To support this industry, the government has already come out with a draft IoT policy that aims at building an entire ecosystem around IoT and to incentivise the players in the ecosystem. Experts believe this is a step in the right direction as en- terprises in every industry vertical are looking at IoT to solve their business problems. “IoT can generate a lot of value for every indus- try – be it manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, or even agriculture. It is helping enterprises not only reduce costs, energy consumption and downtime of machines, but also significantly improve efficiency and customer service,” says Ganesh Ramamoorthy, Research Vice President at Gartner. Take for example Hero MotoCorp. The largest two-wheeler company in the country needed a way to improve its visibility on the fleet of vehi- cles that are available in different locations so that the dealer clearly knows by when certain vehicles would be available. “We started with GPS-enabling our fleet and getting real time data of truck location and linking that with our sales and distribution data to take actions as may be required. This also helped our dealers and sales teams to get real time information on loca- tion of goods,” says Vijay Sethi, Vice President- Information Systems & CIO, Hero MotoCorp. Similarly, Hindustan Petroleum is using IoT to automate many of its processes and create re- al-time insights into the business. The company has installed sensors in field units to capture information such as temperature, pressure, flow rates, density, product levels, GPS coor- dinates, condition of devices, speed and other physical attributes. India Inc’s big... continued on pg2 Dossier orporate C T HE E CONOMIC T IMES ILLUSTRATION: ANIRBAN BORA Hooked to everything A n NCR based two wheeler company tracks its fleet of trucks across the length and breadth of the country using GPS technology. Another Chennai based auto manufacturer is toying with the thought of launching connected vehicles. The company also tracks pollution lev- els and productivity across its shop floors using connected devices. Technology companies and hospitals are talking about how doctors will be able to monitor sugar levels of diabetic patients real-time in the near future. That’s what the Internet of Things (IoT) is all about. After surpassing the human population on the planet in 2011, internet-connected devices are expected to number between 26 billion and 50 billion globally by 2020. These devices, which in the past could only be thought to be mobile phones, laptops and desktops, now include ATM machines, gas pipelines, street lights, transportation vehicles and even the soil that is used for agriculture. This highly interconnected world is something that the industry calls Internet of Things—a new industry that the Indian government expects to cross $15 billion by 2020. As per market research firm Gartner, the total revenue generated from the IoT industry would be $300 billion and the number of connected devices would be 27 bil- lion by 2020 globally. It has been assumed that India would have a share of 5-6% of global IoT industry. Why large Indian enterprises, startups and global service providers are tapping into the Internet of Things opportunity By Varun Aggarwal and Sneha Jha The revenue from the IoT industry would be $300 billion and the number of connected devices would be 27 billion by 2020 globally 01 July 10-16, 2015
Transcript
To support this industry, the government has already come out with a draft IoT policy that aims at building an entire ecosystem around IoT and to incentivise the players in the ecosystem. Experts believe this is a step in the right direction as en-terprises in every industry vertical are looking at IoT to solve their business problems.
“IoT can generate a lot of value for every indus-try – be it manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, or even agriculture. It is helping enterprises not only reduce costs, energy consumption and downtime of machines, but also significantly improve efficiency and customer service,” says Ganesh Ramamoorthy, Research Vice President at Gartner.
Take for example Hero MotoCorp. The largest two-wheeler company in the country needed a way to improve its visibility on the fleet of vehi-cles that are available in different locations so that the dealer clearly knows by when certain vehicles would be available. “We started with GPS-enabling our fleet and getting real time data of truck location and linking that with our sales and distribution data to take actions as may be required. This also helped our dealers and sales teams to get real time information on loca-tion of goods,” says Vijay Sethi, Vice President- Information Systems & CIO, Hero MotoCorp.
Similarly, Hindustan Petroleum is using IoT to automate many of its processes and create re-al-time insights into the business. The company has installed sensors in field units to capture information such as temperature, pressure, flow rates, density, product levels, GPS coor-dinates, condition of devices, speed and other
physical attributes.
India Inc’s big... continued on pg2
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Hooked to everything
An NCR based two wheeler company tracks its fleet of trucks across the length and breadth of the country using GPS technology. Another Chennai based auto manufacturer is
toying with the thought of launching connected vehicles. The company also tracks pollution lev-els and productivity across its shop floors using connected devices. Technology companies and hospitals are talking about how doctors will be able to monitor sugar levels of diabetic patients real-time in the near future. That’s what the Internet of Things (IoT) is all about.
