As discussed in previous articles, context awareness has, for some time now, been one of the most important sources in providing task relevant information, which helps in decision making.

Almost all software which is involved in preparing context aware data employs one or the other DIP sequences, which is typically done in iterations. As the new data gets examined, previous context data is included in the analysis and refreshed. It is better for organizations to buy a prepared context data rather than dealing with the raw data sources directly.

Guidelines

Gather more data

The applications that are used for digital business and IoT solutions incorporate some private big data sources, which include both direct signal streams and internal social streams, in addition to the internal transaction data. Businesses are also interested in external context data which is provided by the government, social or data services. When there is more context to be considered, there would be better insights and hence, a more intelligent solution can be reached.

But the amount of data is so huge that it cannot, and should, not be processed inside the application code. What is typically done is that the decision maker calls a specialized reactive context data service and retrieves the prepared context data that is needed.

Event driven approach

In the event driven architecture, the service operates in reverse. The active context data service examines context data as it arrives. When a pattern is detected, the service posts an event, triggering a decision and subsequent action.

Internal context services

Multiple internal context services can be also created to manage different data sources and implement different algorithms. These services are then combined together in form of composite context services and are exposed to applications.

External Context Services

When using external context services, the deciding application should not engage external context data sources directly. It would lock the application into the selected foreign sources which are not under any kind of direct control. They should be made to come through internal service interface, which implements loose coupling SOA and helps organizations to maintain continuous improvement and innovation. It is deemed better to isolate the deciding application from collecting and investigating the source of context data. The services might appear simple when implemented for the first time, but will increase in intelligence and capability over time.

Context data pipeline (from Big Data to Decision point)

Organizations cannot, in any circumstances, choose to ignore context driven choices. They need to consider it as an important part of their business strategies if they want to remain relevant and successful in the coming future. These guidelines will help organizations in making the best decisions with context aware data.

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