While still in its early stages, the Internet of Things trend has already impacted organizations by providing them with numerous Web-connected devices and infinitely larger volumes of data. The IoT includes everything from Internet-enabled thermostats to vehicles and farming equipment – even dolphins are videoconferencing these days. The ethical implications of giving broadband to animals may still be unclear, but one thing is certain for the future of IoT: There is going to be a ton of new data.
In fact, the potential value of IoT comes from the data that is collected, created and analyzed. For example, Silicon Angle contributor Mike Wheatley recently described what the highly connected future may look like. He suggested that Internet-enabled showers would not only be able to predict when someone's shower gel is running low, but also analyze local store inventories and correlate that with his or her agenda for the day to determine an optimal purchasing location.
Perhaps more interesting than using analytics to maintain personal hygiene is the technology enabling those kinds of promises. As Wheatley noted, cloud infrastructure is the secret ingredient to an IoT-powered future.
"The problem is exacerbated somewhat by the fact that you're not the only out there taking a shower – think about, between 6am and 8am, how many millions of people are going through exactly the same routine as you are? Millions of them are busy scrubbing themselves clean, which means gigabytes of data streaming in from showers up and down the country," Wheatley wrote.
Considering that worldwide data is on pace to double every two years until 2020, according to IDC's sixth annual study of the digital universe, an Internet of Everything will likely accelerate storage issues that many enterprises are already facing. Wheatley suggested this makes highly scalable cloud hardware particularly important for being able to not only store that information but efficiently analyze it.
It's about volume and velocity
In preparing for such an information-driven future, it may be a good idea to look at the lessons businesses have learned from big data. Namely, gleaning value is not just about collecting huge volume – organizations also require enough performance to analyze it quickly. Gartner touched on this issue in February when analysts noted that real-time operational intelligence solutions are now a necessity rather than a luxury.
"A large enterprise makes millions of decisions every day," said Rita Sallam, research vice president analyst at Gartner. "The challenge is that companies have far more data than people have time, and the amount of data that is generated every minute keeps increasing."
Gartner's suggestions are based on current market trends, but it is worth noting that these issues will only become more pressing as the rate of data volume expansion grows. However, only 30 percent of business users said they were leveraging solutions that have been implemented by IT. The main reason that adoption has lagged is that analytics tools need to be more accessible to non-traditional analytics users, Gartner explained.
This further confirms the notion that cloud technology will play a major role in powering the Internet of Things at both the hardware and software level. While the scalability of these solutions means that organizations will be able to accommodate large fluctuations in storage and computing power needs, cloud software designed with the end user in mind will make sure all stakeholders can glean insight from collected information.
"Such insights can only be extracted using big data technologies, and cloud solutions will be an essential partner to this," Wheatley wrote. "Cloud software is the only technology capable of handling this data and delivering it where it needs to be in real time."
