Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2016. Read them in this 8th Annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Bobby Johnson, Co-Founder and CTO, Interana
IoT Enables Businesses outside of Tech to Gain Insights from Big Data
With
2016 just around the corner, all eyes are on the Internet of Things (IoT). Ask
analysts, manufacturers, and software developers, and they'll all tell you that
among the major topics on big data and analytics, the IoT will grow
dramatically and become a part of everyone's daily life in 2016. It's not only
about smart phones and watches, look for BlueTooth deadbolts on front doors,
smart football helmets, and a sky full of drones
around Christmas. A recent TechNavio report (Feb 2015) predicts the number of
connected devices will grow to exceed 17 billion in the next
5 years--more than two for each of the planet's projected 2020 population of 7.7 billion.
This
means that in 2016 many traditional businesses will suddenly have access to
dramatically more data generated from their business and customers than
ever before, collected from IoT devices and sensors. So 2016 will be the year
that they must learn how to manage and analyze this data, and incorporate that
analysis into their business processes to make better day to day decisions. To
adopt new technologies and practices is a hefty challenge, but it's also a huge
opportunity for traditional businesses to compete with web businesses using exactly
the tools that have led to the success of the web.
Web
companies have always had access to detailed information about what their
customers are doing, because it happens on their servers. The most successful
web companies are the ones who are adept at analyzing that data and using it to
improve their products and their operations.
With
the IoT revolution, the entire world is being instrumented the same way a
website is. A huge range of businesses such as retailers, manufacturers,
hotels, restaurants, and hospitals are now able to collect information about
how their customers move through the experience of interacting with them. For
example an electronic ordering device at a restaurant tells you exactly when
every person has ever decided to order a dessert or another drink. Optimizing
the buying experience to sell more drinks is exactly the same problem as
optimizing a mobile game to get more in-app purchases. Another example is a
applying for a loan at a bank - it might involve web searches, phone calls, and
visits to branches over a long period of time. When data on how accounts are
created is brought together it can be analyzed and optimized the same way a web
retailer optimizes a checkout funnel.
This
will be enormously valuable for consumers - every real-world interaction will
get the same level of user experience care that a great mobile app does. The
reason you love your smart phone is because the best apps have such an easy and
seamless interface, and the way this happens is by iterating those designs
again and again based on data of how they are used.
For
businesses, the race is on in 2016 to leverage all their raw data so they can
provide great real-world experiences. The companies who do it best will be the
long term winners in their spaces, just as the web and mobile companies who
dominate now are the ones who were best able to iterate on their products based
on data.
To
do this, companies first need to recognize data sources that matter to them and
get the right kind of sensors and devices deployed, which is a trend already
picking up steam. Next they must build or buy tools to let them easily look at
the data so they can make day to day decisions based on it. And I don't just
mean the analysts or the data team, everyone in a company can benefit from
detailed information about what is really happening on the ground with real
customers. If this is done well it leads to the most important change -
everyone in the company is making decisions based on what customers are
actually doing, and therefore making better decisions. This has been the norm
for web and mobile companies (at least the most successful ones) for many years
now, and thanks to IoT, 2016 is the year where it will become the norm for the
most successful companies in every other industry.
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About the Author
Bobby Johnson, co-founder and CTO
Bobby
Johnson is co-founder and CTO of Interana. As Interana's technical
leader, Bobby guides his team by example and continually inspires them
to create with
big impact on the business world and ultimately people's lives in-mind.
Previously, Bobby served as director of engineering at Facebook where
he was responsible for the infrastructure engineering team that scaled
Facebook during its heaviest growth years from
2006-2012, taking the social media giant from a few million college
users to over a billion users globally. During his tenure, his team
solved difficult scaling and infrastructure challenges, adopted Hadoop,
and built Hive and Cassandra. Bobby personally wrote
Scribe and Haystack. He received a Bachelors of Science degree in
Engineering and Applied Science from Caltech.