Enthusiasm for the Internet of Things has reached an all-time high. In 2013 alone, venture capitalists spent more than $1 billion dollars investing in the IoT space. With “smart” appliances and devices, IoT covers wearable smart devices, cloud services to hardware companies. Nest, a Google company, detects temperatures inside homes and automatically adjusts it by tracking its user’s habit. These technologies are quickly developing and with it come challenges such as bridging infrastructure gaps, abiding by privacy concerns and making the concept a reality. These challenges can’t be addressed without the kinds of agile software development and infrastructure approaches pioneered by the DevOps movement.Sep. 20, 2014 07:45 PM EDT Reads: 1,652
Predicted by Gartner to add $1.9 trillion to the global economy by 2020, the Internet of Everything (IoE) is based on the idea that devices, systems and services will connect in simple, transparent ways, enabling seamless interactions among devices across brands and sectors. As this vision unfolds, it is clear that no single company can accomplish the level of interoperability required to support the horizontal aspects of the IoE.
The AllSeen Alliance, announced in December 2013, was formed with the goal to advance IoE adoption and innovation in the connected home, healthcare, education, automotive and enterprise. Members of this nonprofit consortium include some of the world’s leading, consumer electronics manufacturers, home appliances manufacturers, service providers, retailers, enterprise technology companies, startups, and chipset manufacturers. Initially based on the AllJoyn™ open source project, the AllJoyn software and services framework will be expanded with contributions from member companies and the open source community. 
There’s Big Data, then there’s really Big Data from the Internet of Things. IoT is evolving to include many data possibilities like new types of event, log and network data. The volumes are enormous, generating tens of billions of logs per day, which raise data challenges. Early IoT deployments are relying heavily on both the cloud and managed service providers to navigate these challenges.
In her session at 6th Big Data Expo®, Hannah Smalltree, Director at Treasure Data, to discuss how IoT, Big Data and deployments are processing massive data volumes from wearables, utilities and other machines.
Larry Ellison turned 70 and has decided to turn over the CEO reins at Oracle. Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, both in their 50s, will function as a “Ms. Inside and Mr. Outside” as co-CEOs, at least for awhile.
Serious reverberations will be felt within this highly competitive company and the highly competitive industry in which it makes its money.
Even while guiding his yacht to an America's Cup title, Larry Ellison remained in firm control of the company he founded in 1977. He still has an ownership stake of about 20% of the company--1 billion or so shares of Oracle stock worth about $40 billion. Who can imagine that he'll be a docile, passive Chairman?
Yes, he is returning as Chairman, with Jeff Henley, currently in that role, moving aside to be Vice-Chairman. Ellison reports he will also serve as Chief Technology Officer. So it's clear he's not fading from the scene. But he will not be able to micromanage the company by any measure.
What Does It Mean?
Think of all of the very strong executives over the years who rose quickly and highly in Oracle, only to be banished from the kingdom and/or to start their own big companies. Ray Lane, Marc Benioff, and Tom Siebel spring i...
Explosive growth in connected devices. Enormous amounts of data for collection and analysis. Critical use of data for split-second decision making and actionable information. All three are factors in making the Internet of Things a reality. Yet, any one factor would have an IT organization pondering its infrastructure strategy.
How should your organization enhance its IT framework to enable an Internet of Things implementation? In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, James Kirkland, Chief Architect for the Internet of Things and Intelligent Systems at Red Hat, will describe how to revolutionize your architecture and create an integrated, interoperable, reliable system of thousands of devices. Using real-world examples, James will discuss the transformative process taken by companies in moving from a two-tier to a three-tier topology for IoT implementations. 
Technology is enabling a new approach to collecting and using data. This approach, commonly referred to as the “Internet of Things” (IoT), enables businesses to use real-time data from all sorts of things including machines, devices and sensors to make better decisions, improve customer service, and lower the risk in the creation of new revenue opportunities. In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Dave Wagstaff, Vice President and Chief Architect at BSQUARE Corporation, will discuss the real benefits to focus on, how to understand the requirements of a successful solution, the flow of data, and how to best approach deploying an IoT solution that will drive results. 
I write and study often on the subject of digital transformation - the digital transformation of industries, markets, products, business models, etc. In brief, digital transformation is about the impact that collected and analyzed data can have when used to enhance business processes and workflows. If Amazon knows your preferences for particular books and films based upon captured data, then they can apply analytics to predict related books and films that you may like. This improves sales. This is a simple example, but let me tell you what I learned yesterday in sunny and warm San Francisco about more complex applications.
