply improve its operational efficiencies, digital transformation should be at the top of its agenda.
It has long been established that 3rd Platform technologies such as mobile, cloud, big data analytics, and social applications and platforms hold the key to enabling digital transformation, but it is the follow-up wave of so-called innovation accelerators that will be the real game changers.
These innovation accelerators include the likes of the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented and virtual reality, cognitive systems, next-generation security, 3D printing, and robotics, but it is perhaps the first of these — IoT — that will have the biggest impact on our day-to-day lives.
At its simplest, the Internet of Things is where businesses leverage networks of connected devices and analyse the data they produce to provide valuable insights into their processes and gain greater control over their operations.
And it is the organisation’s infrastructure that will be the true determiner of whether its IoT-centric vision succeeds or not. For this reason, businesses should approach the underlying infrastructure as a greenfield deployment rather than trying to retrofit existing legacy infrastructure for IoT use cases.
Ultimately, IoT enables organisations to digitalise the fundamental “things” that the business runs on, turning them into sensors that provide real-time feedback and enabling the business to fine-tune their operations for optimum competitive advantage.
The “things” that can be digitalised are limited only by the organisation’s imagination, but can include equipment on factory floors, shipping containers, aircraft, trains, automobiles, cranes, elevators, heavy earth machinery, and devices that automate the supply chain.
They can also include health care measurement devices, home automation appliances, media devices, and entertainment consoles. There really is no limit to the “things” that can be digitalised in order to improve operations.
Consequently, the impact of IoT is expected to be so vast that IDC estimates that by 2025, we will live in a world that has over 80 billion IoTconnected devices generating more than 162 zettabytes of data. To put that into perspective, that equates to 162 trillion gigabytes!
An all-encompassing IoT strategy has the potential to completely transform businesses and their industries by introducing entirely new sources of competitive differentiation. And it even has the power to change the lifestyles of workers and consumers alike.
A good example of this transformation in action today can be found in the insurance industry. In some of the world’s more developed markets, insurance companies are installing devices in vehicles to monitor driving habits and gauge various risk factors, enabling them to adjust their customers’ premiums in line with their individual risk profiles.
Real-time feedback
Currently, much of this information is asynchronous, but the industry is collaborating with automobile manufacturers to introduce enhancements that will provide real-time feedback to drivers on how they are driving and alert the relevant authorities when driving anomalies are detected.
Eventually, in-car devices will be able to communicate with each other in real time to reduce the risk of accidents. Such innovations will not only limit the costs incurred by insurance companies, but also greatly improve the overall customer experience. Many of the new generation of IoT initiatives will be in full operation within the next couple of years and will include engagement models such as self-driving cars, connected smart cities, and fully automated intelligent factories and supply chains.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of IoT is its universal flexibility; indeed, it can be leveraged both by new businesses looking to disrupt the market and by existing players that want to disrupt the way they do business, but a clear approach is required.
For many organisations, it may make more sense to use IoT to drive incremental improvements in their current business practices, while others may want to disrupt themselves completely if their circumstances allow for such an approach.
Either way, the clock is ticking for businesses to decide how they want to engage with the Internet of Things because it is set to shake up their future whether they are on board or not.