The physical internet arrives
“Over the past 200 years, the world has experienced two major waves of innovation. First, the Industrial Revolution brought us machines and factories, railways, electricity, air travel, and our lives have never been the same. Then the Internet revolution brought us computing power, data networks, unprecedented access to information and communication, and our lives have never been the same.
Now we are experiencing another metamorphic change: the industrial Internet. It brings together intelligent machines, advanced analytics, and the creativity of people at work. It’s the marriage of minds and machines. And our lives will never be the same.”
-Economist Marco Annunziata at Ted talk
The industrial Internet is the convergence of the global industrial system and machinery with the power of advanced computing, analytics, low-cost sensing and new levels of connectivity permitted by the Internet. Advanced sensors now cost less than $10 apiece, computing power and efficiency have increased nearly 10,000 times since the 1990s, and there are now nine billion machines connected to the Internet—a number Cisco expects to double by 2016. These developments have given birth to new uses in manufacturing, energy conservation, transportation, health care and food distribution.
The New York Times in an article explained that across many industries, products and practices are being transformed by communicating sensors and computing intelligence. The smart industrial gear includes jet engines, bridges and oil rigs that alert their human minders when they need repairs, before equipment failures occur. Computers track sensor data on operating performance of a jet engine, or slight structural changes in an oil rig, looking for tell-tale patterns that signal coming trouble.
It tells us how sensors on fruit and vegetable cartons can track location and sniff the produce, warning in advance of spoilage, so shipments can be rerouted or rescheduled. Computers pull GPS data from railway locomotives, taking into account the weight and length of trains, the terrain and turns, to reduce unnecessary braking and curb fuel consumption by up to 10%.
A GE report explains that a single gas turbine sensor, for example, creates 500 gigabytes of data daily. With approximately 40,000 gas turbines operating worldwide—and assuming three sensors per gas turbine—60 quadrillion bytes of data would be generated per day. That’s 24 times the daily traffic generated by the global Internet in 2000; and that’s just for one sector of manufacturing.
Our perspective
The Internet has transformed the way we live, work and learn. The Internet in a very basic sense is an infrastructure, a network of globally connected computers, which makes it possible to access, send, share data and information with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Data and information existed before the Internet also, in all human societies, and was recorded, stored and transmitted through oral, written and other means. In fact, data and information are limitless and present everywhere and more data and information is created every moment.
It’s not possible to capture or record every data and though it may appear that the amount of information and data created through the Internet today is massive, it doesn’t even represent the minute fraction of all the data being generated every day in the world.
The Internet provided a way to connect networks of computers around the world and it unleashed the information age. Now, imagine the magnitude of information that would be generated by connecting the physical objects beyond computers. Despite all things already on the network, it is estimated that more than 99% of physical objects that may one day join the network are still unconnected. There will be about 40 billion devices connected by 2020, e.g., fridge, security system, music system and each of the speakers. This is the Internet of things – the connection of people, process, data, and things.
Industries in the future will be 2×7 behemoths operating ceaselessly, generating unimaginable amounts of data, rapidly multiplying intelligence, all without much involvement of humans. Corporations will need to create management structures that can rapidly operationalise the strategic insights gleaned from analysing the enormous amount of data. This will require new skills and also new approaches to performance management and design.
Gazing through the crystal ball
- Internet of things is among the fastest emerging applications of the internet. Finding job or entrepreneurial opportunities will be very easy as of now for all kinds of educational and experience background because it is about everything around us. Seriously explore the domain of digitalization of every device/appliance/apparatus.
- All kinds of products and services will be redefined with the wider acceptance of the Internet of things. A world of entrepreneurial opportunity awaits all of us in creating new products and service experiences by connecting and ‘commanding’ a network of connected world of things.
- Interdisciplinary teams will be must for the working of Internet of things. Multidisciplinary and productive team play skills are very important now.
- Smart city, smart buildings, smart appliances, smart wearables etc. are all part of industrial applications of internet.
