Just about everyone is aware of the sweeping changes brought about by advances in technology, and how they have affected both private citizens and businesses. You need to look no further than the cell phone for a shining example of this. Cell phones have changed the way individuals communicate, find their information, and even take pictures. Businesses have quickly adapted to the universality of the cell phone, and have made their websites mobile-friendly and developed apps which accommodate cell phone usage.
It’s a given that technology will continue to develop newer, faster, more convenient ways of doing things. So what’s the next big innovation on the horizon? Give yourself a gold star if you guessed any or all of the following: cloud computing technology, big data, and the Internet of Things.
Here’s how these three are about to change the world again for individuals and businesses:
Big Data
Big data is just what it sounds like – an enormous volume of data. But it isn’t just volume that characterizes big data and takes it a step beyond data storage of the past. The variety of this enormous volume of data is another factor which makes it something more than the traditional databases of the past. Data comes in to businesses in structured formats, unstructured formats like text, video, audio, email, and financial transactions, and all these have to be interpreted and stored. The velocity of incoming data has also been ratcheted up several notches, adding a third ‘V’ dimension to volume and variety.
Internet of Things
At its core, the Internet of Things refers to significantly increased communication between all the machines and devices we use in our daily lives. Cloud computing technology is what enables it, and it’s fed by entire networks of sensors which gather data. The net result of this real-time data-gathering and device inter-communication is a dynamic and instant connection between devices, making them ‘smart’ devices.
But there’s another element to this inter-connectedness – analysis. Simply sensing and storing large amounts of data is not very useful by itself, but when that data can also be analyzed, and that analysis can be used advantageously, you have a truly ‘smart’ device. Sensory data can be transmitted to the cloud, where it can be evaluated by powerful analytics applications, and returned to the sender with intelligent recommendations, so that useful responses can be initiated.
The Convergence of Big Data and IoT
The Internet of Things requires that cloud technology be in place to analyze the mountains of big data supplied by sensors within smart devices, in order for those intelligent responses to be made. Together these three components will have the next profound impact on businesses around the world.
A whole slew of new, smart products will be developed and marketed which make use of these three components working together to provide seemingly miraculous functionality. For instance, imagine a vehicle equipped with numerous different kinds of sensors which detected road conditions, traffic conditions, weather, and other environmental information.
All that data could be transmitted back to special analytics applications for evaluation, then returned almost instantaneously so that the vehicle could automatically make an appropriate response – with or without driver involvement. Such a vehicle could almost operate itself.
Just imagine all the household products which could become smart devices, the tools and machines which could be enhanced – even the very infrastructure of our society. Traffic lights could be connected to the IoT, using big data analysis to adapt dynamically to conditions, and direct traffic smoothly and uniformly throughout busy metropolitan settings.
It will be a whole different world.