After surpassing the human population on the planet in 2011, internet-connected devices are expected to number between 26 billion and 50 billion globally by 2020. These devices, which in the past could only be thought to be mobile phones, laptops and desktops, now include ATM machines, gas pipelines, street lights, transportation vehicles and even the soil that is used for agriculture.
This highly interconnected world is something that the industry calls Internet of Things—a new industry that the Indian government expects to cross $15 billion by 2020. As per market research firm Gartner, the total revenue generated from the IoT industry would be $300 billion and the number of connected devices would be 27 bil-lion by 2020 globally. It has been assumed that India would have a share of 5-6% of global IoT industry.
Why large Indian enterprises, startups and global service providers are tapping into the Internet of Things opportunityBy Varun Aggarwal and Sneha Jha The revenue from the IoT
The Internet of Things (IoT) is arriving — and with it comes a whole lot of hype. Hype of a connected world with billions of gadgets and trillions of dollars in economic value. And while it’s tempting to dismiss
much of this talk, when you peel back the layers, you begin to see the current IoT reality. IoT is being driv-en by business leaders who are pushing connected products into the marketplace to better engage with customers and deploying connected assets in their business processes to differentiate customer offer-ings and improve efficiency. Their business motiva-tion? IoT enables a future where business leaders can deliver on, and even exceed the ever-growing expectations of the age of the consumer.
These new technologies have the capabilities to improve customer experiences through deep, ongo-ing, digitally mediated engagements, meet customer expectations set by mobile apps, respond to regula-tory and compliance standards and keep up with early adopters.
But to think that putting IoT to work within business units can continue to happen without the involvement of the CIO’s technology management organisation is naive. Just as with PCs, websites, and smartphones - all of which started with do-it-yourself efforts of the business – the CIO will end up being called in to help. But unlike those previous tech trends, IoT will be a shared responsibility of the busi-ness and tech management organisations. The CIO’s team will eventually manage the security and the growing complexity of the IoT infrastructure - espe-cially when the business integrates IoT data into core business processes. For example, CIOs at hospitals are now being asked to integrate data from various imaging and pharmaceutical systems so hospital managers can get a broader view of operations across the connected assets.
As CIOs work to integrate IoT into the overall business technology (BT) agenda, they will face five challenges:
Running IoT will be a shared responsibility between CIOs and business heads By Frank Gillett
Five IoT era challenges for CIOs
Hooked to... continued from pg1
“These systems enable us to op-erate our facilities efficiently and provide real time visibility of the status of the condition of these sys-tems,” says S.T. Sathiavageeswaran, Executive Director- Information Systems, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation. “The retail outlet au-tomation systems help us to monitor the performance of our outlets in real time and enable us to proactively at-tend to any issues immediately.”
Similarly, Apollo Hospitals is using IoT to transform healthcare. “We are exploring IoT in disease management. SUGAR is our diabetes management initiative. Constant monitoring of the specific blood sugar levels using disruptive IoT enabled technology and transmitting them seamlessly to our personal health re-cord system has been effectively pilot-ed and is now getting ready for wide scale usage,” says Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals. The hospital chain is also looking at IoT in effective inpatient care, post discharge care and overall preventive health and wellness.
According to Gartner, IoT is some-thing that needs to be seen as a busi-ness initiative by enterprises, “IoT is not a technology initiative. It is all about business process improve-ment. Enterprises need to put down their business pain points and then look at how to resolve them with the help of IoT.”
Manufacturing, healthcare, in-surance, retail, utility and power generation are some of biggest benefi-ciaries from IoT, according to Arnab Basu, Partner & Technology Sector Consultant, PwC. “It’s important to note here that IoT will work in con-junction with other technologies like analytics, data protection, cyber se-curity and data governance,” he says.
Cisco is investing heavily in the space by building large teams and localised products. “IoT has been the biggest focus area for Cisco in India. We have increased our IoT team by five times in the last one year. We focus primarily around the digital
India program and on digitising enterprises with the help of IoT,” says Nalinikanth Gollagunta, managing director, commercial sales at Cisco India & SAARC.
Apart from working with IT services companies such as Wipro, Infosys and TCS, Cisco says most of the IoT projects now involve indus-trial equipment companies such as Honeywell, Rockwell, Schneider. “In IoT, we are generally moving away from enterprise environment and into operational environment where typical companies such as Wipro and Infosys have little to play,” he says.
