Internet Of Things: 8 Pioneering Ideas
Today's Internet of Things remains a disparate assortment of ideas and products competing for attention. These pioneers should intrigue enterprise IT.
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If you're figuring out how to apply the Internet of Things (IoT) in your organization, bring your imagination and get ready to do some heavy lifting.
Sure, we've all seen the predictions from Gartner: 26 billion IoT units deployed by 2020, with product and service suppliers positioned to rake in revenue of more than $300 billion. But here, now, in 2014, the IoT -- and the machine-to-machine technology behind it -- is really a disparate assortment of ideas and products competing for attention.
Vendors are trotting out all manner of products and applications to address specific needs -- such as health monitors or home automation -- alongside ambitious platform plays. At the moment, though, we're seeing little action in the way of true enterprise-grade applications. To learn why, see InformationWeek editor Chris Murphy's in-depth look at the hurdles faced by enterprise CIOs who already have clear IoT wishes, at companies like GE Power & Water and ConocoPhillips: Internet Of Things: What's Holding Us Back?
One hurdle is that the IoT lacks standards, though efforts on that front are being made by major players in the space through the Oasis Consortium's IoT/M2M committee.
Also, the IoT space is currently so focused on consumer-oriented products and applications such as wearable devices and home monitoring systems that it's hard for an enterprise IT executive to see through the clutter to understand how the IoT can be applied in a business context.
In hopes of helping you wade through the piles of IoT information, we've assembled our list of eight IoT startups and projects to watch. This list is by no means comprehensive. We chose to focus on players that have products or software that hold potential for the enterprise, as well as some of the companies that are focusing on IoT platforms to ease the pain of building enterprise-scale IoT applications.
You won't read about Nest Labs here. That well-publicized Google-funded company is already selling a reported 40,000 to 50,000 of its home thermostats per month. We're hoping to raise your awareness of companies that are not generating major headlines -- yet. We also hope to tempt you down some new roads of thinking about how consumer-focused applications might be applied to the enterprise.
Tell us what you think of our choices in the comment section below. Are we off our rockers? Which companies fascinate you the most? Which ones downright frighten you, and why? And what other companies would you have liked to see on this list?
Researchers at MIT Media Labs are experimenting with all sorts of fun IoT concepts that may or may not make it to the commercial market. My personal favorite is CityHome, a 200-square-foot apartment that can constantly transform to suit your needs, all with the flick of your hand. Imagine this technology being applied to office spaces. You could adjust the setup to suit your organization's needs at any given time. Have a troupe of visiting employees coming in for the week? Transform a conference room into cubicles. Need to open up space for a company town hall meeting? Push back some walls. Companies looking to cut down on real estate expenses could also apply such technology to require less office space by maximizing their space when workers are traveling on business, working remotely, or on vacation.
Soundhawk is the company behind an audio processing system that's being marketed for personal use but has clear applications for the enterprise. Basically, it allows you to enhance the sound frequencies you want to hear and minimize those you want to block out. According to The Wall Street Journal, the product is based on intellectual property and research by Rodney Perkins, MD, a founder of Stanford University's California Ear Institute. The earpiece is controlled by an app for Google and Android phones. For example, if you're in a crowded, noisy restaurant where the background noise is drowning out the conversation at your table, this gadget will enable you to drown out the ambient noise so you can hear your companions better. It's probably a nifty eavesdropping gadget, as well, though we're thinking beyond spy versus spy applications. This could have uses in any industrial environment in which it would be useful to drown out background noise to protect one's hearing and to communicate better with those around you.
Sociometric Solutions' products are designed to enable managers to gauge social sentiment among their workers by monitoring face-to-face interactions in the workplace. How is this done? By inserting microphones, sensors, and Bluetooth into employee ID badges. Sociometric Solutions also aims to monitor how work gets done across the organization and give managers a dashboard on which to monitor activities. The dashboard can also be used to enable employees to see how their performance stacks up against their peers. Ben Waber, president and CEO of Sociometric Solutions, told Marketplace: "What we're trying to do is really quantify what people have always felt to be unquantifiable. Things like, how are people interacting with each other? How do you talk to customers? How engaged are you in a conversation? And how is information flowing in an organization?"
