Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: internet of everything

  • Could the Internet of Things grow by fifty times?

    Could the Internet of Things grow by fifty times?

    One of the annual events in the tech world is Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, the company’s survey of internet traffic trends.

    The numbers, as always, are staggering and this year Cisco are forecasting that global internet traffic will grow by a factor of eleven over the next four years to 190 exabytes – that’s 190,000,000,000,000Mb or the equivalent of 19o billion hard drives.

    What’s particularly fascinating about this year’s index Cisco forecast that by 2018 there will be more mobile devices on the planet than people.

    Many of those devices will be the sensors and equipment that makes up the Internet of Things (IoT), or Machine to Machine (M2M) technologies and Cisco expects the internet traffic in this area to surge fifty-fold over the next four years.

    This is remarkable as most of the M2M devices don’t use much data as the vast majority only need to send out the odd short signal – as opposed to smartphones that download megabytes of information each day.Cisco’s predictions underscore just how pervasive this technology is going to become in the next few years, the challenge for us is to understand how to use and protect the masses of data these systems are going to generate.

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  • LG and the smart vacuum cleaner

    LG and the smart vacuum cleaner

    The theme for this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas appears to be the internet of things as vendors start peppering journalists with media releases showcasing the of the smart devices they’ll be showing off at the event.

    One of the early starter is appliance manufacturer LG showing off their range of smart appliances that are controlled though the Line messaging app that’s best known for its manga like emoticons.

    LG are particularly proud of their robot vacuum cleaner, the somewhat clunkily named Home-Bot Square that has a form factor similar to the Chinese made Win-Bot window washer.

    LG_SMARTHOME1

    Through the Line app, the Home Bot Square and other LG smart devices can be programmed with natural language, initially Korean and English, commands.

    Ahead of the CES show on January 7, the next few weeks will see more announcements like LG’s. There’s going to be no shortage of smart home devices to write about over the next few months.

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  • Britain’s smart cities agenda

    Britain’s smart cities agenda

    Yesterday the UK government held its first Smart Cities Forum on what it sees are the economic opportunities for the British economy and its cities.

    The Smart Cities Forum is part of the British government’s innovation policy that’s seen £50 million allocated to smart city projects including £24 million for Glasgow’s Future City showcase.

    While the British government sees this as being an investment in grabbing the nation a share of what they believe to be a £400 billion global market, it’s also an opportunity to rejuvenate the county’s cities, as this video clip explaining what being a smart city has to offer Birmingham.

    Like Barcelona and San Francisco tech and smart city policies, the UK initiative was born out of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis which forced the British political and business establishment to rethink the nation’s economic position and policies.

    A key part of that rethink is how infrastructure spending can be co-ordinated with new technologies and this is something Barcelona is doing with its own smart city project in rolling out fiber networks as part of scheduled maintenance around the town.

    The Glasgow pilot project is probably one of the more ambitious smart city projects, as the UK’s Technology Strategy Board says in its media release;

    The Glasgow Future Cities Demonstrator aims to address some of the city’s most pressing energy and health needs. For example, developing systems to help tackle fuel poverty and to look at long-standing health issues such as low life expectancy.

    Glasgow’s objectives go beyond the usual open data and parking spot strategies and attacking low life expectancy and poverty are strong social challenges.

    With buy-in from the national government, the UK is making a strong big to lead the smart city industries. The challenge now is for British businesses to step up and find the commercial opportunities.

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  • Silos and security in the internet of things

    Silos and security in the internet of things

    Last week Deloitte launched its list of  500 fastest growing Asia-Pacific Technology companies.

    At the Australian media briefing on the list and the company’s predictions for the telecommunications market in 2014 Deloitte’s Jolyn Barker and Eric Openshaw discussed the some of the implications of the report.

    During the briefing Openshaw was asked about the risks of vendors creating their own Internet of Things standards to lock customters into proprietary platforms.

    Openshaw isn’t convinced, “over time when technologies develop out of significant players in an attempt to create or extend a vertical stack, over time the market tends to revolt against that.”

    “There’s usually one or two forces working against that, either the market revolts against it and insists on a new standard or the stack is too successful and regulators will come in and say ‘we don’t like your stack, dismantle it’ .”

    His view is that in the long term issues of vendor lock-in and proprietary platforms fix themselves. “One way or another, these things can be problematic in the short run but typically over time they are resolved.”

    Where Openshaw does see risks with  lying in the security of machine to machine technologies.

    “The security aspect just can’t be overstated in terms of how important it is,” says Openshaw. “When we have demonstrations now of being able to hack a pacemaker, that’s a problem.”

    “So the security issues on these networks is important.”

    The interplay between the software, network protocols and security is going to be complex and may well be what makes or breaks some vendors products.

    It’s still early days to fully appreciate all the risks with the internet of machines, but securing networks and devices will be one of the most important tasks ahead for the industry.

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  • Where will the jobs come from in the internet of things?

    Where will the jobs come from in the internet of things?

    One of the common worries about the internet of things and the automation of business processes is that many jobs are going to be lost as a consequence.

    This is a fair concern however we need to keep in perspective just how radically employment has changed in the last century.

    Concerns about technology displacing occupations is nothing new; in the eighteenth century the Luddite movement was a reaction to skilled workers being displaced by new innovations.

    In an interview with GE’s Chief Economist Marco Annunziata, published in Business Spectator, we covered this topic and Marco had a valid point that the bulk of the Western world’s workforce was employed in agriculture a hundred years ago.

    Today it’s less than two percent in most developed country as agriculture became heavily automated, yet most of those workers who would once have worked in the fields have productive jobs. “As an economist I look at this over a long term perspective and I’ve heard this concern about technology displacing jobs over and over again.”

    Annunziata sees new roles being created, among them what he calls ‘mechanical-digital engineers’ who understand both how the actual machines work as well as the data and the software used to run and monitor them.

    This isn’t to say there won’t be massive disruption – John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath described the massive dislocation that happened in the United States with the first wave of agricultural mechanisation in the 1920s and the decline in rural communities is due directly to modern farms not needing the large workforces that sustained many country towns.

    We can’t see where the jobs of the future will be and just roles like as Search Engine Optimisation and ecommerce experts where unheard of twenty years ago, our kids will be working in occupations we haven’t contemplated.

    It’s up to us to give our kids the skills and flexibility of thinking that will let them find opportunities in a very different workplace.

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