Tata Elxsi is similarly scaling up its IoT team rapidly as it sees this market as the next wave. “At Tata Elxsi we believe that IoT drives fundamental changes in the way products are conceptualised by manufacturers and utilised by cus-tomers. In the new paradigm, prod-ucts serve as an extended platform to provide services to customers,” says
RR Bipin, VP, Digital Services - IoT, Embedded Product Design Division at Tata Elxsi. He adds, “In addition to the broader theme of smart cities, telehealth, fleet management and connected car are some of the impor-tant verticals that we are focused on right now.”
According to IBM, the insurance sector could be the next big adopter of IoT and would transform the way healthcare and insurance busi-nesses are run today. “Caring for the elderly or people with chronic ill-ness could become a lot easier with the help of wearable medical devices such as fitness bands that can track your health and inform your doctor about your deteriorating health so that steps can be taken to heal be-fore it is too late,” says Dr. Prashant Pradhan, director-Smarter Planet Business, IBM India.
He explains how insurance compa-nies could give incentives to custom-ers for allowing them to track their fitness records from devices such as fitness bands and then offer them proactive health tips based on the customer’s physical activities that’ll not only help the customer remain fit but also save the company mil-lions of dollars from mediclaim. Car insurance companies similarly may mandate customers to put sensors in your car and charge premiums based on your driving style.
IoT provides an opportunity not only to large vendors but also a plethora of startups who are attract-ing big investments. Companies such as Cisco, IBM and Intel are using their venture funds to invest in some of these companies to grow inorgani-cally in the domain.
Bengaluru-based IoT startup Altimetrik is working with some of the largest retail and FMCG com-panies in India to bring in efficien-cies in their business. “We try and define business outcomes and then
we tell them (customers) that for them to cause this outcome, what all data they need and where it is resid-ing,” says Madhavan Satagopan, CTO at Altimetrik and a member of Nasscom’s Engineering and R&D Council. “The sensors in IoT only provide a way for sensors in your business network to talk more and provide the essential data. More than analytics, IoT helps companies to get real-time correlation of events and then tie that back to the compa-ny’s business outcomes,” he says.
Cisco launched a $40 million fund in June last year to seed startup com-panies under its “India Innovation” program, which focuses on IoT solutions. The company has already invested in Mumbai-based Covacsis Technologies, an enterprise software firm, and Mobstac, a cloud-based company offering a publishing plat-form for mobile websites and apps and is still scouting for more. “We are
looking at startups who can provide IoT solutions in the enterprise and government space,” says Gollagunta.
Intel similarly is scouting for start-ups through its venture fund, Intel Capital. In November, Intel Capital said it would invest $62 million in 16 technology startups working in wearables, data analytics and IoT.
Despite huge investments going into the space, experts say IoT is still at a nascent stage in the country. There are also concerns about skill-set availability, security of data that these sensors transmit and the need to build a regulatory framework around IoT. However, the govern-ment has already taken positive steps by initiating an IoT policy, while in-dustry associations such as Nasscom and IESA are working together to suggest to the government how IoT could be used to build the nation. CD
IoT at workLeading two wheeler manufacturer, TVS Motor uses IoT for process automation, process quality control and traceability in shop fl oor, pollution control and monitoring, measurement of water fl ow and power consumption. The auto maker is also working on connected vehicles. IoT has resulted in productivity improvement, quality control, cost control and above all agility of business.
ICICI Lombard General Insurance is leveraging use of telemat-ics in transportation solutions to minimise loss of cargo during transit of goods. The technology is used for the benefi t of cus-tomers covered under the marine insurance policy (transporting goods by land or sea). It enables real time tracking of goods through the transit to ensure that the carrier doesn’t deviate from the course. If there are any unscheduled stops they get reported real time thus reducing incidents of theft, pilferage and the rate of loss.
Telecom tower infrastructures provider Bharti Infratel is using IoT for management and live monitoring of its passive infra-structure like tower, fuel management, energy distribution, alarm monitoring, surveillance on the site and security. IoT helps the company optimise manpower, analyse data points, trends and in fault detection.
