If you follow technology, you have probably heard of “The Internet of Things” or IOT. This term refers to a future where everything is connected to the Internet for some reason or another. I have no doubt that this will happen, because there are so many advantages to knowing where all your stuff is located at any given moment [grin].
I’m wondering however, if this presents another opportunity for software developers or existing software vendors. There are systems today that do inventory control and audits for companies like AT&T, managing hundreds of thousands of network elements. I actually work at a company like that [grin].
Will systems like these be used to provide new services that will tell me who borrowed my IOT network connected version of the innovator’s dilemma? Seriously though, location services are a small part of what the IOT will provide in the future.
For the moment, let’s consider what the IOT means for data collection. The IOT will create an enormous pile of data that will only be useful, if it can be mined and managed. Systems that mine and manage that volume of data will have to scale to “infinity and beyond” to borrow a line from my good friend Buzz Lightyear.
Big Data systems like the ones that monitor my credit card, already perform some data monitoring, but there is work to do. Extracting data from the IOT will involve translation and organization to improve its usefulness and there will be massive storage requirements.
I think that the IOT will open a new door for OSS vendors that want to migrate their products to service that space. NFV is perhaps the tip of the IOT iceberg. NFV promises virtual devices that developers will use to write the adapters required to extract and translate data.
The winds of change are blowing, let the games begin!!