Neil Dove, head of product management for BTâs M2M Team, advised an audience at IFSEC 2016 to take a strategic view of Internet of Things (IoT) Applications. He said: âBe ambitious, creative and daring. Collaborate and share, plan for the future and scale for the future.â
He added: âIt is not a short-term project. There are short-term gains to be had but if you are really going to embrace an IoT project and benefit from it, you need to take a strategic view and involve other departments and not just the IT department, in order to move from end-to-end to IoT.â
IoT is where a network of physical devices are connected electronically in order for data to be collected and exchanged. Successful deployment of IoT technologies can have huge benefits in terms of efficiency and lower costs for businesses.
Being ambitious also applies to data storage and that is where the cloud comes in to store lots of data and exploit it.
A range of organisations are already starting to benefit. In just two years, the health and pharmacy industry has grown its IoT usage by 28%.
Said Dove: âWith the ever-increasing cost of the NHS, the health and pharmacy sector have to find more intelligent ways of saving costs. How can we avoid people having to go to hospital by providing better care, how can patients be monitored at home?â
Energy and utility companies are also strong in this sector â water companies for example are benefitting from an operations perspective by being able to monitor leakage. âSo much water is leaked through the system but by monitoring this they can be more efficient and improve cost savings, which can help to justify price rises,â Dove explained.
The automotive industry is using IOT effectively. âYou can barely buy a car without having some sort of connectivity in it. Car companies are moving away from just providing you with a tin box of wheels; they are moving into a more service-based industry.
âYou can see a world where the fan belt is being monitored on a sold car which can transmit information back to the dealership when it is wearing out, so the car is booked in for the fan belt to be replaced. Retailers will be able to offer more personalised shopping and advertise to customers in an intelligent way.â
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFqIsAh7wqE
IoT is going beyond just offering customer products to providing smarter customer service and after-sales service. However, security and privacy remain its biggest challenges.
âThings like electronic health records are clearly very sensitive and personal so security concerns for this are very acute. Anything with an IP address can be attacked so letâs be aware of it but take a cautious approach.
âWe know there are security implications in what you do but donât let that stop you from doing it. It is important to address these issues from the start rather than finding out about them later. If you take that open approach you will reap the benefits.â
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