1. Myriad of technolo-gies, networks, and protocols: Starting with sensor-equipped things themselves, there are a wide variety of situation-specific technologies, networks, protocols, and data for-mats that must be cho-sen, managed, and inte-grated. As a result, CIOs will need to answer pressing questions, like which short-range ra-dio tech is best? Or, are HTTP or IoT-specific standards better for communicating sensor data efficiently over the internet?
2. Distributed busi-ness data, analytics and logic: Sensor devices and gateways are often capable of local data filtering and analysis. They can also store business logic to en-able quick responses to various situations, such as a safety issue. IoT software platforms, like Xively and ThingWorx, manage things and gate-ways, analyse and man-age sensor data, and in-tegrate with enterprise systems. In either case though, business data, analytics and logic are living outside of the core enterprise applications and processes.
3. New security risks: IoT brings with it new security challenges that span customer premises, the Internet, and the enterprise. It’s critical to ensure that connected devices and the data they collect are tamper-resistant and tamper-evident. CIOs need to consider which identity, authentication, and encryption tech-nologies will work for sensors and gateways. For these connected devices, it’s absolutely crucial that the chain of custody remains secure all the way through cloud services and back to the enterprise apps.
4. New network de-mands: The surge in devices connected to enterprise networks is going to shock network admins and challenge them with a new type of network node that can have widely varied requirements. Some de-vices may stream data continuously, while others need low latency and high quality of ser-vice for quick responses to crucial events. The CIO will be responsible for making sure these demands are met.
5. Vast quantities of time-series data. Enterprise analytics tools are typically built around transactions at the core of the business - not for the constant volumes of data sensors on connected products and assets record. In order to analyze this time-series data, a new generation of analytics technology is making itself readily available. CIOs will need to work with these new technol-ogies to decide how best to transmit, capture, and store the data.
Emerging technologies can create massive tech-nology challenges for CIOs, especially if they take hold outside of initial technology management involvement. CIOs should get involved now and co-ordinate with their internal teams to integrate IoT technologies into the BT agenda in order to better win, serve, and retain customers.
CIOs should ask their app development team to explore new software skills and tools to build apps and infrastructure that take advantage of con-nected assets and enable connected products. They should also make sure their product engineer-ing teams are looking to IoT platforms like Ayla Networks, ThingWorx and Jasper, rather than DIY efforts to enable connectivity and manage products. These platforms will offer tremendous support when dealing with machine-to-machine or IoT-specific protocols analytics and more.
An enterprise architecture team too can work to build CIOs an inventory of connected assets and their characteristics. They’ll be able to then plan for a unified console and integration with en-terprise apps and analytics. Finally, CIOs should ask the security team to review and report on the connected assets inventory and the associated policies for installing, monitoring, and updating those assets. The preventive maintenance will be appreciated by all. CD
Frank Gillett is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research.
T he Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of unique physical objects that contain embedded technology to communicate, sense, analyse, and/or interact with their internal
state or external environment.The IoT is not a single market but, rather,
a collection of niche markets, as well as a subset of the broader embedded electron-ics market. It encompasses hardware, the “things” themselves and the embedded soft-ware that runs on the hardware. It enables the connected capabilities of the things and the services associated with the things in-cluding services based on analysis of usage patterns and sensor data. As such, IoT is
heterogeneous. The common ele-ments that hold it together
are connectivity, sensors and processing.
The concept of IoT is not completely foreign to Indian enterprises – RFID technologies to
track and monitor goods and assets, sensor technolo-gies to monitor
pro- cess parameters, operational tech-
nologies such as programmable logic controller and supervisory
control and data acquisition, and
manufacturing ex-ecution systems to manage plant operations have already been in
use for years now. But there is still a lack
of understanding about how IoT impacts business.
The biggest question in their minds is, “How is IoT different in what it can de-
liver compared with what we already have (the IT systems)?” The answer lies in them understanding IoT systems better, and wid-ening their traditional views of “intercon-nected systems.”
While the benefit of interconnecting IT systems is clear, many organisations do not see past a world in which the physical assets (equipment and machinery that are criti-cal to the core business activity) are also interconnected. This lack of understand-ing is a major hindrance for organisations from even taking the first step toward IoT — which is to understand how IoT will influ-ence their business.
