The Future of the Internet of Things
It has been 2 weeks since the IoT Solutions World Congress 2016 in Barcelona. From team meetings discussing how to embrace this buzzword in the coming years, to sales reps researching what impact this has on their customers, the event left its footprint. For those of you wondering what the event was all about, I decided to follow up on my previous post and sum up main takeaways for everyone interested in the future of IoT.
Sum up
For the sake of convenience, I asked to include some insights from a colleague of mine, Martijn Hanegraaf, who published his own summary of the congress last week.
- IoT market value is estimated to be 48B$ in 2020 (up from 6,5B$ in 2015)
- IoT isn’t new; previously Machine to Machine (M2M) communication, solutions of today are more affordable due to decreased price of sensors
- IoT has to solve 3 problems:
- Edge – Manage millions of things
- Core – Use data (analyze & act)
- Cloud – Develop & deploy cloud mobile IoT solutions
- IoT still in its infancy, therefore a lack of experience on IoT
- The event was focused on enterprise solutions co-developed through alliances & partnerships, illustrating an Eco-system that cannot be dominated by a single player
- Preventive maintenance of machinery were the main use-cases presented, with 70% of IoT value deriving from B2B solutions by increasing efficiency
- Edge computing is critical for analytics of data in order to reduce the traffic to the cloud
About 15% of the attendees were customers and the remaining 85% were tech companies, which translated in an abundance of creative concepts and use cases to learn from. Not to mention, Hewlett Packard Enterprise won the award of Best Solution for Energy & Utilities with our Edgeline Coverged IoT Systems, illustrating yet again our core belief of being ‘innovators at heart’.
But is being a leader in innovation enough?
I argue that it certainly isn’t.
Understanding successful innovations and their consequential hypes also means understanding what this means for our customers. Understand customers in turn not only means listening to their challenges, but it requires a deep understanding of their business and industry.
For my customers in the manufacturing industry, IoT brings - just like any technological evolution - both challenges and opportunities. Allow me to give draw a picture.
In the past, organizations would purchase IT infrastructure (hardware and software solutions) to capture and analyze data generated by machines once every few years until they had to be updated or something broke down. Today, organizations might be looking at business models that include Machines-as-a-Service because they have a need for additional services and expertise do to this, and are pressured to reduce CAPEX. This illustrates the trend towards service driven enterprises, something discussed a great deal at the IoT congress. In addition, a utility company, for instance, with a large on-premise IT infrastructure needs to integrate their Operational Technology (OT) with their Information Technology (IT) to enable this data capture and data analyze. This was previously not an easy endeavor, giving ground for the so called “battle between OT and IT”. In the above scenario, the operations manager and the IT-manager have to come together and talk about integrating their systems. With the rise of (Industrial) Internet of Things it has become more economical to use sensors that measure activities and generate data and companies, like HPE, are working on delivering special computing systems to analyze this data, accelerating the OT/IT integration for manufacturing firms. Think of Google Nest (had it lived up to its expectations) on an enterprise level.
The digital transformation affects literally every business on the planet, which creates a lot of exciting opportunities and requires a new way of working. Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been enabling this way of working for many years and it is my daily job to make sure our customers get the best strategic advice for their specific business.
So how exactly do we at HPE embrace this transformation?
A few weeks ago, Meg and the executive team hosted HPE’s Securities Analyst Meeting to provide updates on our go-forward strategy as well as the financial outlook for the next fiscal year.
What should you learn from this meeting? It’s simple – the go-forward strategy for HPE. Here are the top takeaways illustrating HPE’s commitment to enabling IoT to the world:
1. The world will be Hybrid – We make Hybrid IT simple.
2. The Intelligent Edge is going to unleash an industrial IoT revolution - We power the Intelligent Edge.
3. Services are going to be even more critical - We have the expertise to make it happen.
Solutions like Gateway Edgeline 20 and HPE Edgeline EL4000 Converged IoT system are examples of how HPE is positioning itself in this market. Evidently, security is an important precondition for customers to adopt (Industrial) IoT, and our solutions are tailored to this.
It might take a few years before the market catches up with IoT, but the leading businesses will be the ones who started yesterday. So if you want to have a chat about digital transformation, where you currently are, and where we can help you - get in touch!
Until then, live on the edge!
*The views expressed on my profile are my own and not necessarily the views of Hewlett Packard Enterprise