The Internet of Things is changing the dynamics of how corporate management works. One example of this, writes Oozi Cats, CEO at Telit Communications PLC, is allowing the older style, traditional graphs and charts – based on months-old data – to be replaced by dynamically assembled dashboards of business context, synthesised in real time with interactive, big data analysis systems utilising immersive telepresence, aided by the smarter, context-aware sensor networks.
The new workforce
As the generation that has never known a world without the internet and cell phones enters the workforce, it is only natural to expect business dynamics to change. And change they will. Not only because these new workers have a totally different perspective on the unachievable, ie. they do not think much is outside the realm of possibility; but also because they are arriving at their desks just as the information technology (IT) and cellular industries converge once again. This congregation spawns two new spaces that are so revolutionary that every top tier technology company is rushing to christen them with their own names; and every analyst trying to wrap their minds around the perplexingly vast reach of their impact – the Internet of Things and Big Data.
Although rapidly changing, corporate decisionmaking processes are still, for the most part, structured around hierarchical data collection systems, from the lowest levels of the supply/ distribution chain, progressively moving up into departments. Eventually these processes make their way into boardrooms as performance charts, graphs, and red-flags, feeding traditional go/no-go project reviews, product launch evaluations, customer satisfaction issues, and others.
IT is the engine of change for business
A remarkable engine of change since the 1960s, IT has evolved from standalone mainframes to networks of PCs and other types of computing devices; and at every step of this evolution, caused drops in the lag between the time data is collected at the edge and its arrival in the boardroom. But even with this trail blazing evolution, bar a few exceptions, processes have remained confined to data collected from business information assets inside the corporate campus.
Then, in the mid ‘80s innovators like Federal Express started revolutionising corporate operations with truly global deployment of business processes reaching and interacting with assets outside the gates. When that happened, managers became capable of actually “gleaning” fundamental elements of their businesses associated to operations outside the gates, such as position and condition of raw materials, work in progress, and finished goods in transit to and from suppliers, customers and logistics partners; rather than simply estimating them.
A new wave of productivity
2G cellular technology begets M2M and a new wave of productivity gains. About a decade later, with the arrival of the second generation cellular telephony, mobile phone manufacturers started spinning up departments to take on the development of the data side of cellular technology. Until then, this was non-existent because of the total focus on voice communications. With that effort, hightechnology witnessed the arrival of the cellular communication module, a component that could be embedded into the electronics of machines, cars, truck, alarm systems and others, to carry out not only voice communications, but were also interfaced with that remote assets’ data systems and relay information (such as geo-position, temperature, and other telemetry) and conversely receive data from the central office to unlock a door, disable a faulty sensor, and so on.
Economic power
This marked the birth of Machine-to-Machine communication (M2M), an event of great impact and which continued extending the reach of business processes.
The economic power of the internet redefining business In the ‘90s, as the internet grew, analysts quickly moved to establish its impact on the broader economy; particularly considering that traditional commerce bricks-and-mortar retail prices typically include a 50% burden for distribution margin stacking, a large value component that the internet could replace in almost its entirety.
With global goods retail, valued in the trillions of dollars, the potential represented by the internet was an economy in (and of) itself. The drive to retrieve the 50% became the initial and pivotal push to expand the internet’s role in corporate processes at a very fast pace. Indeed, it is this that started the change of the way we work, and the way we are measured for performance and professional development.
With their evolution, these processes hungered for access to assets even further outside the campus, driving advancements in the M2M industry, quickly pushing it to intersect the emerging cloud space. Cloud technology opens up the opportunity for machines, sensors, and other devices to upload and store vast amounts of raw data. This becomes the analysis base upon which new models can be developed for assessing performance, profitability, competitiveness, and other business metrics. All in nearly real-time.
The Glass Boardroom
Just as pilots in a glass-cockpit jet plane can punch up highlevel information from hundreds of sensors and systems into manageable displays, so will new managers in the modern boardroom – the Glass Boardroom. In this environment, managers can leverage big data analytics to glean performance metrics of campaigns, product changes and launches, right as they are being rolled out. What’s more, managers can interact with assets all the way to the very edge of the supply/operation chain and view amalgamated real-time results and data analytics-based predictions and trends, including competitive performance.
Immersive telepresence
Along with placing cloud-powered, big data analytics at managers’ fingertips, another way M2M is creating the Glass Boardroom – and fundamentally changing the way we work – is by facilitating development of the emerging space of
Immersive Telepresence.
With the generational evolution of video teleconferencing, these new system concepts allow managers, sitting half a world apart from one another and from the key business assets they manage. It brings ways to view and interact with peers and systems seamlessly, and substantially more effectively than current generation collaboration systems.
Challenges and opportunities for utilities
The utility industry is not traditionally known for being fast moving. In fact, much of the utility infrastructure around the globe hasn’t changed significantly for a hundred years or more. This simple fact; combined with global population growth, advances in building systems like air conditioning, a growing trend toward electric vehicles and more, has created a major burden on utility companies to address both conservation and load balancing with a fresh approach. As utilities roll out smart meters and remote system monitoring, they can begin to address these challenges in new and sustainable ways. The glass boardroom not only enables them to better manage billing and save money on operations, it also allows them to access real-time load data and provide user incentives down to the individual household in order to avoid rolling brown outs, or worse, blackouts – ultimately providing better service to each of their customers.
Telit and the Glass Boardroom
On the 12-year journey leading to this reinvention of the boardroom, Telit has been part of the charge that enabled the original M2M movement and now the Internet of Things. We welcome the world’s new thinkers and encourage the continued and relentless challenge of boundaries and limitations. Our products and services are about simplifying the connection of ‘things’ to the Internet of Things as we continue adding value to the business process revolution, making our jobs more about thinking than about conforming.