The first and foremost thing that organi-sations should understand is that IoT is not a technology initiative – it is a business im-provement initiative. Behind every IoT pro-ject there is a business priority. It has broad applications and supports a wide range of business models, though most applications are rooted in four usage scenarios:
connected things can be moni-tored and optimised. For example, sensors on an asset can be optimised for maximum performance or increased yield and up time.
connected things can be mon-etised on a pay-per-use. For example, auto-mobiles can be charged for insurance based on mileage.
connected things can be remote-ly operated, avoiding the need to go on site. For example, field assets such as valves and
actuators can be controlled remotely.connected things can be ex-
tended with digital services. For example, connected healthcare equipment can receive software upgrades that improve functionality.
These four usage models help organisa-tions tackle two sets of business priorities – the internal priority, which is essentially to do with reducing costs, improving produc-tivity or efficiency, and optimising resource utilisation, and the external priority, which is essentially to do with growing sales, find-ing new growth markets and enhancing customer satisfaction.
Interconnecting physical assets and op-erational subsystems with supply chain and enterprise-wide resource planning systems, allows for a single, unified view of the core business activities and enables faster op-erational decisions, cost reductions, asset optimisation and asset utilisa-tion improvement activities such as predictive maintenance.
However, many Indian organisa-tions are currently underprepared to embrace IoT due to the lack of infrastructure, relevant business use cases, product ecosystem and awareness levels, as well as due to the lack of willingness to commit investments in an emerging technology area that is yet to prove business returns globally. Further, security issues relating to interconnection of critical physical assets to the Internet, IoT-related technology obsolescence, and misplaced understanding that IoT will re-quire fresh investments in technology, ren-dering the existing technology investments redundant also play their part in dampen-ing IoT adoption.
But by 2020, we will see investments from large end-user organisations likely, that are currently at the very initial stages of under-taking some pilot projects. Government de-partments (especially from the traffic man-agement and water quality management
perspective) and organisations in the energy and utility sector (that are adopting smart grids to manage power supply and demand, and to study customer’s power usage behav-ior), and other manufacturing industries such as oil and gas, automobiles, FMCG, etc., and service industries such as retail, health-care, hospitality, etc., are currently identify-ing various pilot projects in IoT.
The pilot projects target leveraging IoT to help optimise the performance of large assets (remote operation, extending services or usage-based billing), leading to reduced operating costs (fewer energy costs), enhanced customer satisfaction (re-turning customers), improved availability (reduced downtime from failures) and in-creased yield (more output from the same operating costs).
As more such pilots, and success stories emerge, both globally and lo-cally, Indian businesses will discover that IoT can transform every facet of their organisation – manufacturing, supply chain, sales & marketing, customer relationship management, and new product development.
However, for successful IoT implementation, Indian organ-
isations will first have to understand the business use case for IoT. By not focussing on the immediate opportunities and small-er pilot projects, business and IT leaders will only end up committing to grand and expansive plans that demand big leaps of faith to justify investments and long-term growth but really not deliver the expected results. Success will also depend on align-ing the IT and OT resources, processes and people carefully, experimenting and looking at other industries as sources for innovative uses of the IoT, and on ensuring that their enterprise architecture teams are ready to incorporate IoT at all levels. CD
The author is Research VP, Gartner.
internet of things
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evangelist and the chair of the IoT forum at the Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), one of the jobs of Arvind Tiwary is to men-
tor startups in this emerging technology. In his meetings and writings, he is trying to evangelise a view that is contrarian to the established wisdom. He is trying to get com-panies not to use Internet Protocol (IP) at the end of the network, where the devices oper-ate. “There is a risk whenever IP is used,” says Tiwary.
The Internet of Things is a term used for a network of devices instead of just computers. Over the next decade or two, industry observers expect 50-100 billion devices - refrigerators, cars, security cameras, planes - to be connected to public networks like the Internet. Technology standards for this network have not evolved yet, but many stakeholders favour IP. Specifically, they would like every device to have an IP address, preferably using its latest version IPv6. To Tiwary, this could be a recipe for disaster.
Look at it this way. What is the worst out-come of a computer security breach now? Loss of data, loss of money, loss of reputation or loss of military secrets. All serious incidents, but rarely life threatening. What would happen if someone hacks into a cardiac pacemaker? Or a car when it is being driven on the road? Or a plane in mid-flight? A network of devices will have to grapple with these issues, and some engineers are already thinking about solu-tions to such possibilities.
IoT as it exists now, consists largely of net-works that remain isolated from the public networks. This is especially true in India, where IoT concepts are largely used to im-prove efficiencies in manufacturing. These networks are not connected to the Internet. A network of devices not connected to public networks is still useful, but the full value of IoT lies in connecting devices to public net-works. But when you connect a network to the Internet, you open up possibilities of intru-sion and its consequences.
