The History of Suitcases and Why IoT is like Wheels on a Suitcase.

I checked into Caesar's for IoT Evolution and immediately start pushing my suitcase on the side with the tiles, because the carpet had more resistance. It was a simple thing, but I was reminded how many years my suitcases did not have wheels.

I went to wikipedia and realized why wheels are a recent addition. The answer is because of conditions of the infrastructure. Suitcases start being built when people started immigrating. The great wave of the immigration that came to the colonies represented travel in carriages, railroads and ships. All of these have a tendency to bounce around. Having wheels did not make them easier to move, it made them easier to break.

Focused on the things of value inside the suitcase made it more about keeping things from moving rather than moving them along.

There is another piece of this as well in the fact that the people packing the suitcase, were not the ones carrying the cargo into the ship or train. So the pain point was not directly felt by the owner.

These days however we live in a self service world where ships have stabilizers and planes fly relatively smoothly. The valuables are not having quite a rough ride so the suitcase is about letting the owner of the things in the suitcase move the freely.

So now we have retractable handles, should straps and of course wheels.

In someways, there is an analog to what is going on with IoT. Let me explain.

The early days of telematics and sensors had very specific goals that solved very specific problems. Like the original suitcase, the sensors were packed into the PLC and other machines to do a task. If there was data to be gathered it was being summarized and put into separate systems.

Like the improvement in travel, the ability to connect to alternative networks has changed the value to the owner of the data.

In effect, Internet connectivity of things is the wheels on the telematics systems.

Likewise, the value has changed from where simple alarming existed, we now have predictive and prescriptive systems. Once again the transport has transformed the value.

I think if you followed my logic and see how the change is impacting production and management in Enterprises, you will want to join us at IoT Evolution.