What if your smartwatch could detect when you become agitated while driving and signal your car radio to play soothing music? What if your vacuum cleaner could identify specific areas in your house prone to allergy particles and clean them more frequently? What if office workers were alerted when they were less than two meters apart, thus maintaining social distancing?
The Internet of Things has made this last example possible—through a wristband. The system is already in use, and its market continues to grow.
Customers drive business. Therefore, all your business transformation activities should focus on improving the customer experience in some way (directly or indirectly). A company's digital transformation is complete—or at least on the verge of success—when its products are mapped onto each user.
This mapping is simply a digital "link" between companies and customers, which can be facilitated and enhanced through the Internet of Things (IoT) as long as the company has access to devices owned by customers, even if those devices have not yet been sold by the customers. The IoT certainly begins with connectivity, but the connected devices themselves do not bring value—neither to customers nor to businesses.
It was the digitization of products, and the use of data and analytics to enhance user interaction, that truly transformed the company's business model. This aligns with Gartner's definition of digital transformation: the process of leveraging digital technologies and supporting capabilities to create a robust new digital business model.
While Fortune 500 companies are expected to digitize many of their product lines, and they already have, true digital transformation is being led by small businesses, which are more likely to “create a robust new digital business model” in the process. Let’s look at where the Internet of Things (IoT) comes from and how it can help organizations that already have agile methodologies, automated core processes, analytics across all business functions, and strategic investments in innovation and IT to undertake their ongoing digital transformation.
The Internet of Things (IoT) facilitates data collection and analysis.
Businesses make money by selling products and services—even if those products and services are virtual, informational, or digital. The Internet of Things (IoT) works on a physical device, facilitating transactions between companies and customers by collecting and using data. The company has a responsibility to transform this data from the physical world into useful information to sustain and grow its business.
This physical device has a sensor that can collect real-time data from the surrounding environment or components, such as the number of internal items or the system's temperature. (Internet of Things)
The software then transforms this data into a digital payload, packages it using encryption and network protocols, and sends it to the company's database, which is located in the company's data center or in a public or private cloud.
Once you have this data, you can format it and feed it into your analytics software or AI-based business process models to gain key insights into various business functions and make predictions.
Two key technological components play a crucial role in the process of transforming sensor-collected metrics into insights that drive decision-making and strategy. Together, they enable IoT-driven digital transformation.
Internet of Things Platform
An IoT platform is a software-defined solution that drives the entire process from connectivity to data processing and integration with analytics tools. It performs several key functions:
Provide local computing power for edge devices
Analyzing data from IoT sensors embedded in physical devices
Connect to public cloud, private cloud or on-premises data center
Deploy analytics functionality where data is generated.
All of this makes the IoT platform a “middleware” between remote user devices and applications that use their data—merging the physical layer, the application layer, and everything in between.
Information sourced from the internet.
An IoT platform acts like an operating system driver, managing the interaction between hardware and applications. More importantly, it must provide and automate all connected devices, be compatible with multiple network and cloud protocols, manage network security and encryption, have data processing capabilities, and support the development of new or native applications.
No wonder managing and monitoring IoT platforms is exceptionally complex. The sheer volume of data generated makes real-time analysis nearly impossible. This is why a key characteristic of IoT platforms is observability—the ability for administrators to understand, control, and troubleshoot complex systems by delving into specific devices, applications, areas, or user roles.
Edge computing
Traditionally, all data processing has been concentrated in data centers owned and operated by enterprises. Consumer and industrial IoT devices are now being installed in self-driving cars, drones, utility meters, CCTV cameras, heart monitors, oil rigs, and more.
These devices generate vast amounts of valuable data, which quickly becomes invalid after creation. Milliseconds become the issue when police are trying to catch a fugitive, someone suffers cardiac arrest, or a pedestrian collides with a self-driving car.
In this scenario, moving critical data from IoT devices to the public cloud or data center and then back would cause delays, thus undermining the purpose of data collection itself. The data needs to be analyzed, processed, and analyzed locally or as close to the device as possible to make it actionable in real time.
This will lead to a major shift in the computing landscape, with data processing moving from data centers and public clouds to distributed, independent, self-contained mini data centers located in remote locations, closer to clusters of IoT devices in specific regions.
However, this doesn't mean the cloud is obsolete for IoT-driven digital transformation. For data that provides insights over time, unifying edge data with cloud-based applications is worthwhile. It helps you aggregate and correlate IoT data and workflows across multiple sites, benchmark and compare them, and understand which are efficient or profitable.
Information sourced from the internet.
Digital Transformation 2.0
In the new hyperconnected reality of hyperconverged edge and public cloud environments, the Internet of Things (IoT) is evolving into a more broadly defined Internet of Things (IoE). All these technological advancements are driving a second wave of digital transformation in both B2B and B2C sectors, guiding enterprises to expand their IoT deployments.
Many small and large companies are moving from IoT pilot projects and proof-of-concept to larger opportunities driven by data, machine learning, and predictive analytics. You can emulate these and build an OT/IT bridge between your company's operations and IT departments. Ultimately, this will help you innovate rapidly and get closer to your customers.