When you make the network with uniform standards, it is much easier to hack, accord-
ing to Tiwary. At the moment, each network operates with different stand-ards. Different consortia of companies are pushing for different standards. So it makes sense to have uniform stand-ards, but it could also open up vulner-
abilities. Some companies want to have a web-page of sorts for each device, with information about it then available for scrutiny. It could then be a hacker’s dream.
The Internet of Things would work only if the end device uses as little energy as possi-ble, which in turn would constrain its ability to process large amounts of data. In many cases the device processor will be sleeping, and wake up periodically to send some data to a gateway.
It cannot run a complicated security software. “These are constrained devices,” says Manish Agarwal, cofounder of Axelta Systems, an IoT consultancy and training company. “They are difficult to secure with-out simple standards.”
Some incidents in recent times have shown that IoT networks are extremely vulnerable. Ruben Santamarta, a security consultant at the firm IOActive, showed at a conference last year how he could hack into an airplane’s sat-ellite communications through the Wi-Fi net-work. In October last year, another security expert Denver, Chris Roberts, was not allowed to fly on United Airlines after he boasted that he could get at the plane’s controls and bring it
down if he wanted to. Drones are considered to be a good target for hackers, and the first mal-ware for drones has already been created.
There are several ways in which IoT net-works are different from the Internet. The low processing power of devices is one. Lack of people and monitoring is another problem. For example, in computer networks security experts regularly monitor the networks and report security breaches, which forms an in-
put for developing security solutions. “There is no self-conscious reporting system in IoT,” says Prashant Pradhan, director of smarter planet business at IBM.
Many IT companies are developing security-aware hardware and software as the foundation of IoT, which makes security at the core of the hardware rather than an overlay. From then onwards, every part of the network is built for security. Networking companies like Cisco hopes to detect breach-es in the network while they happen and take action almost instantly. “Malware intro-duces changes in the network when it begins to execute,” says Pravin Srinivasan, lead of security sales, Cisco India and SAARC. These changes can be detected and respondedto in real time.
Use of IoT is increasing for home automa-tion, manufacturing, healthcare and other industries in the West. India is yet to see IoT in any real sense. One early user is Mahindra, which uses a network to monitor the health of its electric cars. IoT is set to make its entry into healthcare through personal health mon-itoring devices. Security issues are bound to creep up almost immediately. From then onwards, it is a hard battle.
Since the device does not have processing power, IoT will necessitate a lot of intelligence in the cloud. A key question for developers is this: how much control do you give to the device? “How much control you allow is a key issue,” says Harsha Angeri, head of new business teams, mergers and acquisitions in Bosch India. “The trade off that you allow can lead to a security breach.” CD
Common connections
Though the network of devices is proving to be a boon for nations and corporations, its vulnerability is a prime concernBy Hari Pulakkat
The industry is experiencing a tectonic shift and getting increas-ingly competitive and complex. All of this is a result of the changes in consumer demographics and be-
haviour, leading to a change in the way ser-vices are consumed. Meanwhile concepts like the Internet of Everything (IoE) which Cisco defines as the convergence of people, process, data and things, are bringing about unprecedented disruption.
IoE, also known as the digital revolution, is expected to generate new business models & jobs, and become the biggest opportunity of mankind in the next 30 to 40 years. The Internet of Things (IoT), a subset of IoE, con-tains embedded technologies that interact with internal states or the external environ-ment, through which objects can sense and communicate. This is changing how and where decisions are made and by whom.
IoT: What it means in India With the advent of IoT, the need to share data between applications, sensors, infrastruc-ture and people becomes imperative. The proliferation of things – systems, machines, equipment and devices— connected to the in-ternet, will need greater data management.
According to the IoT Policy document issued by Department of Electronics and Information (DeitY), the “industry” is a key stakeholder and industry collaboration is essential for driving innovation and build-ing well designed, cost effective and scalable solutions for managing the data deluge.
As IoT gains momentum, it will impact a number of industry sectors including healthcare, agriculture, education, infra-structure, public services, utilities, manu-facturing and more. Some of the areas where we can see results are:
These will leverage a range of
“smart” services to improve the standard of living of citizens like intelligent traffic and parking management, automated building resource management, public safety and surveillance, and Wi-Fi services.
