Creating New Opportunities with the IoT, Big Data and Cloud Ecosystem
The amount of information collected and made available via the IoT (Internet of Things) systems, Cloud and Big Data forms an ecosystem of data. The technologies are used to receive, store and process various data from various sources, and the collected and made available information creates new opportunities, both for already established businesses and start-ups.
IoT – to gather our information with sensors
The IoT defines a computer principle that objects that are equipped with sensors are able to gather information and send the collected data to an external storage. Now the data generation process via connected allows us to receive an amount of exponential data of any type, whether in our personal or professional lives.
We will see more and more connected objects that are able to gather information about our actions and habits from our daily digital interactions. For example, many of us have already been using connected refrigerators, connected watches or home automation devices.
Big Data – to collect and process the raw data
The concept of Big Data can then come into play. With the large amount of data collected in raw format, it is time to think of the capacity of storing, processing and analyzing a large amount of data to derive relevant information to the market, particularly from a business and marketing standpoint.
Companies and governments are aware of the potentials of these technologies to improve their processes and increase their efficiency. For example, in many countries, the health sector has started launching online consultation on the Big Data to seek advice on the use of medical data.
Cloud – to store and host analysis capabilities
The Cloud solutions offer the ability to host large amounts of data, serves as a base for the entire ecosystem. The infrastructure plays a vital role. All data is hosted in different data centres around the world – on physical infrastructure – allowing store but also to host Big Data solutions for processing this data.
Cloud allows great flexibility, since the storage capacity can quickly be extended if needed. The technical equipment of the data centre also allows achieving good performance in terms of transfer. The data can be received and returned by minimizing latency.
There are many safety rules are also applied: First to meet different standards of data protection, and other hand to ensure that a copy of the data will remain in case of disaster (fire servers, equipment failure, etc.).
Innovative services made possible through this ecosystem
The IoT, Big Data and Cloud ecosystem allows you to see the emergence of many startups specializing in real-time data analytics and visualization. The goal is to provide the businesses an accurate view of the markets and customers through the analysis of a large amount of data.
Many start-ups, but also well-established companies, also managed to take advantage of this ecosystem to create services based on new business models around the data. The advantages are many:
- The data can give a very good view of usage and consumer behaviour.
- The data can be reused to supply a service.
- The interaction between smartphones and connected devices enables the creation of value-added services.
For example, with a connected refrigerator, when the level of food it contains becomes low, it will directly send a shopping list to a smartphone. It is also conceivable that a company can develop a third party application to retrieve this data and create automatic delivery at home shopping system.
The IoT, Big Data and Cloud ecosystem allows the emergence of new business models, focusing on the maximum customization of the user experience. Although IoT and Big Data are now under the spotlight, the third pillar – the cloud – is the foundation of this ecosystem.
