Internet of Things – IoT

Ahhhh, technobabble…gotta love it. What I don’t love is the endless pursuit of the newest “differentiator” in technology. Two of the hot ones today is Digital Transformation and the Internet of Things (IOT).

The reality is that very few of the companies discussing the promise of IoT have actually created the proper foundation for delivery, by having a data warehouse designed to properly use an increase in data capture a hundred times greater (or more) than what they are currently processing.

Having more data isn’t as important as knowing how to analyze it. Most data intensive industries (i.e. financial services) are still redesigning and reorganizing their data warehouses because they started capturing data for accounting and regulatory purposes first, and customer evaluation/delivery second.

“IoT by itself is not a technology; you can’t buy a box of IoT off the shelf,” says Mike Redding, managing director at Accenture Technology Labs, the technology R&D organization within management consulting and outsourcing firm Accenture.

“Social media, sensors, and embedded devices expand the ability to gather data from previously unexplored areas,” Redding says. “One challenge is to design for analytics — creating a strategy that sees data more as a supply chain than a warehouse.”

Pursuing IoT goals before catching up to other industry retailers (who began data capture around customers, instead of numbers), will drown them in a flood of data when they are already underwater in big data initiatives.

With IoT creating countless new unstructured data sources coming into the business, the problem will shift from wanting more data to making sure the key data isn’t being overlooked.

Focus on properly targeted big data first and you’ll feed your revenue engine with the right data and analytics going forward. That’s the journey that needs to be pursued in IoT.