Stephenson blogs on Internet of Things
Qualcomm presented their Healthy Circles platform at the Connected Health Symposium.
I was impressed with all of these devices, but especially with the congestive heart failure ones: economical ways to reduce hospitalization for this condition!
I’m attending the annual Partners Health Connected Health Symposium in Boston. Will try to do running notes during the presentations!
I’ve been noodling how do you introduce the Internet of Things to companies that haven’t even heard of it, let alone have a strategy to capitalize on it. It would probably have to be something that would have minimal up-front costs, provoke aha! moments that would stimulate other IoT initiatives, and would provide some quick return on investment.
Jawbone UP
Having just read SAP’s interactive report on mobile strategies, it dawned on me: if companies are now comfortable with creating BYOD policies covering smartphones and tablets, what if they were to create formal policies to encourage employees to bring their Quantified Self devices — Jawbone UPs, Nike FitBits, and the like — after all, the workers are probably already doing so anyways!
What if — thinking out loud here — the company could enter anyone using one of the devices during the work day in some sort of contest with fitness prizes, or, — this is more controversial because of privacy concerns — if they offered discounts on health insurance for workers who were willing to share their QS data with the company (since companies are penalizing overweight workers, shouldn’t it work the other way as well?).
Heck, given the payback in terms of lower absenteeism, higher productivity, and lower medical claims, I bet you could make a plausible case that it would be in the company’s enlightened self-interest to actually pay for the devices for those who don’t already have them.
It’s just a thought, and there would be a lot of details to work out, but I think it merits consideration as a way to introduce the IoT’s benefits to corporate America. Let me know how you feel!
I’m particularly interested in how very traditional businesses will make the transition to the Internet of Things (Exhibit A: see my post from last year about the incredible way the Union Pacific Railroad has been able to switch to “predictive maintenance” by stringing sensors all along its tracks).
What could be older, and more basic, than agriculture?
Lance Donny, the founder and ceo of On Farm Systems, gave an overview of the potential of the Internet of Things to radically increase productivity and cut costs in agriculture at last week’s GigaOM Mobilize conference, saying that agriculture is a “sleeping giant,” when it comes to real-time data.
At present, the industry is handicapped by the high cost of sensors — they can run hundreds of dollars apiece — and lack of infrastructure — there’s no wi-fi, and, more often than not, bandwidth on the farm is limited.
Despite that, On Farm and other firms in the field (ooh, bad pun) are already helping farmers, especially with the critical issue of managing water use. He said there are already 14 million “connected farms” in the US and Europe, and by 2020 there will be 70 million connected devices on farms (interest in the technology is also increasing in developing nations.
Donny mentioned that a big issue with really serving farmers’ needs is that since they’re operating in a moving tractor, “you can’t give them too much data,” but must pay a lot of attention to the user interface, and only give them limited amounts of actionable data.
This “precision agriculture” yields tremendous volumes of data, and one of the problems facing IT firms in agriculture is that there are no common platforms (On Farm uses ThinkWorx), so adding a new data source from another provider requires contacting them directly and then connect to their API.
He said that reducing water usage by pinpointing when it is needed and how much is the biggest challenge, pointing out that 70% of fresh water usage is for agriculture — even a 5% reduction in use could have tremendous implications not only for farmers, but a world with inadequate water supplies.
Donny said that Monsanto’s recent purchase of Climate Corp., which underwrites weather insurance for farms, for nearly a billion dollars “started a data war” in agriculture. He said that the goal will be to combine enough real-time data so that farmers would have 90% or more accurate 5-day weather forecasts in order to manage water better.
If the IoT is emerging as a priority for as basic an industry as farming, can other mainstream businesses be far behind?
I’ve been busy for the last two days, so I’ve only been able to view a couple of them, but from what I have seen (I’ll blog about specifics later), the GigaOM Mobilize conference has been an absolute goldmine of insights, especially into the nuts and bolts of the IoT. As soon as the livestream video is archived, don’t miss them!
