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IOT Momentum Starting to Build
June 23, 2015
Breaking the IOT Connection
June 16, 2015
Software is a Service
June 9, 2015
The Challenge of Rising Expectations
June 4, 2015
Insider Extra: Rethinking the Conference Room
June 2, 2015
Win10 + Intel Skylake + Thunderbolt 3 = Interesting PC
May 26, 2015
The IOT Opportunity is Wide Open
May 21, 2015
Insider Extra: The Carrier Challenge for Consumer IOT
May 19, 2015
Maker Movement Drives the Future
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Insider Extra: The Next Step for Wearables: Health Care
May 12, 2015
Making Sense of IOT
May 5, 2015
A Fresh Look at Wearables
April 30, 2015
Insider Extra: The Amazing HoloLens Leap
April 28, 2015
The Device Dream Team: Large Smartphones and Thin Notebooks
April 23, 2015
Insider Extra: Mobile Sites Should Be Dead
April 21, 2015
Wearables + Connected Cars = IOT Heaven
April 14, 2015
The Future of Wearable Power Is Energy Harvesting
April 7, 2015
Twinning Is Key to Connected Devices
April 2, 2015
Insider Extra: Competing Standard Co-Existence For Wireless Charging and IOT
March 31, 2015
Riding the High-Res Tidal Wave
March 24, 2015
Smart Cars Accelerating Slowly
March 19, 2015
Insider Extra: The Future of Computing is Invisible
March 17, 2015
Smart Home Decade Dilemma
March 10, 2015
Apple Event Surprises
March 3, 2015
Flat Slab Finale?
February 26, 2015
Insider Extra: "Phablet" Impact Continues to Grow
February 24, 2015
Paying for Digital Privacy
February 19, 2015
Insider Extra: The Wire-Free PC
February 17, 2015
Whither Apple?
February 12, 2015
Insider Extra: The Real IOT Opportunity? Industry
February 10, 2015
Business Models For The Internet of Things (IOT)
February 5, 2015
Insider Extra: Is "Mobile Only" The Future?
February 3, 2015
Sexiest New Devices? PCs...
January 29, 2015
Insider Extra: iPhone Next
January 27, 2015
How Will Windows 10 Impact PCs and Tablets?
January 22, 2015
Insider Extra: Hands-On (or Heads-on) With HoloLens
January 20, 2015
Whither Windows 10?
January 15, 2015
Insider Extra: Mobile Security: The Key to a Successful BYOD Implementation
January 13, 2015
Smart Home Situation Likely To Get Worse Before It Gets Better
January 6, 2015
More Tech Predictions for 2015
December 30, 2014
Top 5 Tech Predictions for 2015
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July 7, 2015
By Bob O'Donnell
One of the big promises of IOT is supposed to be insight. The idea is that, by collecting all kinds of data from a myriad of connected sensors, both businesses and consumers will be able to learn more about the systems, devices, and environments around them.
The key component to bridge the gap between data and insight is, of course, analytics. Big data analytics has been a major buzzword in the IT world for the last five years or more, and it’s the key to generating the sort of knowledge that we’re all hoping IOT can enable.
The problem, or challenge, is that analytics is a complex topic that few people really understand. (And, frankly, it’s a topic that can, and does, mean a variety of different things to different people.) Analytics for IOT is the sort of vague software “magic” that has many people salivating over the potential of what it can do, without necessarily looking at the reality of what it has actually achieved.
The theory is that you pump IOT-generated data into the black box of an analytics engine—most likely hidden on some unknown server in the cloud—and you’ll get a continuous stream of insights fed back to you.
While there may be a system or two that comes close to this ideal, it seems that, at present, this is more the exception than the rule. Instead, there are a fair number of cases in which a significant amount of sensor-generated data gets fed into some sort of pattern or rule-matching tool, and, at best, the output is only modestly useful data points.
Part of the problem may be inaccurate assumptions or expectations about what’s really possible. For one thing, I think many people assume that analytics projects are essentially never-ending--if you keep feeding data in, the results will keep coming out. In reality, however, many are finding that, while analysis of IOT-generated data can create some solid insights, it’s essentially a one-trick pony.
For example, in the widely discussed story of connected cows—where female cows were fitted with pedometers and Fujitsu researchers discovered that when they go into heat, they exhibit a particular walking pattern—the result was an extremely positive increase in insemination rates. It’s a great insight, but once the analysis was done, all they had to do was look for that pattern and then take appropriate action. Mission accomplished.
Similarly, the kinds of automated HVAC systems that have been integrated into “smart buildings” for some time now can track the movement and density of people in a building and adjust settings accordingly. It’s practical and useful, but not necessarily the profound outcome that many people seem to associate with the analytics of IOT.
The example of the connected cows also highlights other common misconceptions around analytics and IOT. For one thing, it’s not always big data; it can be little data—as in the footsteps of a herd of cows. Therefore, it’s possible that the “analytics” can be done directly on an endpoint device, and don’t necessarily have to be done with big server hardware somewhere in the cloud.
One could argue that wearables with integrated sensors could perform these kinds of actions themselves. Yes, they could compare their own data to a set of data retrieved from the cloud, but they also could be built as a closed-loop environment. While there are certainly arguments to be made to keep things like wearables more open, there’s no denying the reduced security risks in a closed loop versus an open one.
Analytics in the IOT world is still evolving, and I look forward to the interesting applications that will be created over the next several years. Nevertheless, I think it’s critical to keep expectations in check, because there’s no guarantee that analyzing IOT data is going to generate useful, much less earth shattering, information on a regular basis. In fact, we will likely see many more data dead ends than insightful vistas in the years to come.
Here's a link to the original column: https://techpinions.com/the-analytics-of-iot/40962
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