Expert talk: Cisco’s chief technology and strategy officer Padmasree Warrior

 This blog originally appeared on Sogeti’s technology trendlab called ViNT – Vision Inspiration Navigating Trends

Cisco’s Head of Technology and Strategy Padmasree Warrior was interviewed about Connecting Everything by McKinsey’s Rik Kirkland.

Internet of Things, The Social web of Everything, Smart cities, what does Cisco mean with their Internet of Everything? Warrior is very clear on what he thinks the Internet of Everything is:

“So when we say “the Internet of Everything,” we mean an intelligent way to connect processes with data and things. Not just the Internet of Things, not just connecting the devices onto the network, but how can you use the information that’s being collected to drive better processes, better decision making for businesses, and better lifestyles for users and consumers? And we mean more efficient ways to analyze that data through analytics from the network—which is our expertise—to make every single vertical (manufacturing, retail, transportation) significantly different than what it is today.”

And their making progress:

“We’ll make significant progress in connecting the 99 percent that’s still unconnected. That will be people, that will be devices, and that will be a lot more information on the network.”

Unfortunately, we can not embed the video, follow this link to watch the interview. 

Internet of Things: for Business and Beyond (2/2)

This blog originally appeared on Sogeti’s technology trendlab called ViNT – Vision Inspiration Navigating Trends

Most of the things we use are physical objects. Internet of Things is about connecting these physical objects to the digital. This creates new oppurtunities if one can integrate IoT as part of a business strategy. Here’s why you should.

Also read part one: “The need of Things” & all slides: “The need of Things” – Internet of Things: For Business and Beyond.

Anatomy of Things (The Anatomy Of The Internet Of Things)

Anatomy as in structure and identification. Internet of Things can be described with three pillars. Three pillars that are needed to make IoT happen.

1.     Hardware

Hardware is becoming less expensive. Information has become more accessible. In short: “making technology happen” has become something accessible these days. Hardware, basically is the key to this technology. Arduino is a supplier in hardware for example. For less than € 80,- you have a starter kit. Other names in hardware are (among a lot of others) Spark, Pengate, BolT and Mosoro.

2.     Wireless connectivity

To send real time information about internal states or external environments of objects connectivity is needed. To give a small overview of connectivity possibilities: Near field (NFC), Body (BAN), Personal (PAN), Near-me (NAN), Local (LAN), Home (HAN), Campus (CAN), Backbone, Metropolitan (MAN), Wide (WAN).

3.     Infrastructure

a.     Horizontals

We need platforms that connect all these new products and services. Horizontals are platforms to be plugged into. The platform can then collect and analyse the generated data. Known players in the ‘horizontal’ world are: IFTT, Symplio, IoBridge and Thingworx.

b.     Verticals

Verticals are the applications of the IoT. Verticals are dividing in different categories as: Quantified Self, Lifestyle, Connected Home, Industries, Industrial Internet and so on. Some known applications are: Pebble, Jawbone, Withings, Smartthings, NinjaBlocks, Nest, Wemo and Belkin Echo.

The core of Things

Just as simple as Kevin Ashton thought in his days as Brand Manager at P&G back in 1999: “There is a lack of information!”. All these new data points deliver new types or extra information to a decision making process. With ‘things’ you can fill the information gabs in your organization. Analyzed properly, this data should enhance the process. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”

And isn’t that the core of Internet of Things?

Give me a little data…

Think about how connected objects and devices can support your business processes and how you can compete with the right insights with your competitors. IoT will be Business Intelligence on steroids. Make sure you are ready for it. To close off with Darrell Smith, Director of Facilities and Energy at Microsoft:

“Give me a little data and I’ll tell you a little. Give me a lot of data and I’ll save the world.”

Internet of Things: for business and beyond (1/2)

This blog originally appeared on Sogeti’s technology trendlab called ViNT – Vision Inspiration Navigating Trends

Last week I had the privilege to speak about ‘Internet of Things’ at the Dutch Sogeti headquarters in Vianen, as part on my thesis study at VINT. In this 20 minute presentation I presented my thoughts about the subject “Things” to our Communication professionals. The presentation is my insight in the world of IoT and where it is coming from. The title of the presentation was, “The need of Things”. And, wether you like it or not, we need connected objects to save money, energy and to reduce waste of our (for example) resources.

