Where and When Should IoT Data Deliver the Goods?

B. Shimmin

Summary Bullets:

• Where and how quickly do companies analyze IoT data? Do they iteratively push device data into a central warehouse en mass for analysis later, or do they process all of that data at or close to the source in real-time?

• It turns out that enterprises want answers not just here and now but also later and in greater detail, making the case for combined distributed and centralized data processing.

I maintain a friendly but superficial relationship with math, but I understand enough to admire ideas like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Erwin Schrodinger’s related and now famous thought experiment about the wellbeing of secretly imprisoned felines. It’s intriguing to think that for certain pairs of physical properties, like both the location and velocity of a given particle, you can calculate a particle’s speed, but in so doing you forfeit the ability to also know its location.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference: IBM Exec Shares Insights into the Future of Swift

C. Dunlap

Summary Bullets:

• IBM furthers its end-to-end Swift development efforts through new cloud tools that simplify server-side development, building an IBM Swift Sandbox website for code experimentation.
• IBM will continue to encourage enterprises to move workloads to the cloud by easing end-to-end app development through buildpacks customized for Xcode developers and advanced connectivity in API services.

During this week’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, IBM’s announcement of updates to Swift 3 illustrate its investment in technology that eases end-to-end development in the Apple ecosystem (please see Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference: IBM Addresses Cloud-based and Server-side Development with Swift Tools, June 15, 2016).

Live at LiveWorx: Industrial IoT in All Its Glory

K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

• At LiveWorx, PTC showed off exciting new capabilities for Industrial IoT, including the use of Augmented Reality, a potential game-changer for both IoT providers and customers

• The IoT ecosystem, in demos and panels, also showed off new wares, but many acknowledged a long road to meaningful revenue and profits

PTC LiveWorx, held in Boston from June 7th through 9th, is an annual “love fest” for the industrial IoT industry – the majority of presentations and demos showed off new technologies, software, hardware, analytics, dashboards, application enablers, vertical solutions, and consulting services that point to an even more compelling future for industrial IoT. In particular, the use of augmented reality, which PTC now has in its arsenal through its acquisition of Vuforia in late 2015, has the potential to allow customers to sell, demo, manage, operate, and troubleshoot their products more effectively, and cost-effectively prototype new features.

Verizon DBIR Controversy Highlights Need for Data-Driven Research Transparency

E. Parizo

Summary Bullets:

• The recent DBIR controversy over a seemingly flawed top 10 list is an opportunity to highlight that data-driven security research is no panacea for breach prevention.
• Data-driven security research shouldn’t be a drive to develop conclusions; it should an attempt to foster discussion and collaboration.

The annual release of the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report is usually widely anticipated and well received for its data-driven insights on which attack techniques led to successful data breaches in the previous year, and what preventative actions enterprises might undertake to avoid future attacks.

This year’s report, however, has been unusually criticized because the authors’ list of the top 10 most exploited vulnerabilities (in successful breaches) seemed flawed to many vulnerability experts.

Meet the New Informatica, Same as the Old Informatica (Thankfully)

B. Shimmin

Summary Bullets:

• Now a private company, Informatica marked a significant change of direction at its annual user conference with the introduction of an end-to-end marketing analytics solution aimed squarely at business buyers.
• Have the big data market and Informatica itself moved beyond the era of databases and data discovery to embrace pure business outcomes built upon data-driven insights? The answer is of course both ‘no’ and ‘yes,’ in that order.

It seems lately that the entire technology industry has gone insane… but in a good way, of course.  Case in point: Informatica.  At its annual user conference in San Francisco last week, the decades-old data management software purveyor announced that it was suddenly and completely enamored with business outcomes.  This is in no way unexpected or even unusual, as many, many technology providers are feverishly following the money.

The Sobering Reality of Unlicensed Spectrum Use is Likely to Give CSPs an IoT Hangover

I. Grant

Summary Bullets:

• IT, not communications service providers, are customers’ preferred partners in both enterprise and municipal IoT projects.

• Operators have to expand their skills base and business models to cope with the widespread use of unlicensed spectrum and to stay relevant.

A new Current Analysis report on enterprise IoT has some sobering news for mobile operators that hope to cash in on the hype around IoT. What’s more, the CA findings are backed by the Global Mobile Suppliers Association, which has just published a report on telecoms in smart cities.