I was able to attend my second Boston-area IoT meetup last Tuesday, hosted by Ascent Venture Partners (thanks Luke) at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge, MA. The focus of the meetup, as was the last event (hosted by Ascent, Radius Partners and LogMeIn) was the panel of IoT industry leaders and a Q&A session MC’d by Chris Rezendes of Inex Advisors.
There was an underlying theme from both meetups that IoT technologies have to be grounded on concrete, value-added solutions with a real ROI for the customer. This was an interesting departure from the hyperbole which seems to be constantly defining most public discussions of IoT. Even across many disparate target markets (Consumer, SMB, Enterprise, etc), this message was repeated. Three very interesting applications stood out to me: monitoring oil and propane tanks to optimize truck rolls; supply-chain transit monitoring and optimization; and rapidly-forming ad-hoc communication networks for defense and first-responder applications. Interesting as well was that only one of these (I think) used any form of Bluetooth connectivity, which seems to be the most frequently assumed interconnect in IoT solutions.
There were two discussions which the panel engaged with the audience on that I found particularly important to consider when evaluating IoT technology and changing business practices. Due to the large number of attendees and the relatively short amount of time available in this kind of format, the concepts were only sketched out and touched upon by the panelists, but would make great topics for dedicated sessions. Of course, we’re talking about security (in its many aspects) and analytics (and data collection, pre-filtering, indexing and retention strategies). Data ownership was also touched on (and associated with that, Chris brought up: access, authorization, and liability). In the next two posts, I’m going to try to explore both the security and analytics topics in more depth.
I strongly encourage anyone seriously interested in the IoT market and technology make a point to attend the next meetup in your area. Chris and the sponsors have done a great job with the Boston-area meetups so far!
Dave, great observations. Security was bounded, but I also think the standards discussion was the most important topic posed, but not dissected. Perhaps we cannot achieve standards, but open interfaces are a must.
You’re right Mike, standards will evolve either purposefully or become defacto through adoption. One would hope we’ve learned our lessons in the past with the benefits of purposeful standards development. Those standards (and the open interfaces they define) are what allow each “tier” within the end-to-end solution ultimately be delivered to market most efficiently and enable each tier to innovate most effectively.
Dave,
Glad to see your involvement in the IoT discussions. I would be interested in talking further with you regarding edge devices. I have been involved in industrial automation for many years so I would be interested in your views. IT systems or accessing wireless devices
or intelligent edge devices is bit different. The industrial side has a lot of legacy edge technology from the process, discrete, utilities/energy and BAS automation space etc:
Thanks for the update