The IoT tsunami is coming. Is your business prepared for the wave of data coming your way? While IoT is already generating huge amounts of data, projections have forecast the pending arrival of the perfect storm of data.
The Tsunami is Coming
It’s no secret that IoT is experiencing massive growth. Currently, 5.5 million new things are connecting to network infrastructure each day. Gartner, Inc. forecasts that there will be 20.8 billion connected things by 2020. That’s far more connected devices than there are people on earth.
As IoT grows, so do the volumes of data it generates. IoT is much more than a bunch of connected Internet-enabled devices – it includes databases and systems independently producing masses of data. Predictions show that a tsunami of data truly is coming. By Cisco’s estimates, connected devices will generate 507.5 zettabytes (a zettabyte is 1 trillion gigabytes) of data per year by 2019, far more than the 134.5 ZB generated in 2014.
Dark Data
If a business is not collecting data, they are throwing money out the window. Data is vital for businesses to make smart, informed decisions and gain a competitive advantage. Unfortunately collecting data is of no use if it cannot be found later.
Chances are that your business is collecting more data than they have the capability to organize and use. This unused data is known as ‘dark data.’ Gartner defines dark data as “the information assets organizations collect, process and store during regular business activities, but generally fail to use for other purposes.” Allowing data to go dark is like burying money in the ground and forgetting about it.
All data can be useful, but without the right tools, valuable data is often lost or difficult to find. Not only is dark data potentially useful information going to waste, it can be costly and risky to store.
Businesses need Big Data solutions that will bring dark data to light. The sheer size of the data generated by connected devices can be overwhelming, but still your business should have the advantage of being able to use all the data it is collecting.
Solutions
Luckily, there are ways to interpret the tsunami of device data to develop a new awareness for your business. Businesses need IoT application software that will ingest data and make it available for immediate and future use and provide analytics and search capabilities. Instead of dark data being a liability, it can become a competitive advantage.
In order to harness today’s data in ways that are useful for your business, Big Data solutions are becoming a prerequisite. First, your business needs applications that are secure, highly scalable, and always on. These applications should have high speed distributed processing with a big data backbone, and be capable of communicating with device specific firmware.
The applications you choose should also be able to provide sophisticated analytics and dash-boarding features in a user-friendly manner. Lastly, they should use machine learning and natural language processing capabilities as these technologies go mainstream.
Now that you are aware of the problem and what to look for in a solution, you can begin to transform your business for a smarter world. Start digging up that buried money, and let us know if we can help.
About the Author: Kamalesh Nayudu is CEO and co-founder of Bridgera LLC. He has three decades of global IT delivery experience working companies of all sizes from the Fortune 500 to startups. He is now leading the effort to establish Bridgera as a leader in Big Data and IoT services.
