In this special guest feature, Yaniv Mor of Xplenty talks about the upward trajectory of the Internet of Things (IoT) industry and examines the distinct opportunities as well as pitfalls present in this new space. Yaniv Mor is CEO & Co-Founder of Xplenty, the big data processing platform that makes it easy to process more data more quickly.
The hype is over, for better or for worse: the Internet of Things is here.
Some 22 billion pieces of IoT technology – Internet-connected devices, appliances, and objects – are expected to be in use by 2019. Yet, as is often the case when adoption of emerging technology takes off at lightning speed, end users and the infrastructure already in place are often behind the curve.
In the case of the Internet of Things, connected devices are producing a massive influx of data; and brands, data professionals and developers alike are all scrambling to find ways to respond. For those in the data industry, this presents a unique opportunity to shape the future of how we use data. Here are three ways we can build for the developing IoT landscape and position all industries for success.
Adapt to IoT Data Sets
Currently, given the Internet of Things is just beginning to hit its stride, data people have not yet had to deal with IoT data as its own subset. However, given IoT data is quickly becoming an animal in and of itself, in order to cope with the deluge of data coming from wearable technology and smart devices, IT professionals and brands must first tackle some difficult infrastructure and operational challenges.
Storage capacity, scalability and inbound data-center bandwidth requirements are just some of the issues the data industry must address to make sure that they are capable of capturing, synthesizing and acting on the data being generated and collected. This will not only help streamline processes, but also make IoT data crunching much more fluid.
Make Analytics Quicker
In addition to gathering and processing the vast amount of IoT data, making business sense from it in real-time is also proving to be cumbersome. This is a must for companies to be able to compete in today’s digital age, and as such brands and IT pros must begin innovating new ways to make the process more agile.
These innovations can come through a variety of different avenues, such as shifting data processing responsibilities to more flexible cloud environments, or by newly forged on-device sensors and chips that can crunch data more thoroughly and remotely (or some combination of both). Technologies such as these will play a pivotal role in helping businesses – or users in the case of wearable technology – get the insight they need and want when they want it.
Standardize The Cloud
The IoT has opened a lot of doors and spawned a brand new batch of IoT focused startups. Unfortunately, however, this has led to a lack of standards across the IoT sphere as these companies use their funding to build off of the stack or cloud in their own direction as opposed to doing so in a unified way.
As a result, standardized back-end products are needed as the IoT industry continues to grow. These solutions must ensure better interoperability with existing back-end solutions while also making the processing and overall management of data much simpler.
From revolutionizing the brand experience to making the lives of consumers easier, the Internet of Things is a potential boon for businesses and consumers alike. It’s on the cusp of greatness, and now that the technology chasm has been closed, it is up to data people to make the IoT everything it can be.
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I agree “connected devices are producing a massive influx of data; and brands, data professionals and developers alike are all scrambling to find ways to respond.” I think that the amount of sensitive data collected will become increasingly difficult and important to protect from theft and manipulation.
We are seeing a number of common issues across recent data breaches, stealing our most sensitive data, and I think it is time to re-think our security approach and be more data-centric.
Ponemon Institute published an interesting survey related to the recent spate of high-profile cyber attacks. According to the survey database security was recommended by 49% of respondents, but the study found that organizations continue to allocate the bulk of their budget (40%) to network security and only 19% to database security. Ponemon concluded that “This is often because organizations have traditionally spent money on network security and so it is earmarked in the budget and requires no further justification.”
It’s incumbent upon the companies that collect sensitive information about the users of these devices to be good custodians of that data. That will require implementing robust and layered risk management controls as well as encrypting that data while it’s stored on the company’s servers, being used for analytics in Big Data environments, or shared with cloud-based services.
Ulf Mattsson, CTO Protegrity