Internet of Things – Blog Series

Internet of Things – Series 1

This series of blogs on Internet of Things as a topic for all of us to learn,collaborate,exchange discussions and see the how the IOT is changing, enabling and transforming the way people, things live and interact.

This series of blog would cover the following; we will start discussing on each of the topics. As SAP Professionals, its required to deep dive into these specifics of IoT to understand and create the business value for Enterprise Applications.

• Software Architecture and Dimensions for IoT
• Technologies enabling IoT
• Domain Specific IoT
• M2M, IoT, IIoT, IT – OT
• Cloud Offerings, Platforms Enabled for IoT
• Data Analytics in IoT
• Deriving Business Models for IoT
• Industry 4.0 and Solution Sketches
• Opportunity Identification Matrix for IoT
• Concerns in IoT
• Designing IoT and Deriving Benefits IoT Solutions in Domains

Lot of definitions for IoT available. Read through couple of them and you will see all get to the same context.

The Wiki definition says “The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the ever-growing network of physical objects that feature an IP address for internet connectivity, and the communication that occurs between these objects and other Internet-enabled devices and systems.”

Now, the definition says it is about connecting the device/things around which has an identity, however as time proceeded it starting adding lot of application, usage and deriving business value out of this connectivity. The reality is there is endless connections and values that can be derived out of this.

A little bit of history to know, its interesting fact that IoT is not a recent concept , it has been existing since 1832 when an electromagnetic telegraph was created by Baron Schilling in Russia, and in 1833 Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber invented their own code to communicate over a distance of 1200 m within Gottingen, Germany.

Few other interesting facts mentioned here, Mark Weiser had constructed a water fountain outside his office whose flow and height mimicked the volume and price trends of the stock market. “Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality,” Weiser wrote “Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people.”

1999 was a big year for IoT, The Internet of Things term is coined by Kevin Ashton executive director of the Auto-ID Center in MIT. In 2008: U.S. National Intelligence Council listed the Internet of Things as one of the 6 “Disruptive Civil Technologies” with potential impacts on US interests out to 2025.

What is bringing this paradigm shift across industries to IoT enable the business in recent years?  Few market drivers are –

• Increasing need of deployments of automation solutions
• Growth of connected devices and systems
• Investments on disruptive technologies
• Need to digitalize businesses

At the same time, there are technology trends which are helping these market drivers to enable IoT based applications/solutions to meet the requirement.

The technology trends that will help drive IoT include the decreased cost of memory, storage, and processing; the increase in sensors; cloud and big data, and the convergence of the Internet and industrial networks.

It all boils down to integration of data from multiple sources into business systems to enable these enterprise businesses with information. The information which can be understood from data level and convert to wisdom as in DIKW Pyramid(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIKW_pyramid). Each layer in this pyramid has data which can be interlocked as IoT Data.

We, as enterprise systems owners are to look at how this data can be made beneficial. Combining data from multiple sources and analyzing them in innovative way should get business benefits of reducing cost, improving efficiency and consistency and help in the entire chain of enterprise apps.

Multiple sectors which will be using IoT and benefiting from using this ecosystem

• Manufacturing
• Oil , gas and Mining
• Transportation
• Insurance
• Defense
• Agriculture
• Food Services
• Infrastructure
• Utilities
• Retail
• Hospitality
• Logistics
• Healthcare
• Banking

Businesses will be the top adopter of IoT solutions. Gartner Survey shows that 43 % of Organizations Are Using or Plan to Implement the Internet of Things in 2016. At one side, where are there adopters, there are still few organizations who are evaluating, experimenting for this route towards adoption. All of them are evaluating the threats and concerns IoT bring along with advantages it has.

In next series, we will discuss how businesses are equipped and enabled to become the adopters for IOT.