I’m beginning to sound like a schill (no, not a typo, just a bad joke: short for [Curt] Schilling, the former Red Sox pitcher — sorry, I can’t get those guys out of my head today…) for GE, but it’s hard to argue with their impressive record of walking their talk about the “Industrial Internet,” their marketing term for the subset of the Internet of Things dealing with the industrial sector.
The latest evidence? A report today in the NYTimes‘ “Bits” blog that GE has just announced “14 more products that combine industrial equipment, Internet-linked sensors and software to monitor performance and analyze big streams of data. G.E. had previously announced 10 similar industrial products.”
Equally impressive, the Industrial Age behemoth turned nimble IoT leader said that by next year, almost all industrial products it makes will have built-in sensors and Big Data software to analyze the huge data streams those sensors will create.
Right now I’m writing an e-book on IoT strategy for C-level executives (not sure if I can disclose the customer — it’s a big one!) and GE VP of Global Software William Ruh, used the news to fire a shot across the bow at companies that are slow to realize a fundamental paradigm shift in manufacturing, product design and maintenance is well underway:
““Everyone wants prediction about performance, and better asset management… The ideas of speed, of information velocity, is what will differentiate the winners from the losers.”
You in the corner office: got your attention?
Equally important, given my insistence that the IoT is all about collaboration, GE simultaneously announced partnerships with Cisco, AT&T and Intel. It had already inked deals with Accenture and Amazon’s cloud subsidiary and has also invested in Pivotal, an Industrial Internet app creator.
Smart companies will follow GE’s lead in radically reforming the product design process to capitalize on the rapid feedback on performance that the Industrial Internet products’ built-in sensors yield. According to Ruh, they’re switching to an iterative design process, with rapid changes based on data from the field:
“… G.E. is adopting practices like releasing stripped-down products quickly, monitoring usage and rapidly changing designs depending on how things are used by customers. These approaches follow the ‘lean start-up’ style at many software-intensive Internet companies.
“’We’re getting these offerings done in three, six, nine months,’ he said. ‘It used to take three years.’” (my emphasis)
That change is definitely going to make it into my e-book! Brilliant example of how the IoT, by allowing companies to think in terms of systems dynamics, especially feedback loops, will have profound impacts on the design and manufacturing processes, integrating them as never before (oh, and don’t forget, the data from the built-in sensors will also allow companies to start marketing services — such as leasing jet turbines, with the lease cost based on the actual amount of thrust the engines create)!
Combined, that’s definitely a paradigm shift!
Oh, I almost forgot. Here’s a brief rundown of the products themselves and the industries served. They are clustered under the Predictivity name, and are powered by Predix, a new IoT platform:
Given the diversity of industries the Predictivity products serve and GE’s global clout, I predict this level of commitment will radically accelerate the IoT’s adoption by big business, as well as accelerating the payback in terms of lower operating, energy and maintenance costs, and reduced environmental impacts.
Will GE’s competitors in these sectors get on board, or will they be left in the dust?
Here’s one of my infrequent diversions from the business of the IoT and data. My apologies if you don’t suffer from a severe case of Red Sox Fever right now….
How about them Red Sox? It took until 12:30 AM, but the Bearded Wonders cemented their collective place in the hearts of Red Sox Nation by sending the Rays off to the golf course.
I haven’t checked the Boston City Charter, but I don’t see any insuperable obstacles to Koji Uehara, though technically a Japanese citizen, being elected by acclamation as the next mayor of the Hub of the Universe! Wow. He was lights out!
But my fav hero from last night was the Smartest Guy in Baseball, Craig Breslow. Just as he has been all season, he of the dual majors in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from down the road in New Haven, was unflappable (BTW: read his Wikipedia bio …. when he finally finishes with besbol, he’ll probably cure cancer!).
These guys have brought back such joy to New England after last season’s debacle. On to the World Series!
Another indication that the Maker Movement is alive and flourishing is the news today that a Welsh factory that took over production of Raspberry Pi boards for Western markets (there’s another that produces for China) has just built its 1 millionth board!
