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IoT has arrived for good, the sensors market is exploding and storage has never been available so easily and at such a low cost. The booming market for M2M speaks volumes about the speed at which IoT is taking over almost all industries as well as consumer usage. All of these new technologies and devices are generating an immense amount of data. Do we have a solution for the utilization or even parking of this Big data? And this one is REALLY big. The ability of applications that use IoT to collect data is unprecedented, and the world is not even ready for the data explosion once its potential as well as utilisation increases.
When IoT is being used for running smart cities, the data will be generated from geodata in cars, traffic and its management. Manufacturing facilities will be using the ability to communicate between machines and devices to create a seamless platform, but it will then generate data that crosses the physical devices that are connected. Hospitals will be remotely connected with patents and generate minute to minute data of their health which will be recorded as EHR and used for providing them better healthcare. The smart grid that will run these cities that avail all these technologies, will have realms of data about each smart meter, its consumption and capacity utilization.
In short, we are looking at a deluge of data as our life becomes more dependent on Internet – and it will be Internet of Everything then!
Our next conversations will need to be, is this humongous data being properly utilised? Apparently not. M2M, the commercial application of IoT, will generate a global annual growth of information to the tune of 3.2 Exabyte by 2024, through mobile networks alone! This stat has been forecasted by strategy consultants at Machina. Currently we stand at 0.2 Exabyte, so the growth will be 16 fold over a little less than 10 years!
McKinsey’s figures show a scary scenario, that is, only about one percent of the data generated by these ubiquitous apps will be utilised as big data and structured or analysed for insights. German Big Data specialist ParStream shares this view- in a study commissioned from Dimensional Research, they have maintained that while almost 83% enterprises capture data, only about 8% will structure it , utilise it or analyse it for any enterprise usage.
This gap created is having enterprises miss out on an important source of strategy and maybe even newer and smarter business models. As per McKinsey, IoT is used largely for real time machine control, and still generates huge amounts of data. If this usage extends to dynamic monitoring of machines across geos, time zones and applications, the data will be more conducive to strategising . This may well give rise to more agile and robust business models. One could be the transformation of machines manufacturing enterprises to service oriented ones- a big and more profitable shift in business plan. This could also identify ways to optimise processes and streamline procedures. Internally, IoT data can be used to ensure optimal maintenance of production units, better planning and of course, more objectiveservice delivery. Many , if not all, enterprise leaders realize that utilising the data IoT throws out has the capability to transform their business unrecognisably. It seems to be on everyone’s agenda- specially in times when increasing competitive both for markets as well as resources is forcing organizations to shrink costs and expand devices. IoT data could hold the key to identifying opportunities that it will create. But the question is, what are they doing about it? Will these opportunities for transformation that IoT provides, help create better business systems? More on that later.