What’s in a name?
The internet of things is far more than just gadgets. What are we really talking about, and what is the context of the bigger picture? Cisco talks about Internet of Everything, General Electric about the Industrial web, Microsoft calls it the Web of the World, the Germans speak of Industry 4.0 and Bosch about the Internet of things and services. Still there is no end at the list.  Here a few more definitions:

• Industry 4.0
• Internet of Sensors and Actuators
• Internet of Everything
• Internet of Things & Services
• Smarter Planet
• Ambient Intelligence
• Machine 2 Machine
• Social web of Things
• Industrial Internet
• Web of the World

All these type of synonyms and definitions are marketing buzzwords from large companies, research institutes and independent organisations or governments. Companies like Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Intel, Ericsson and so on, who are trying to be an industrial driver of the phenomenon Internet of Things. Internet of Things? Yes, Internet of Things, as Kevin Ashton found it in 1999 at his job as Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble. When we combine these perspective we can generate (if you ask me) a definition that deals with what IoT is really about:

“Internet of Things (IoT) refer to the collective noun for the general idea to connect the physical to the digital via embedded technology. To receive data from all kind of smart objects from the past, the current and the future to communicate and sense or interact with their internal state or the external environment to simplify and facilitate human life, improve business processes, reduce costs and risks and raise efficiency.“

Things are not smart, the cloud is.
Internet of Things is about a very logical system, you can compare it with the principal of the website If This, Then That. When an object is triggered by his internal state or external environment it will react on that. A case about this principle you can read in a blog post we wrote before with the title: ‘Things’ aren’t smart, the cloud is.’ In this stage of ‘tagging’ things and objects, a necessarily question for all of us is: what type of objects and things should we connect to simplify and facilitate human life, improve business processes, reduce costs and risks and raise efficiency. What data will help you of your company. What insights do you need to create competitor advantage?

Is Internet of Things a new phenomenon?
No, it isn’t. Here is a great read from Alex Brisbourne on Forbes. A Blog post with as title: “The Internet Of Things Isn’t As New As It Seems”

And what do you think of Tesla when he told a reporter from Collier in 1926 the following?

“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole.  We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance.  Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone.  A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.” Read the full article: “When woman is boss’ here.

Part 1/2
In part two of this presentation online next week, I will go on with the ‘need’ of data and insights in our personal lives and for our business. Please share your thought in the comments.

Big Data: Turning volume, variety and velocity into Big Sales

This blog originally appeared on Sogeti’s technology trendlab called ViNT – Vision Inspiration Navigating Trends

Many companies asked themselves how they can use the big amount of data in organized and valuable data. Data which they can use to increase their Sales for example. Big Data has a huge potential and here are benefits of Big Data that companies cannot ignore. On the website Cloudtweaks I found a nice overview of Big Data benefits:

·         Information is transparent and usable at a much higher frequency.

·         Better management decisions, based on more objective data analysis;

·         Forecasting industry trends or customer needs;

·         Better customer segmentation that ultimately helps them tailor their products and services;

·         Faster development of innovative products or services.

Big Data is here to stay but we are not there already. About this process PROS has made a nice infographic I would like to share today.

Source: http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2013/02/big-data-and-the-cloud/

Expert Talk: Rise of the Mobile Machines — Oracle’s solution for Device to Data Center

 This blog originally appeared on Sogeti’s technology trendlab called ViNT – Vision Inspiration Navigating Trends

At the Mobile IT Summit, Peter Utzschneider, Vice President of Product Management, reveals Oracle’s strategy on device to data center. Within his function as VP of Product Management, Utzschneider is also responsible for identifying sectors with an early market demand and growing in a broader adoption. Some highlights from the talk:

“Right now, if we look at everything that’s going on around us, we are at the, what I would call, third wave of innovation with the advent of the internet and this wave in particular will be very very interesting. We’re looking at connecting everything else in the world to the internet.“

“For organizations this means a completely new type of client that they’ll both have to connect into their organization, but also handle in terms of managing those devices and data turning that into opportunity.”

“We have to be able to take that fast data and do an analysis dynamically as the data is moving back into the enterprise.”

Internet of Things will be the manager assistant of the future

 This blog originally appeared on Sogeti’s technology trendlab called ViNT – Vision Inspiration Navigating Trends

There is a huge difference regarding Internet of Things considering a connected household and (connected) business benefits. Last week I have discussed mundane features. You can read about it here. But reducing energy waste in your house for example is totally different from introducing RFID chips on every product in a supermarket chain to work more efficient. In this post I would like to highlight an upcoming internet of thinngs business case from Virgin.

The new fleet of Virgin planes will create 500 gigabyte of data every single flight. So a return flight will generate 1 Terabyte of data. IT Director David Bulman is expecting an explosion of information. The data will not only be generated from digital sources but also from physical ‘entities’ like employees, customers, planes and cargo. In an interview with Computerworld UK the IT director quoted:

“The latest planes we are getting, the Boeing 787s, are incredibly connected. Literally every piece of that plane has an internet connection, from the engines, to the flaps, to the landing gear. If there is a problem with one of the engines we will know before it lands to make sure that we have the parts there. It is getting to the point where each different part of the plane is telling us what it is doing as the flight is going on. This level of operational insight will involve generating large amounts of data from each 787 aircraft”

Bulman also said in the interview that you can enter a plane without saying a single word to anyone on the airport. Your passport data is loaded onto other devices so you do not have to check in the regular way. Bulman also realized that there are large demands placed at the IT infrastructure of the company. The IT director thinks scalable cloud solutions will be needed to deal with the huge amount of increasing data.

“If you are talking that level of data you can’t just chuck ten disks into your data centre anymore, you have to look at cloud based solutions and how you can store data.”

Not only Virgins business can be measured with RFID tags, Bluetooth and other sensors. These manners can also be integrated to each part of your organisation; embedded technology which will generate data and send the generated data to your network. Not long from now the current status of each of your products and processes can be measured. Basically you can now see what is really going on inside your company. The internet of Things will be the manager’s assistant of the future.

The Machine2Machine market (M2) is estimated at 1.200 billion dollars at 2022, the estimation of connected devices ranges from 24 to 50 billion in 2020. When you look at your business, think about what kind of aspects are measured currently. And now, think again and imagine what kind of aspects could be measured and adjust to reduce waste and to work more efficient then you are doing at the moment. Whether you are a production company, a supermarket chain or a insurance company. Real time data decision making engines are not to far away.

Expert talk: Cisco’s Chief Futurist on IoT and IoE

This blog originally appeared on Sogeti’s technology trendlab called ViNT – Vision Inspiration Navigating Trends

During the Cisco live 2013 Dave Evans, Cisco’s Chief Futurist gave his opinion on the future decade. Together with interviewer Shari Slate he talks about the Internet of Things and Internet of Everything. What is the difference between those two concepts and what combines them?

“IoE builds on the foundation of IoT. IoT is a technology transition. But there are many other technology transitions in which Io is comprised of. Cloud, Big Data, IP6 and so on.”

When Shari Slate asked Dave Evans IoT/ IoE around humanity topic he quoted:

“Technology does not exist for technologies sake. It exist to make our lives better”

5 Cool Open Source Arduino Projects

This blog originally appeared on Sogeti’s technology trendlab called ViNT – Vision Inspiration Navigating Trends

Arduino is an open-source electronic prototyping platform that allows you to create objects that can really interact with their environment through different triggers and signals. So far, the maker community around Arduino has come up with some pretty nifty things. Check out these projects I found:

1. Laser harp
A laser what? Yes you read it right: a laser harp. How it works is very simple. When you build an instrument out of lasers you can play it by breaking the beams of light. Will there are music instruments on stage in the future or, only lasers? Connected with a software synthesizer and sensors on the ground the laser harp will sound something like this.

More and technical information can be found here

2. Keyless door entry
Maybe people think psychical money will disappear in the future but how about keys? The keyless entry unlocks a door by touching a wire in a specific time and sensitive pattern. So a light version of the fingerprint ID you might say.

3. Open source Game boy
Being smaller than a Gameboy does not mean being less fun. That shows us our next Arduino based project. The maker of this little Game boy wanted to build one since middle school and guess what, he just created one… Imagine what people will build on their own with a few pieces of electronics in the next decade.

If you want to build one, you will find the source codes in this blog post

4. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)
Now let us talk about drones. Not just quadrocopters, no, drones. With a handful of servos, battery pack, GPS unit, and the Arduino programmer you can build your own unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone.  The 22 page tutorial here will guide you through the entire build process.

5. Wall avoiding robot
You always wanted to have a wall-avoiding robot for whatever reason? You can make one up for yourself now. The famous B-9 robot from Lost in Space inspired the maker of this robot. He used Google’s Sketch Up to make a scale model. Personally I have no clue how this wall avoiding robot is really adding value to my life but I would certainly like to have one. Keep in mind that a wall-avoiding robot is one step closer to creating a walking fridge as a next project.

Parts, tools, a description how to make one of these and the image credits you can find here

Lots of people share their Arduino project online. The technology is cheaper than ever before and will also become cheaper in the future. Everyone can start making awesome new applications from their kitchen tables and garages.

Do you know other awesome applications or did you build one yourself, please share your applications in the comments below.

The Anatomy of the Internet of Things

This blog originally appeared on Sogeti’s technology trendlab called ViNT – Vision Inspiration Navigating Trends

How does Internet of Things look like today?

Matt Turck from Tech Crunch wrote an article about that with the title: “Making sense of the Internet of Things.” In that article a few interesting overviews I want to share with you today.

Building blocks
Trough several key factors the Internet of Things is now becoming more and more reality. Turck describes three key factors, hardware technology, wireless connectivity and infrastructure.

1. Hardware technology
Technology nowadays is becoming more and more cheap. Through this way technology has become more accessible than ever before. The evolution of technology will be going faster as technology is not only available for large companies anymore.

2. Wireless connectivity
The evolution in wireless connection is going a rapid speed so it will become more attractive to connect things through this wireless connections. The evolution of the wireless connection has to go on in this kind of speed because according to Cisco only 99% of the physical objects are still unconnected. “99 percent of things in the physical world are still unconnected, ready to be woken up.”

3. Infrastructure
“The Internet of Things is able to leverage an entire infrastructure that has emerged in related areas.” And this infrastructure is one of the core elements for a successful Internet of Things era. A lot of people are talking about smart objects. Objects are not smart. The only do things they have been programmed for. If This, Than That. By connecting ‘things’ and objects to the cloud, ‘things’ become smart.

Verticals
“Unlike the Big Data space, where the action is gradually moving from core infrastructure to vertical applications, the Internet of Things space is seeing a lot of early action directly at the vertical application level.”

Verticals can be described as products and services which are able to work on their own without the intervention of a overall platform. Notable is that these verticals have adopted a integrated strategy where key elements of the product can be controlled. In this way we will see also a lot of successful Internet of Things based start-ups I guess.

Horizontals
Where we see nowadays a lot of vertical applications is the chance for big companies to deliver a major horizontal platform where all these verticals can be plugged on. In this way the generated data can be collected and analyzed. Looking for patrons and business opportunities.

“One open question is whether a platform developed for a vertical will easily translate to another vertical. In addition, whether the winning platforms are open or closed will play a huge role in the future of the space. My bet would be on openness.”

What kind of information did you always wanted to know about your business processes? How do you think Internet of Things can help your organization to create competitor advantage? When Internet of Things is the next big ‘thing’ it also asks for your big next step.

Expert talk: The Key Elements of Data Life Cycle Management

This blog originally appeared on Sogeti’s technology trendlab called ViNT – Vision Inspiration Navigating Trends

McKinsey’s Matthias Roggendorf’s talk on the key elements of data life cycle management, Roggendorf is associate principal at McKinsey.

“You need to be very clear on what kind of business value you want to create with your data transformation it’s very important to think about carefully walked by the benefits from better data from highly integrated data and from data in higher quality”

As with any strategy or business process, what do you actually want to reach with it. What is your goal. Start with the basics was Roggendorf his tip.

 “There is a pretty lot of work to be done in terms of finding the right by the rhythms finding the right way he often  leveraging your data assets but at the same time you also need to work on the basics what is the target picture in terms of your government structure in terms of your data architecture in terms of off the data quality”

In the article: “Big Data: What is you plan?” colleagues of Roggendorf describes how to set up a Big Data plan. But first, watch the video.

And also check out this video on the three key challenges for making data analytics work.