IoT is still a vague buzzword for many people. In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Mike Kavis, Vice President & Principal Cloud Architect at Cloud Technology Partners, will discuss the business value of IoT that goes far beyond the general public's perception that IoT is all about wearables and home consumer services. The presentation will also discuss how IoT is perceived by investors and how venture capitalist access this space. Other topics to discuss are barriers to success, what is new, what is old, and what the future may hold.
The Domain Name Service (DNS) is one of the most important components in networking infrastructure, enabling users and services to access applications by translating URLs (names) into IP addresses (numbers). Because every icon and URL and all embedded content on a website requires a DNS lookup loading complex sites necessitates hundreds of DNS queries. In addition, as more internet-enabled ‘Things’ get connected, people will rely on DNS to name and find their fridges, toasters and toilets. According to a recent IDG Research Services Survey this rate of traffic will only grow. What’s driving this increase? The growth in volume is largely attributed to the rollout of new services and applications along with expanding migration to the cloud and traffic spikes. The Internet of Things will also place a strain on DNS services. Are you ready for this surge of new services and applications along with potential DNS threats? 
Building low cost wearable devices can enhance the quality of our lives. In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Sai Yamanoor, Embedded Software Engineer at Altschool, will provide an example of putting together a small keychain within a $50 budget that educates the user about the air quality in their surroundings. He will also provide examples such as building a wearable device that provides transit or recreational information. He will review the resources available to build wearable devices at home including open source hardware, the raw materials required and the options available to power such wearable devices.
Where historically app development would require developers to manage device functionality, application environment and application logic, today new platforms are emerging that are IoT focused and arm developers with cloud based connectivity and communications, development, monitoring, management and analytics tools. In her session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Seema Jethani, Director of Product Management at Basho Technologies, will explore how to rapidly prototype using IoT cloud platforms and choose the right platform to match application requirements, security and privacy needs, data management capabilities and development tools. 
P2P RTC will impact the landscape of communications, shifting from traditional telephony style communications models to OTT (Over-The-Top) cloud assisted & PaaS (Platform as a Service) communication services. The P2P shift will impact many areas of our lives, from mobile communication, human interactive web services, RTC and telephony infrastructure, user federation, security and privacy implications, business costs, and scalability.
In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Erik Lagerway, Co-founder of Hookflash, will walk through the shifting landscape of traditional telephone and voice services to the modern P2P RTC era of OTT cloud assisted services.
We were in contact recently with Shrikant Pattathil (pictured below), Executive Vice President of Harbinger Systems. Here are some of his thoughts about healthcare, the IoT, and disruption: IoT Journal: Healthcare, with all of its systems and dataflows, seems an ideal area for IoT solutions. What is Harbinger Systems doing in this area?
Shrikant Pattathil: Being a service provider we work with many product development companies who are building new IoT-based applications to solve problems that plague the healthcare industry. For example, there is a need for applications to manage your medicine dosage, seek help, and notify your care provider.
IoT Journal: And how do you go about addressing these problems?
Shrikant: We are approaching IoT from mobile and cloud perspective. These are our key strengths. We are helping product companies in IoT space to quickly build the mobile interfaces for their product offerings. We are also helping them to place the data on the cloud in a secure way, so that they can truly exploit the benefits of IoT.
IoT Journal: What are the advantages of the IoT here? Cost? Better care? What sorts of metrics can be applied, and are there intangibles as ...
The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly in the process of breaking from its heretofore relatively obscure enterprise applications (such as plant floor control and supply chain management) and going mainstream into the consumer space. More and more creative folks are interconnecting everyday products such as household items, mobile devices, appliances and cars, and unleashing new and imaginative scenarios. We are seeing a lot of excitement around applications in home automation, personal fitness, and in-car entertainment and this excitement will bleed into other areas. On the commercial side, more manufacturers will embed sensors in their products and connect them to the Internet to monitor their performance and offer pro-active maintenance services. As a result, engineers who know how to incorporate software and networking into their mechanical designs will become more in demand. 
Launched this June at the Javits Center in New York City with over 6,000 delegate attendance, the largest IoT event in the world, 2nd international Internet of @ThingsExpo will take place November 4-6, 2014, at the Santa Clara ConventionCenter in Santa Clara, California with estimated 7,000 plus attendance over three days. @ThingsExpo is co-located with 15th international Cloud Expo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading IoT industry players in the world. In 2014, more than 200 companies will be present at the @ThingsExpo show floor, including global players, and hottest new technology pioneers.
