Special guest, Rob Tiffany, CTO of Hitachi Lumada joins neXt Curve to discuss the origins, the present and future of the Internet of Things and the impact that it will have on our digital economy in the last installment of this 3-part webcast series. 

On May 15th, 2018, neXt Curve’s Leonard Lee and Dean Freeman hosted a webcast discussion with Rob Tiffany, CTO of Hitachi Lumada, who architected and developed one of the leading IoT platforms according to Gartner Inc.  Rob joined us to share his points of view on how the Internet of Things is evolving from its origins in Industrial IoT, and where he thinks it is going in the future.

How Will IoT Change The World?

The Internet of Things comes with great promise to change everything.  It is often portrayed as the Internet on steroids because it blends the physical with the digital.  But how will the IoT change the world?

Let’s start with the cyberphysical, the blending of the virtual with reality.  The digital twin will be one of the key IoT technologies that will bring about the gamification of how we interface, interact with and control things and environments across the physical and digital realms. Digital twins will enable the creation of new, digitally-augmented experiences as objects as well as environments in the physical realm are digitally modeled, cyberphysically interlaced and controlled giving us new ways to visualize, manipulate and manage our physical world.

We continue to see advancements in industrial IoT implementations that are increasingly applying advanced analytics with machine learning and robotics.  As these advance IoT implementations mature, they will establish a template for closed-loop optimization of consumer use cases enabled by a learning engine that will optimize the availability and use of resources in our individual lives and ultimately our time.

As core IoT converges with ubiquitous computing enabled by 5G and intelligence at the Edge, we can expect to see persistent context-driven applications emerge that deliver fine-grain automation and personalization of cyberphysical experiences in the digitally-augmented home, in the digitally-augmented field, in the digitally-augmented office and beyond resulting in new conveniences and efficiencies that are yet to be imagined.

We will seeing the acceleration of new business models that are enabled by the new possibilities that IoT solutions can enable in the delivery of contextually-aware services and consumer experiences.  In particular, asset as a service business models will address inefficiencies in the lives of consumers by enabling new resource sharing models such as Mobike and Lime with their bike and scooter sharing services, which have overtaken downtown areas across the U.S.

Bumps in The Road to The IoT Promise

The advancement of IoT faces a number of headwinds including the low level of readiness of organizations to deal with the Internet of Things evidenced by the low success rate of IoT projects.  There is also a significant digital skills divide of people who understand the IoT related technologies and how to apply them in a meaningful business context.

Additionally, the technologies that get lumped into IoT continue to pile up complicating the IoT discussion within an organization.  A great example is the addition of artificial intelligence and Blockchain into the IoT tech pool.  Organizations can expect the complexity of IoT-related technology discourse to increase for the foreseeable future.

Security and privacy will be critical topics going forward with the implementation of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and similar regulations coming into play around the world.  But one of the most concerning issues is IoT security.  It has been described as Swiss cheese.  With processor-level vulnerabilities such as Meltdown, Spectre and most recently Foreshadow threatening the entire ICT universe, the securing of IoT implementations and operations is absolutely vital for corporate risk management and the protection of consumer private data.

Implications for Business Leaders

The simple recommendation that Rob Tiffany provides to business leaders is to keep thing simple.  The value of the Internet of Things follows that Pareto rule.  80 percent of the value of IoT can be realized through simply connecting things.  The remaining 20 percent of value will only be accessible once your organization has reached a level of technical and organizational maturity than can support more advanced IoT capabilities and functions.  The challenge will always be keeping up with the technologies that will be bundled into the IoT.  No need to worry about them until you have realized the high-value, simple wins with your IoT strategy.

You can listen to the audio replay of our Industrial Internet: Shaping The Future of IoT webcast by playing the media below or downloading the Podcast available on iTunes.  Subscribe to our Podcast channel and keep up to date on the latest insights from neXt Curve.

Presentation Materials

neXt Curve Industrial IoT (PDF)

Audio replay of Part 3 of the Industrial IoT: Shaping The Future of IoT webcast

Podcast: Play in new window | Download