Why IoT now ?

In the not so young past the miniaturization has cause a variety of new concepts to drive the markets. This was introduced to many markets. In the IT it is called, and was originated, from the move to softwarization of HW. Yes that is the main driver of the digitalization. Was in the 90’s the key on CNC productions, process automation,

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improving the way humans work and it turned over to the 00’s in more focus on Software. With the concept of Open-Software and mass development, more high layer of software development open the door to connect devices. Not to mention the standards which are born in the IT side, like IP and the ISO models led to a harmonization of the infrastructure. Since around three years the trend of a unique backbone, we call it IT infrastructure, which consist out of HW/SW/Middleware and is transparent to the development of software cased the opening of a window to more and more connecting of different devices. Still many questions are not yet answered, like security, ownership of generated and collected data, responsibility, the governmental, profiling u.o. However one of the burning and open questions in the OO’s was solved with the introduction of HADOOP and MAP-Reduce concepts. Combined with the open software approach it defined the starting point of the big data area, or I would call it the era of information. Now the Internet of Things was born. With combination of the Google and Apple for mobile as well as Facebook and RedHat for Information collection and backbone OS the collected data was much more easy to personalize and enlighten with more data sources collected somewhere else. Of course there are still many companies opt-out of the sharing and implement own standards to hold on the proprietary formats of data. On the long run they will follow the market and join the collective, I am quite sure and the history has proven this more than one time.

What is IoT ?

The basics of Internet of things is the collection of data with uncounted of variations of devices. It can be from machine, human body sensors, cars, trains, databases, watches, sensors on environmental, mobile devices  among many others possibilities. Smart homes and smart cities are the next steps which the industry currently targeting.
In addition to the devices and island of data producing entities the Internet of Things is marked thru the collection and combination of the data. These are stored in various new concepts of DB’s. At the end the key is to drive new insights out of more data. So in essence the Internet of Things generate facts from the billions of sensors and combination with other data stored in the Internet.

What is than Industry 4.0

Under the term Industry 4.0, the digitalization of the process automation industry is often mentioned. From my point this is only a small fraction. The Industry 4.0 describes all attempts to digitalize the processes in the industry. This covers retail,  manufacturing, connected cars, aerospace, transportation as well as healthcare and other industries. The focus here is not only to improve the quality of the data, it drives also a totally new way to go to market: The as a service approach. This means that the companies no longer supply the offerings as a one off, more as a constant service. It is like the telephone companies do already in there business models. Other companies now driven by many startups to do the same in the Business to Business (B2B) efforts.

Future is Today

What is next?

The digitalization will not come to an end. It will consume more and more industries. Like the mathematicians would say „The World is build on numbers and functions“ This process will drive IT and and Information skills into business units. The traditional IT departments will be commoditized and often move to a provider. I see that happening in the next 10 years, like it happened to the telekom models in the late 90’s. Today no large enterprise is running his own telecommunications department. It is all integrated in the IT. In the next 5 years all non critical systems will be run by a specialized provider. Global and large enterprise have to understand the impact of open software, the information and data science. With the sharing of information and connection of things security w

ill be a critical asset to understand. Information and data will be assets which will find the way on the balance sheet.
In the next years it will not be the question what, more the question why the companies need still own IT