As The Internet of Things continues to grow, huge amount of data is going to be generated. How huge is the “huge”? Really huge. I do mean that.
Physical devices across the globe are consuming and creating data to drive a continuously connected world. David Booth, CEO at BackOffice Associates believes that currently we are at the tipping point of the Internet of Things. He says, “It was not a big leap for the industry to realize that an IoT global network of continuously connected devices would mean that data would not only be created at geometric rates, but that it would become one of the most valuable commodities in the world.”
Alongside the fact that year 2016 was declared to be the year of the first Zettabyte in internet traffic, Cisco report says the number will reach 2.3 ZB by 2020. Before long we will be transferring this much data annually.
If it does not say anything to you, imagine a byte equals 1 character of text – a zettabyte would cover War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy(which is about 1,250 pages) at least 325 trillion times. Or if 1 gigabyte can store 960 minutes of music – technically a zettabyte would be able to store just over 2 billion years of music. If that still isn’t illustrative enough, let’s measure in cups of coffee. Cisco states that if the 11oz coffee on your desk equals to one gigabyte, a zettabyte would have the same volume as the Great Wall of China. This amount of information is mind-blowing. Zettabyte transformed Big Data into enormously Big Data.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is expanding rapidly and relentlessly. And as IoT grows, so do the volumes of data it generates. Ignoring this fact is not an option, and companies will do so at their own peril and risk.
Though there are many new start-up companies storing, analyzing and integrating massive amounts of big data created from the IoT, not many of them have actually considered how the IoT can and will transform organization thinking by implementing data quality and information governance.
With so much data being created, companies must understand what they want to do with it, what are their data requirements and ensure that they have access to the right data. Unless a company can find a way to accumulate, manage and, most important, monetize their data storage, data hoarding can be a real issue for them. Put simply, while the value IoT brings is in the information it creates, innovation gold lies in the filtered data an organization has extracted from the intermediate layer between the devices and the cloud (so called “fog”).
Obviously, data provides powerful potential for boosting analytics efforts. And analyzing the amount of data that is going to be created by the Internet of Things requires new, advanced analytic techniques. The good news is, artificial intelligence and cognitive computing are maturing at a fast pace.
When used properly analytics can help organizations translate IoT’s digital data into knowledge that will contribute to developing new products, offerings, and business models. IoT can provide useful insights into the world outside company walls, and help strategists and decision-makers understand their customers, products, and markets more clearly. It can drive so much more — including opportunities to integrate and automate business processes in ways never imagined before.
Rowan Trollope, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s Internet of Things (IoT) and Applications, told participants at the Cisco Live conference, “One of the biggest mistakes you could make now is to underestimate the Internet of Things. This is a life or death issue for most of our customers. They have seen what has happened with Uber and taxi companies and with Netflix and Blockbuster”.
The bottom line is that IoT and Big Data can either disrupt your business or help you become more competitive compared to other businesses that are about to be disrupted.