Where programmes like solid waste management using sensor intelligence and location tracking, smart energy and water management, actionable monitoring of water and air quality and in-dustry waste and pollution will help create a cleaner, greener environment.
Health services delivered to remote populations via a network that sup-ports voice, video and intelligent medical devices will enable actionable monitoring of patient vitals in various settings (hospitals, dementia centres, old-age homes), and pro-vide specialist consultations to hospitals and health centres that lack local medical talent.
Precision farming based on data (temperature, moisture, pests) from field sensors can be used to maximize crop production. Storage facilities can also be controlled for these parameters to mini-mize spoilage. Real time agricultural and weather updates to mobile devices will keep farmers informed of critical and actionable information.
Continuous monitoring of plant and indus-trial operations, automated analysis and control automation over a secure network will allow manufacturing units to stay lean and profit-able by using data driven de-cisions to adjust to evolving market demand. CD
The author is President, IT and CIO - APJ&C, Chief
of Strategy, Planning & Operations, Cisco India.
internet of things
Edit & Desk : Dibeyendu Ganguly, Moinak Mitra, Priyanka Sangani, Dearton Thomas Hector and TV Mahalingam Design : Shubhra Dey, Sanjeev Raj Jain, Nitin Keer
The Internet of Things will have an impact on governance and business By V C Gopalratnam
Simply put, Internet of Things / Everything is an application of con-nectivity to physical objects using electronics, software, sensors or their varying combinations. By con-necting physical objects both physi-cally and remotely, IoT allows great-er value for the user as well as the manufacturer and service provider through the free flow of information in otherwise static objects.
IoT was coined in 1999 by British entrepreneur Kevin Ashton. But the concept was discussed as early as 1982 with a modified Coke machine at Carnegie Mellon University be-coming the first internet connected appliance. Academic venues such as UbiCom and PerCom came up with the contemporary version of IoT. Implementing IoT would have a direct bearing on daily lives via machine-readable identifiers.
Researchers give varying estimates on how big the IoT opportunity will be by 2020, roughly from 26 billion to 50 billion devices. It is tipped to be the next stage of the information revolution connecting everything from urban transport to medical equipment to household appliances.
The convergence of mobile, social, data and cloud is driving digital disruption worldwide. We’re at a tip-ping point. Think about it: last year, 77 billion apps were downloaded while 800 billion photos were shared on social media worldwide. Digital infrastructure is being adopted five times faster than electricity and telephony.
Within five years, 75 percent of
businesses worldwide will be digital—or will be preparing to become digital. Only 30 percent of these efforts will be successful. Digitisation will transform indus-tries and enable the delivery of education, healthcare, transporta-tion, real estate, safety and security and other services. Manufacturing, service providers, IT services com-panies, startups and government institutions have a huge potential to digitise and drive value.
The Internet of Things requires innovation in key technology domains, including sensors, net-works, data analytics and control systems. Indian consumers are fast going digital and the role of IoT will be to help Indian businesses create a digitisation roadmap and prepare an architectural blueprint for ad-dressing areas such as increase in operational efficiencies, enhancing consumer experience, increase compliance to security and regula-tion and higher asset utilisations. On the public sector side, there is potential to be able to offer citizen services in a convenient and cost-effective manner and extending government’s reach nationwide. Public organisations and private-sector enterprises leveraging the IoT have the potential to create $511 billion in value in India over the next decade.
As the IoT spreads widely, cyber attacks are likely to become an increasingly physical (rather than simply virtual) threat. It has the potential to spy on people in their own homes as it would be hard to deny access to a network of sensors and remotely-controlled objects to enemies of establishments. CD
Answers to all the questions you can have on the Internet of Things By Moinak Mitra
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Regn. No. MAHENG/2002/6295 Volume 14 Issue No. 29“Published for the proprietors, Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd. by R. Krishnamurthyat The Times Of India Building, Dr. D.N.Road, Mumbai 400001 Tel. (022) 6635 3535, 2273 3535, Fax-(022) 2273 1144 and printed by him at The Times of India Suburban Press, Akurli Road,Western Express Highway, Kandivli (E), Mumbai 400101. Tel No: (022) 28872324, 28872930, Fax No (022) 28874230 Navi Mumbai - 400708 and Plot No 4, MIDC, Digha Village, Thane Belapur Road, Airoli Tel. (022) 27609700 and Editor:
