By 2020, Gartner expects, 26 billion units will make up the Internet of Things, and that excludes PCs, tablets and smartphones. With so many sensors collecting data about equipment status, environmental conditions and human activities, companies are growing rich with information. Businesses are learning that it's not enough to gather mounds of data.
With so many sensors collecting data about equipment status, environmental conditions and human activities, companies are growing rich with information. The question becomes: What to do with it all? How to process it most effectively and use it in the smartest way possible?
Businesses are learning that it's not enough to gather mounds of data. The data on its own is only marginally interesting. "Where we are today is static," says Vernon Turner, an IDC analyst.
Traditionally, businesses have used tools like business intelligence software to look at data about the company's internal activities, he says. But adding other information including public data about the environment or local events, for instance, as well as data produced by sensors that other companies have in the field, can add much more value, he says.
It turns out, though, that combining that data is often tough because it typically comes in different forms. For now, while many companies are moving in the right direction, not many have built fully integrated, elegant solutions -- or if they have, they've had to do a lot of custom wrangling to get it right.
Daikin Applied is one company that, with the help of partners, has put together a sophisticated set of hardware and software that collects and analyzes 4,000 different data points about its commercial heating and air conditioning rooftop units. The system, designed with Intel, syncs with weather forecasts to allow building owners to adjust for changing temperatures in advance and lets Daikin know when changes in energy use by individual components indicate a failure is imminent so that the company can dispatch a repair technician beforehand.
"Instead of just passing all the data through to the cloud, we have an SoC so we can do pre-possessing," Facinelli explains. That means the gateway, which will be built into all future Daikin rooftop systems, sends only important data, like a change in status of a component, rather than sending along an endless stream of "I'm normal" signals, he says. Doing some processing on site reduces the volume of data that needs to be transmitted -- Daikin primarily uses cellular connectivity -- and also helps to reduce the data warehousing load on the back end.
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