Mutiny Blog

According to Gartner’s latest predictions a staggering 6.4 billion connected things will be in use in 2016 fuelling a surge in spending on Internet of Things (IoT) services to $235 billion, up 22% from this year. The forecast goes on to say that “IoT services are the real driver of value in IoT, and increasing attention is being focused on new services by end-user organisations and vendors.”

Gartner has identified two classes of connected things. The first is cross-industry devices such as light bulbs, Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) and building management services and the second relates to devices for specific industries only. Whilst connected things for specialised use are currently the largest category, this is quickly changing so that by 2020 generic devices will dominate and become ubiquitous. Services around these products will be in design, installation and operation of IoT systems.

Risk and Reward

The advent of the IoT gives rise to boundless opportunities and colossal challenges of a level never faced before. For the consumer a perfectly IoT-enabled world brings new levels of customer engagement and the promise of enhanced experience. Once businesses are better informed by the consumer, they will compete more creatively for custom, removing inefficiencies in process and cost along the way. In reality, IoT deployment is far from straightforward.

Professionals employed in the field network management have been enabling communication between multifarious devices for some time. From early machine-to-machine warehouse automation to point-of-sale and inventory management in the retail sector, previously disconnected elements have been centrally monitored and managed. The challenge with incorporating smart devices and sensor data, however, is that the "things" in question use different communication protocols.

Network operators must also cope with the sheer number of devices, data, traffic and demands for higher bandwidth to and from the datacenter along with the security vulnerabilities the situation presents. For today’s CIO whose biggest headache only a few year’s back was BYOD and mobile applications, increasing dependence on the cloud and the impending need for interoperability of countless new devices brings disruption of whole new proportion.

Application Performance Management

In a connected world application performance management (APM) becomes critical. Take the familiar notion of the smart refrigerator extended to the scenario of multiple connected refrigerators for a high street supermarket chain. Information about whether the door is open or closed, lights are working, thermostatic controls maintained and levels of stock is recorded and returned to the datacentre. Continued successful operation is dependent upon the performance of applications. Network monitoring must therefore incorporate conventional hardware and standard and custom applications to detect issues before they lead to a degradation in service.

APM is an IoT service already well underway and becoming more widespread as the brave new world unfolds. With the number of connected things predicted to reach 50 billion by 2020, aggregating and analysing IoT data will become necessary to look for improvements in business processes. Intelligence derived from application performance will be essential to helping business and technology leaders make informed decisions towards desirable business outcomes.

 

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