ADVENT ONE. The Dynamic Demands of IoT in a Connected World

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1 ADVENT ONE The Dynamic Demands of IoT in a Connected World

2 Modern consumers have come to expect online, self-service and intuitive transacting in an on-demand world. We shop online, bank online and expect everything to happen at the touch of a button with instant gratification. This connected world offers agile organisations the opportunity to deliver original and innovative products and services never seen before all thanks to leveraging data on user behaviours and preferences. It s a world that, enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT), has the potential to deliver practical solutions that can dramatically impact many aspects of daily life for individuals - both at work and at home. For businesses specifically, IoT offers the opportunity to gain competitive advantage through the delivery of unique solutions as a result of exploiting improved decision-making abilities through analysis of the vast amounts of data flowing from connected devices in use. In order to be an agile organisation in the modern business environment and able to meet the changing demands of today s marketplace IT operations need to be highly adaptable, with constant analysis of connected data and on-demand reporting capabilities. As new business opportunities are identified and business unit demands increase, IT infrastructure needs to be operational almost immediately. This pressure for delivery of IT services means that both infrastructure platforms and application capability need to have almost unlimited scalability and flexibility. A Connected World The IoT commonly refers to the proliferation of intelligently connected devices and systems that communicate via public and/or private networks increasingly, the internet contributing to the growth of Big Data. IoT growth stems from a range of sources, including: small, embedded sensors and actuators in company assets Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) automating delivery operations Customer interaction in real-time, with core system applications

3 IoT is expected to spread rapidly over the coming years with Gartner predicting that connected devices will grow upward of 25 Billion by 2020 and generate in excess of US$300 Billion in revenue per annum in As a result of this trend, the wave of emerging products and services will continue to expand by leveraging the data gathered from devices, which, in turn, uncover new business opportunities. The Gartner projections indicate an additional US$4 Trillion of global revenue opportunities for the year by The data gathered from connected devices could reach 50 Trillion Gigabytes by 2020, putting real meaning to the term Big Data. An emerging challenge for businesses has been the effective management and use of this intelligence, through meaningful analytics that enable organisations to make timely, data-driven decisions. Consequently, the ability of an organisation to progress is heavily reliant on the competency of their IT department. Embracing the IoT age is not simply about adopting e-commerce and internet connectivity but, rather, pre-empting market changes through intelligent data analysis and embracing opportunities with speed and agility. In order to achieve this, organisations require IT infrastructure that is both flexible & scalable. New technology and application functionality needs to be integrated at a moment s notice to take advantage of the marketplace opportunity. As technology underpins every part of an organization s operations, the effectiveness of IT management and the implemented platform is critical to an organization s success. Connected Living Integrators have been connecting buildings to web-enabled devices for many years. Some examples include HVAC, lighting, access control, elevators and parking garages, all of which can be controlled remotely using automated and interconnected technology. Likewise, technology enthusiasts have been designing home automation systems that control household facilities like lighting, heating, security and entertainment for some time already. Mainstream society has not yet been

4 offered affordable, manageable and easily implemented options, however, based on the uptake of consumer technologies including mobile phones and wearables, once home automation is made readily available it will rapidly gather momentum. For businesses, the opportunity to connect with consumers in a secure manner will be critical to business success. Delivery of products and/or services will entail effective management of the user experience and their privacy, supported by effective customer identity and access management (CIAM) development. To build loyalty and have access to consumer identities and data, organisations must deliver a frictionless engagement process that users trust. CIAM is an evolving arena, very different to the strict authentication protocols of internal business systems. Managing, connecting and accessing data is critical to the success of the IoT, making the Identity of Things (IDoT) a new focus of the IoT. The IDoT is based on the principle that all entities in the IoT ecosystem - including people, apps, services and connected things - have identities comprised of identifiers and their attributes, and that those identities define relationships between every entity. Managing the data that flows between these identities requires a CIAM solution that unifies every entity in the system, a core requirement for businesses looking to capitalize on the IoT in the future. Organisations are under increasing pressure to protect sensitive data and prevent device theft and malicious digital attacks. Global regulations protecting personally identifiable information (PII) are becoming more stringent, with breaches to organisations that fail to comply proving very costly. In addition, valuable intellectual property that creates competitive advantage is also at risk when data records or devices are accessed by unauthorised individuals. The potentially large footprint of an end-to-end solution for IoT can increase an organisation s exposure to security breaches. There are however a wide range of security products that can be deployed on devices and network and cloud infrastructure that will mitigate this risk. As the number of Internet-connected devices grows, the amount of traffic they generate is expected to rise significantly. For example, Cisco estimates that Internet traffic generated by non-pc devices will rise from 40% in 2014 to just under 70% in Cisco also forecasts that the number of Machine to Machine ( M2M ) connections (including industrial, home,

