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IOT helps financial services re-engage their customers

The Internet of Things (IoT) has truly begun to take off with enabled devices including smart watches, smart meters and connected cars as well as smartphones and tablets, writes David Watkins, the service delivery director at Virtus Data Centres. However, technology and appliances are not the only industries affected by this growing trend. In fact, IoT’s potential reaches far beyond, and could play a major role in helping disconnected industries re-engage with their customers. (more…)

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February 3, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

The reality distortion field of IoT
By 2020, Gartner predicts that 20.8 billion connected things will be in use worldwide, across consumer and enterprise use cases, writes Mike Crooks, the head of Innovation at thr Mubaloo Innovation Lab. This year alone, Gartner expects 5.5 million new things will get connected every day, leading to services spending around IoT reaching $235 billion by the year end.
Everywhere you look, there is a vast amount of hype about what IoT delivers, where the market is heading and what can be achieved. We’d be forgiven for thinking that IoT is already a complete world changer, that is fundamentally changing the dynamics of how we live and work. 

In some cases, of course, it’s true. The average person may never be aware of the impact that IoT is having.

We live in a world that is more connected than ever. The farming industry is going through a large change, where its equipment is becoming ever smarter and more autonomous. Cars are starting to have autonomous capabilities, with the ability to self diagnose and trigger maintenance alerts. Smart thermostats are being installed in an increasing number of homes. All the big technology companies are turning more attention, and more money into the entire IoT ecosystem.

Yet, this would be masking over the reality of IoT. IoT has the potential to help us drive improvements in virtually every aspect of the way in which we live and work; but questions remain as to whether the world needs a tweeting toaster or a smart wardrobe.

In reality, how can we be close to the vision of IoT, when so much of the world and so many companies still aren’t properly utilising or understanding technologies that have been around for decades? The majority of companies hear terms like Cloud, Big Data and Mobile and admit that they are still stuck with legacy infrastructure, with no real clue as to how to move forward.

One of the big blockers for IoT over the past few years is that every company with a vested interest in it, has wanted to control it. This has led to any external customer, be it a consumer wanting a smart home, or an enterprise wanting smart infrastructure, having to use multiple systems. 

Many of the IoT deployments at the moment focus on the dots that get joined within an organisation, connecting their own assets and their own infrastructure. The vision of IoT that has been propagated over the past few years is that systems will share data, so that across the entire chain, transformation will take place.

Larger companies in every industry are currently struggling with a very real issue of transformation at the moment. In many cases, companies are skirting around their core infrastructure and using middleware as a way of doing iterative changes. IoT for the majority of companies is something that they see as a distant possibility on their roadmap, not something that they are able to pay much attention to now.

One of the major challenges with the reality of IoT is this; companies still aren’t able to properly understand the data being generated at the moment. It doesn’t matter how much infrastructure companies put in place or how connected the world may be, if they aren’t able to use that information properly, the ability to collect data is irrelevant

IoT is as much about what is happening in the background to understand and process the information as it is about the way in which that data is collected. If we look at the consumer market, Waze is, in many ways the perfect example of IoT in action. It turns millions of cars into a live data feed of road conditions and traffic information. This is fed through the app to help people optimise their driving, which is also fed into Google’s services, to the extent that Google Now is able to recommend that you leave earlier for a meeting.

It’s the intelligence that makes this useful and powerful, but this is precisely where companies struggle. The choices of whether to utilise cellular M2M, Sigfox, Wi-Fi technologies or Bluetooth; the sensors that you deploy — all of it means nothing without being able to analyse the data in real time.

In the enterprise space, this means that we will continue to see closed networks, where the value of deployment is to that company, and that company alone. Some data feeds may be opened up, but a vast amount of data will be kept private. Companies may not want to open up data about predictive maintenance for their assets or equipment, for understandable competitive reasons.

(more…)

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February 2, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

Smart Summit London

Event date: September 21 – 22, 2016
Olympia Conference Centre, London

The Internet of Things, M2M (machine to machine) hyper-connectivity, wearable technology, intelligent living and ubiquitous computing are all increasingly important areas. The common underlying agenda is to develop new forms of connectivity, new types of digital relationships, and anchor opportunities presented by the greater integration of connected technologies into everyday lives. (more…)

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February 1, 2016

Posted by: IoT global network

Smart Summit Frankfurt

Event date: April 6 – 7, 2016
Level 2, Kap Europa

The Internet of Things, M2M (machine to machine) hyper-connectivity, wearable technology, intelligent living and ubiquitous computing are all increasingly important areas. The common underlying agenda is to develop new forms of connectivity, new types of digital relationships, and anchor opportunities presented by the greater integration of connected technologies into everyday lives. (more…)

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Posted by: IoT global network

Virtual reality moves closer to actual reality at CES 2016

Virtual Reality (VR) is closing the final gap before it becomes an accessible and comfortable consumer experience, writes Matthew Duke-Woolley, an analyst at Beecham Research. (more…)

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January 27, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

Smart home take-up needs standards to converge

Smart home and consumer applications in the Internet of Things (IoT) are seen as huge growth markets. Numerous related products and solutions already exist today however, although these solutions achieve enormous comfort and security gains as well as energy savings, an important component is missing: the user acceptance. The convergence of standards and technologies resulting in seamlessly connected, worldwide solutions will change this situation, write Graham Martin, the chairman of the EnOcean Alliance, and Tobin Richardson, the resident and CEO of the ZigBee Alliance. (more…)

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January 25, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

Healthcare things are getting better at supporting wellness

One of the many sizable challenges in healthcare today is ensuring patients are taking care of themselves: taking their medication on time, getting enough sleep, doing what the doctor has advised, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, writes Mathew Kuruvilla, the chief innovation officer of Ness Software Engineering Services. (more…)

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January 22, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

The future of IoT: Patience is a virtue

2015 was a big year for the Internet of Things, it was the first year that we really saw this technology come into play in both businesses and the home, writes Tim Herbert, the senior vice president, research and market intelligence at CompTIA. IoT has been talked about for a few years now but it’s only recently that implementation has started to take effect, and soon we will be seeing that everything that can be connected, will be connected. (more…)

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January 19, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

2016 – the year geospatial analytics makes a comeback

Stuart Wilson, the vice president for EMEA at Alteryx, highlights how the Internet of Things (IoT) is set to propel businesses to discover geospatial analytics all over again this year. (more…)

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January 15, 2016

Posted by: George Malim

IoT Global Innovation Forum

Event date: June 15-16, 2016
Barcelona, Spain

The 2nd Annual IoT Global Innovation Forum, June 15-16, 2016 in Barcelona, Spain, brings together leading technology innovators, business strategists and developers from around the world for two days of focused networking and information sharing at the IoT cutting edge. Expert speakers will discuss the latest applications for traditional commercial processes as well as new business models and opportunities within the emerging Internet of Things ecosphere.  (more…)

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January 14, 2016

Posted by: IoT global network