Over the summer Gartner released its much anticipated annual Hype Cycle report and the big news is that Internet of Things has now replaced Big Data as the most hyped technology. Indeed, we’re hearing more and more about this fascinating new technological paradigm. Every other IT news items seems to be about IoT and its implications on the future of… 
One of the most exciting parts of this week's Apple Watch launch was the example of the BMW watch app. This app allows you to see the charging status of your BMWi electric car, right from your wrist. You can also check the status of the doors of your car (important information such as if they are locked or not!). Although the star of the show was the watch app, APIs had a cameo appearance, since the information shown on the watch is fetched in real-time from APIs.
When it comes to the smart home, big names like Nest and Dropcam have gotten most of the attention due to their product success and lucrative acquisition figures. But as impressive as these products have been, there are a multitude of other unknown products ranging from door locks to basic thermostats that require connectivity and... 
For the past few months, I’ve done something which is dorky even by my own dorky standards: I’ve often gone out in public with two wearable devices on my wrist. One has been a smartwatch of some sort. (At the moment, it’s Motorola’s Moto 360.) The other has usually been Jawbone’s Up 24 fitness band.
The global village, mobile devices, online marketplaces, social networks, and on-demand entertainment all have a part to play. People all over the world are increasing the time they spend in the virtual world. They’re buying, selling, sharing, studying, developing apps, hanging out in social networks, and starting to use digital currencies that bypass traditional banking.
Alongside these community-driven ideas, we are also seeing enormous change in business to business relationships. Cloud computing enables any size business to obtain and manage big-business manufacturing, warehousing, marketing, data analytics, enterprise applications and global spread. Supply chains are radically altered: a business of any size can buy, produce and sell globally, and leverage vertically and horizontally integrated supply chains.
From telemedicine to smart cars, digital homes and industrial monitoring, the explosive growth of IoT has created exciting new business opportunities for real time calls and messaging. In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Ivelin Ivanov, CEO and Co-Founder of Telestax, will share some of the new revenue sources that IoT created for Restcomm – the open source telephony platform from Telestax. Ivelin Ivanov is a technology entrepreneur who founded Mobicents, an Open Source VoIP Platform, to help create, deploy, and manage applications integrating voice, video and data. He is the co-founder of TeleStax, an Open Source Cloud Communications company that helps the shift from legacy IN/SS7 telco networks to IP-based cloud comms. An early investor in multiple start-ups, he still finds time to code for his companies and contribute to open source projects.
For those of you who like to post food pictures, this is something I can see being a benefit. Smart Chopsticks! Yup, you heard that right. Soon you’ll be able to poke that dim sum and know if the food is tainted. Baidu, China’s internet giant, unveiled them at their annual conference last week. While […]
Nest’s thermostat and Protect smoke detector may help automate your home, but they haven’t actually talked directly to home automation systems so far — a bit of a discrepancy, don’t you think? All should be well now, though, since the Works with Nest program has just expanded to support the whole-home automation gear from Control4, Crestron, RTI and URC. If you’re fortunate enough to have one of those systems, you can now integrate Nest equipment with home theaters, lighting and anything else that talks to one of the supported control hubs.
The Internet has changed the way businesses are constructed: vertical integrations and home-grown systems are being steadily replaced by off-the-shelf solutions, SaaS integrations, and web-based workflows. Documents are no longer stored on a file server halfheartedly maintained by your IT department, they’re centralized in a document-storage site like Dropbox or Box.com. Productivity software is no longer something that lives on your desktop computer in your office, but rather on the cloud using Google Drive or Office365.
Earlier this summer, Berlin-based artist and coder Julian Oliver released Glasshole.sh, a simple and free piece of software designed to detect Google Glass and boot it from any local Wi-Fi network. That DIY idea, says Oliver, was so popular among Glass’s critics that he’s now offering his cyborg-foiling hack to the masses in a much... 
In 2013, the National Football League struck a landmark deal with Microsoft that gives Xbox users exclusive interactive access to games each week and requires coaches and coordinators to use Surface tablets on the sidelines. The deal is worth a staggering $400 million over the next five years, which makes one very loud, boisterous statement: Technology is big business in sports.
It isn’t exactly groundbreaking news. Networks and stadiums have been implementing technology designed to enhance the viewer experience for decades. The Jumbotron is a perfect example. Arrowhead Stadium, home to the Kansas City Chiefs, built its in 1991 — 23 years ago. But now, big sports are thinking tech on a much smaller scale, and the newest gizmos and gadgets are poised to change the way we view games and matches forever.