Based in Melbourne, Australia, LIFX offers a WiFi-enabled, energy-efficient LED smart bulb controlled from a smartphone app. It's among the many companies offering an extremely specific product, but as Peter Waterhouse notes in his InformationWeek article, evaluating such items requires a little imagination. "If the humble lightbulb can be managed from a mobile app to control energy output, color, and ambience in the home, then why not apply the same smarts in a commercial setting? Imagine controlling retail store lighting from the touch of an app, or changing hue to accentuate products. Want a holiday mood theme for the store or restaurant? Just tap the app -- a simple, cost-efficient way to differentiate your products from something that's pretty much been the same since Edison stumbled upon the lightbulb idea."
One thing Edison didn't have to consider was security. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, a security vulnerability was recently found in LIFX lightbulbs: They can reportedly expose your home's WiFi password.
Another player focused primarily on the personal use market, Netatmo offers a personalized weather station that measures not only temperature and humidity, but also the levels of CO2 in your indoor air. Other products include a smartphone-controlled thermostat and a wristband that can monitor your sun exposure.
What does all this have to do with the enterprise? Consider the opportunity to create healthier workplaces by using the company's weather station to monitor the indoor air pollution your employees face. This could be a boon to manufacturing facilities, facilities management companies, and any business looking to comply with or exceed government standards such as the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) in the US. Likewise, the sun exposure wristband can be used to manage the UV exposure faced by technicians, construction workers, and others who are out in the field all day.
Electric Imp is offering a platform and services designed to make it simple to connect any device to the Internet. The company's cloud-based service is the connectivity platform behind the Wink brand of smart products being developed in a partnership between Quirky and GE. For businesses looking to implement IoT services into their products, Imp's offerings include a WiFi-enabled processor module that is designed to be integrated into many types of products; an operating system the offers the ability to customize device codes to manage your connected gadgets; an open API that enables users to add messaging, monitoring, and other services; a proprietary Electric Imp setup solution that makes it easy for customers to connect products; and a console that enables businesses to maintain and manage software, push upgrades, and monitor devices.
In addition, Imp has a cloud service that allows a business to run what the company calls agents -- server-side code that runs in a secure environment -- that can be used to offload heavy tasks best performed by a server, and that can easily connect your products to anything with Internet access. According to Imp, "Agents are like pico servers for every imp and can act as a central hub to your products, apps, third-party services, and even your own servers."
While many other IoT players are focused on the consumer market, LogMeIn's Xively is setting its sights on the enterprise with a cloud-based platform-as-a-service. In addition to its platform, the company offers business services to help enterprises identify how they can implement IoT and machine-to-machine solutions. The company also offers systems integration for companies that need even more help in integrating IoT with backend operations. Among its customers are Verdeva, which is building connected fueling stations; New England BioLabs, which is creating an Internet-connected research lab; Elektron Technology, which is designing connected products for the light industrial market; and Turbid, which is creating real-time water-monitoring solutions. Xively's parent, LogMeIn, is a member of Oasis, a nonprofit international IoT standards consortium that's focusing on Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) as the core technology to enable communication between connected devices, platforms, and services.
ThingWorx is an IoT software platform designed to enable enterprises to build M2M and IoT applications rapidly using disparate data sources. According to the company, the platform supports scale requirements for millions of devices and provides connectivity, storage, analysis, execution, and collaboration capabilities for applications. It also features a data collection engine that provides unified, semantic storage for time-series, structured, and social data. The organization is focused on building partnerships with a diverse range of M2M and IoT players to create the ThingWorx Marketplace, with the goal of plug-and-play interoperability.
ThingWorx is an IoT software platform designed to enable enterprises to build M2M and IoT applications rapidly using disparate data sources. According to the company, the platform supports scale requirements for millions of devices and provides connectivity, storage, analysis, execution, and collaboration capabilities for applications. It also features a data collection engine that provides unified, semantic storage for time-series, structured, and social data. The organization is focused on building partnerships with a diverse range of M2M and IoT players to create the ThingWorx Marketplace, with the goal of plug-and-play interoperability.
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