IoT & Automation

Ready to learn Internet of Things? Browse courses like IIoT Applications for Machine Learning developed by industry thought leaders and Experfy in Harvard Innovation Lab. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being recognized as the next platform battle. As Wired Magazine noted, “Microsoft became the giant it is today because Windows was the place developers went to reach PC users.”

IoT devices are nothing new, but the attacks against them are. They are evolving at a rapid rate as growth in connected devices continues to rise and shows no sign of letting up. Today, there are solutions for everyone and we continue to see more items that are always on and do not have to store or process data locally. Those in security would be quick to say that this rapid rise in connected devices has also increased the attack landscape as there is a lack of oversight and regulation of these devices.

The business world has started to recognise that for AI and IoT to be successful, they must be mutually beneficial ecosystems. An IoT device is connected directly or indirectly to a data-transmitting network such as the internet. The optimum value one can get from connected devices is some level of automated, enriched, intelligent insights. This “artificial intelligence” must logically become more valuable than the sum of its constituent, connected parts just like in an ecosystem.

Manufacturers and utilities are already tracking millions of data streams and generating terabytes a day. But everyone wants different cuts of data. A lot of those users sit near the data asset, so it makes sense to keep the data there. The best bet is to look at the use case scenario first. Chances are, every workload will require both cloud and edge technologies, but the size of the edge might be larger than anticipated. 

There’s no single or straightforward answer for solving the major security issues with IoT, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to achieve. To start, we need to focus on improving the security for IoT altogether. As for you — a business owner, executive, or IT professional working in the industry — it’s time you get serious about the problem and come up with some ways to bolster your own security before it becomes a Pandora’s box. Deploying a real-time monitoring solution to the backup of a machine learning or an AI platform is a great start.

People often see the Industrial IoT (IIoT) in a narrow view, namely the ability to increase efficiency, productivity, and cost savings. While that’s true, it’s a limited list of benefits based on one’s understanding of connectivity, data, and information to influence behavior. There are several ways to lead organizational change, and it all depends on one’s role and how they view their role in the organization. With IIoT sensors and analytics, continuous condition monitoring is available in a cost-effective manner to have information flowing in real-time to further enhance productivity, efficiency, health, and safety.

There are eight things that really matter if you want to prosper in leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) to drive innovation. An IoT solution that includes all eight of these elements enables enterprises – no matter what their size – to accelerate their IoT adoption easily, quickly and at scale. Here are the eight features to look out for when evaluating IoT solutions.

For an IIoT project to be successful, you need to have customer-centric IIoT approach. Start by gaining internal agreement on your target customer such as what business outcomes do they expect from your IoT-enabled products and services. Then the targeted segmentation will deliver more engaging customer experiences, higher customer lifetime value, and more valued customer outcomes. As you bring your products to market, learn from your wins and losses. Continuously flesh out user issues, new product features, and integration requirements. So put the odds of IIoT success back into your favor. Take a customer-centric, integrated team (IT) approach.

As companies embark on their journey toward the 4th Industrial Revolution, the ones that are willing to bring in new leadership and make the organizational enhancements to power new digital customer relationships will be the ones that rise above the fray. Digital transformation is both a technology and a management challenge. Focusing on one without the other is not a recipe for success. Instead, companies should adopt a more holistic approach – one that starts with the target customer and ends with organizational alignment based on your targeted outcomes. Remember, start your organizational changes slowly. 

There are three foundational elements which seem to be consistently ignored in from IIoT projects themselves. One of these three foundational elements is more engaging customer experiences, higher customer lifetime value and more valued customer outcomes. The second one is to establish a target organizational end-state and a roadmap. Start with a minimum viable organization (MVO) to get started and make course corrections as needed. The third one is to ensure that valuable and measurable outcomes are not only delivered to your customers, but also to your employees, your company, and your partners.

Of late, IoT as a technology has seen quite a few changes, and Internet of You (IoY) could be the latest. With IoY, you will no longer have to stop, think, and decide to take your phone out of your pocket, find and launch the app you want, then take action. Instead, our data and services will come to us when we need them and in the context in which we are currently in. ‘Internet of Things’ is relevant to the users only when it is centred around them, which combined with semantic web technology transforms into IoY.