5 healthcare, automotive, and other IoT verticals) will rise from 24% of all connected devices in 2014 to 43% in Today the World Wide Web has almost become synonymous with the Internet. Most internet traffic is between people and content, making it a defining characteristic of the current internet network. The web experience is largely users downloading and generating content through computers, tablets and smartphones. If the growth projections about IoT become reality, we may see a shift towards more passive Internet interaction by users with objects such as car components, home appliances and self-monitoring devices. These devices send and receive data on the user s behalf, with little human intervention or even awareness. IoT may force a shift in thinking if the most common internet use, and the data derived, comes from passive use with connected objects in the broader environment. The potential realisation of this outcome in a Connected World is a testament to the general-purpose nature of the Internet architecture, which does not place inherent limitations on the applications or services that can make use of the technology. Systems Considerations The Connected World as a result of IoT will place significant demands on businesses and their underlying core technology resources. Data will continue to grow as the key foundation of modern organisations to remain competitive. IoT has resulted in the development of many new technologies and applications, enabling revenue growth through improved service delivery that in turn improves customer acquisition and retention. This places the technology platform at the core of operational effectiveness, as a business-critical asset requiring effective management and strategic investment. An organisation s ability to deliver innovation can be inhibited by current supporting infrastructure. In an era where consumers expect instant response, having a platform that can adapt and scale, as new demands are required, is paramount. To enable flexibility within the technology platform, a Hybrid Cloud solution is most likely suitable, combining the best of current on-premises capability with a scalable cloud hosted delivery capability. The Hybrid Cloud solution is capable of enacting change at a moment s notice, thus supporting agile business operations. The rapid development of IoT poses potential threats to the on-premises platform, with chaos usage peaks and added storage demands. Having only just begun to scratch the surface of IoT data, unless effectively managed,

6 the petabytes of storage required could start to overrun the current platform. The issue isn t just where to store all that data but how are you going to protect it to make sure it s actually available when it s needed for analysis. In trying to meet the evolving demands of enterprise computing, networking is fundamental in connecting users with applications and applications with the required data. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging architecture that is dynamic, manageable, cost-effective, and adaptive - making it ideal for the high-bandwidth, dynamic nature of current application workloads. SDN addresses many of the issues that the static architectures of conventional networks were not designed for in the evolving world of IoT. Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is the relatively new systems platform architecture that is ideally positioned to handle IoT workloads, due to its ease of scalability. The platform architecture help to reduce total cost of ownership and management complexity by integrating compute, storage and virtualization into a single x86 based system platform. The ability to quickly scale-out to meet traditional & future IoT requirements enables the IT department to focus on innovation and delivering maximum value to the business. Lenovo s recent Joint-Venture with Nutanix delivers an architecture approach that dramatically reduces server, storage and virtualization complexity and enables high reliability, dependable security, limitless predictable scalability, simplified management, and faster time to value. While many business industry segments are working to turn the IoT market into a reality, the cloud-hosted platform providers, including: Amazon, Microsoft, IBM & Google, are playing a big part delivering ever-more cost-effective services. Platform growth alone may not be enough, a new IoT style of architecture may be necessary. The result of IoT s proliferation could be a sea change in IT, due to the massive volume of data that IoT produces. The recent trend toward centralising applications to reduce costs and increase security may become unsustainable.

7 In the short term, IoT may affect storage and networking infrastructure - needing to match the growth of increased network traffic and data while implementing additional security measures. Although the implications of IoT can seem daunting, careful planning will prepare for proactive management and provide the opportunity to exploit revenue and productivity opportunities. Conclusion The IoT will affect every part of an organisation from IT, product design and management, through to marketing and sales. The evolution in technology provides organisations with an opportunity to offer new products and levels of service, the way we interact with customers and streamline operations. The ability of the IT department and the infrastructure platform to deliver solutions that capitalise on the IoT will be crucial to an organization s future. How intelligent devices are securely connected via the Internet to the enterprise, capturing data reliably and analysing the massive volumes of machine-generated data in combination with traditional data sources are key issues. The opportunities and challenges are immense in the world of the data driven enterprise. The positive impact that IoT will have on customer service, driving outstanding customer experiences and higher value transactions for brands will lead to significant impact on the organisation s profitability. The IoT has an unprecedented potential to reduce customer effort, increase brand loyalty and elevate customer spend. The capability of an organisation to maximise benefit from IoT opportunities will be largely driven by the competency and flexibility of their IT platform. Having a strategically positioned central platform, combined with the best cloud-hosted solution partners, will give the ability to react quickly and effectively to consumer s changing demands. Intelligent analysis of data flowing from both IoT and more traditional sources will give organisations the opportunity to react quicker than their competition. The real question is Who has the best technology platform? At Advent One we have a team of technical specialists who can advise on the practical methodologies of designing and implementing reliable and scalable IT environments unique to the individual needs of every business. Don t wait until it s too late, set up an obligation-free meeting with our team who can provide trusted advice on solutions specific to your requirements.

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