Who would have thought that the Internet of Things (IoT) could impact anything from artificial insemination of cows to supply chain management decisions, writes Nick Finch, the technical director of Concentra? (more…)
February 9, 2016
Posted by: George Malim
The first wave of connectivity to serve the continent of Africa was mobile communications; in fact more than double the population in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has mobile phone access compared with access to paved roads, writes Stephen Stewart, the regional director for Africa at Eseye. (more…)
February 8, 2016
Posted by: George Malim
IT is no longer the sole guardian of technology in the business. From IP enabled turnstiles to smart manufacturing systems that continuously monitor and optimise performance and smart buildings with IP connected environmental controls, the Internet of Everything (IoE) is slowly but inexorably expanding across every business environment, writes John Pepper, the chief executive and founder of Managed 24/7.
Right now, however, these deployments remain completely separate from the core business network – and IT has little or no visibility of IoE deployments. While companies are gaining operational benefits, these siloed deployments also represent significant operational risk. Security is the primary concern, but organisations are also missing out on essential business information. By failing to consolidate IoE deployments into the core network, organisations cannot enable CxOs to take advantage of a depth of real time analytics that should be informing changes to every part of the building, estate and production systems.
It is, therefore, no surprise that there is a growing CxO push to integrate IoE into the existing corporate network, not least to exploit IT’s security expertise. Few CxOs even consider any difficulties arguing, quite reasonably, that there is little or no difference between an IP enabled temperature sensor and any cloud based application. However, there is one fundamental and essential difference to consider: IT systems are still managed on the basis of 99.999% – five nines – availability; IoE demands 100% availability – failure is simply not an option.
A small but growing minority of IT organisations have therefore begun to explore the value of consolidating monitoring tools to move beyond break/fix to a predictive model that delivers 100% uptime. End to end monitoring that accurately predicts trends in performance combined with self-healing technologies both prevent problems and enable organisations to achieve far more effective IT utilisation.
Given the speed with which devices are becoming Internet enabled, there is no time to delay. But organisations have some tough questions to consider. From ownership to budget, capacity planning to network audit and security, organisations need to determine where the responsibility lies for this new connected model – and, critically, ensure IT embraces the predictive approach required to deliver the 100% availability now required of these essential systems.
The role of IT is changing; today’s requirement to support servers is evolving fast to one that is about managing millions of connected devices, from coffee machines to life saving NHS equipment. IT needs to step up quickly to embrace this critical, predictive model for every aspect of the corporate infrastructure.
February 5, 2016
Posted by: George Malim
February 2, 2016
Posted by: George Malim
Andreas Schierenbeck, the chief executive of thyssenKrupp Elevator, discusses how modern IoT developments are bringing one of the world’s oldest industries – construction – into the 21st century. (more…)
January 27, 2016
Posted by: George Malim
Internet connected devices are becoming embedded in our everyday lives, with almost every object either already connected or currently being modified in an attempt to be smart, writes Grayson Milbourne, the security intelligence director at Webroot. (more…)
January 26, 2016
Posted by: George Malim
Across Europe, cities are racing to make themselves smarter, writes Ricky Cooper, the vice president of EMEA and APAC and Digital Reality. By harnessing the power of computing, networks and big data, their aim is to improve living standards for citizens and reduce the impact of urbanisation on the environment. (more…)
January 19, 2016
Posted by: George Malim
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…)
Posted by: George Malim
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…)
January 15, 2016
Posted by: George Malim
Kevin Ashton, the ‘father’ of the internet of things has said: “By the next century more than half the world will be vegetarian.” His point, while stirring the innards of a many carnivores, is that the world is changing rapidly and we have to adapt. Regardless of what you think is normal now, tomorrow will be very different. There will be a new normal, writes Mark Homer, the vice president of global customer transformation for field service management specialist, ServiceMax. (more…)
January 14, 2016
Posted by: George Malim