Internet of Everything

FountainBlue’s September 13 VIP roundtable, on the topic of ‘Internet of Everything’. Thank you also to our gracious host at Micron and to each of you for your input and advice. Below are notes from the conversation. 

On the one hand, the ‘Internet of Everything’ is inevitable and logical, but on the other hand, it’s overblown and ineffective. If first all collectively focus on creating a viable and flexible infrastructure to sustain it, if we could all collaborate to mitigate the downsides around privacy, security, and access, we could positively impact societies and people around the world.

Core to the success for Internet of Everything solutions is the need to optimize data, process, and people. 

• Data: With the mind-boggling volumes of data available through the ever-growing mass of devices, we must quickly discover, filter, organize, communicate, report on and process real-data efficiency. 
• Process: We must strategically create processes which would help us receive, manage, communicate, and report on data to the right stakeholders as quickly as possible. These processes must also optimize energy, dollars and people.
• People: We must ensure that the right people get access to relevant and accurate information quickly so that they can respond accordingly.

As an enterprise leader and as an informed consumer, the Internet of Things is providing some daunting challenges.

• The blurring line between work and home means that ‘home’ devices show up at work, which may endanger the enterprise network.
• ‘Intelligent’ appliances might help you optimize what you buy when for example, but might also make you uncomfortable with who might know what about you.
• Everyone wants everything seamlessly, wirelessly, and simply, but sometimes that’s not easy. We can assume that people will get ever more hungry for bandwidth, meaning a huge and growing demand. But creating that infrastructure is a challenging business, unless we can work together to collaboratively fund it.

Where there are challenges, there are also opportunities. 

• Allow on-premise processing of data for the most important information.
• Leverage mixed reality, holograms and simulations to connect with experts in support of people addressing specific on-site challenges. 
• The volumes of generated data will help customers better understand a wide range of problems, and make better decisions, leveraging AI and ML.
• The idea of ubiquitous communications means so much information from so many sources. Filtering out which communications are essential and important will be a huge ongoing need.

Our executives had some words of caution.

• Segment out individual devices which may have access to your home or work network. Hackers generally get in on the weakest link.
• Proactively manage your layers of risk. Ensure that greatest protection for your greatest assets. 
• Know what’s likely to happen and plan accordingly.

In the end, our executives are practical, emphasizing the need to focus on ROI rather than IoT. 

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