Success within the Internet of factors era depends on gathering intelligence within a thriving ecosystem and, for sure, being cool.
This year marked the 23rd anniversary of 2 clever guys — John Romkey and Simon Hackett — hooking up a toaster to the net. The device was connected by TCP/IP and was controlled with the easy Network Management Protocol. Or even though it had just one control (power on/off), it was a big hit on the Interop networking conference that year. Later a robotic arm was added, which picked up a slice of bread and dropped it into the toaster — no human interaction needed.
Fast forward and today we haven’t any shortage of factors connected to the web (greater than 10 billion things, in line with Cisco), from things we wear (watches and footwear) to the cars we drive. Heck, we’re even attending to the purpose where living “things” are connected — equivalent to self-watering plants. Welcome to the superb Internet of Everything.
[ How connected will future vehicles be? Read 5 Ways Big Data Can Improve Your Car. ]
But before we get over excited with the technology and possibilities, remember. Just like the Internet toaster circa 1990, just moving the goods what you are promoting makes online doesn’t necessarily end in commercial success. And in contrast to that toaster, it’s actually not a thorny technical challenge and even that costly.
Today the price of all of the wizardry (temperature, motion and image sensors, WiFi, and GPS) is falling dramatically. This, along with the adoption of newer technologies and customary standards in areas reminiscent of Near Field Communication, telematics, and machine-to-machine communications (M2M), makes absolutely anything a connected thing. So if getting things connected is only table stakes, what are the criteria that basically guarantee success? They won’t be what you watched, but each has huge implications for business and IT pros. Here’s my quick take.
Build connected intelligence: What’s really exciting is when connected products build an entire new value proposition caused by their ability to realize intelligence from things and events happening around them. Take the standard home temperature thermostat. It’s been around for many years, and the technology isn’t particularly earth shattering. But what if the thermostat could self-regulate in keeping with household activity or adjust in step with weather patterns? And what if the thermostat were connected to cloud-based analytics systems to become portion of an energy use ecosystem, advising the homeowner on the right way to reduce energy consumption? Now the standard thermostat would now not be a tool. It might be something way more valuable: a customer experience.
Find the cool factor: Building connectedness and intelligence into your devices can be futile in case you ignore another critical element: design. As an instance, the smarts think about a house thermostat is most often standard and something we take as a right. It not differentiates. But combine intelligence with something that appears cool, and the price proposition increases. Check out most of the newer smart products — yes, even thermostats, that have morphed from the clunky-looking, hard-to-program products of yesteryear into something cool and desirable.
But what does this need to do with IT? Everything. Developing cool, innovative products would require nimble management of the technologies and processes — akin to rapid software and mobile app development, agile project management, social media management, and cloud computing — which might be had to support design, manufacturing, and marketing.
Enrich products with services: Really smart products build an ecosystem of services around them. They’re so connected that external innovators desire to connect, too, quickly meshing their very own innovation into the product. For instance, what may need started out because the humble bathroom scale suddenly becomes the central element in a person’s health regime. It’s intelligently connected to myriad third-party mobile apps and services, or maybe your medical health insurance provider. For IT, this switch in thinking presents some challenges. First, you should make sure the integrated software systems should not encumbered with elements that hurt the user experience (like a badly designed mobile app mimicking an internet site or poor security). Second, you should develop easy-to-use APIs and robust architectures and provide good old-fashioned support to your networks.
In the Internet of Everything, there is a cautionary note. Sometimes building intelligence into products can be counterproductive. Our toaster, for example, ultimately exists to make toast. But if we over-engineer with too much intelligence, we risk building products that are so annoying that our customers won’t want to exploit them. This concept is hilariously illustrated within the BBC UK sci-fi comedy show Red Dwarf.
Finally, never forget the fight club rules of disruptive technology, especially when communicating with the business side on how innovations can expand markets and drive revenue. Finally, on the end of the day, you can be doing the toasting.
IT groups need data analytics software that’s visual and accessible. Vendors are becoming the message. Also inside the State Of Analytics issue of InformationWeek: SAP CEO envisions a younger, greener, cloudier company (free registration required).
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