Internet Everywhere: What Does It Mean for the Marketplace?

A few weeks ago, I published a guest post called “The Rise of the Machine and How It Is Going to Change the World” by Fasih Sandhu, which provided us with an overview of the Industrial Internet. As a top consultant in today’s technology field, Fasih writes extensively on the Industrial Internet as well as on the Internet of Everything (you can check out his blogs at http://www.gghc.ca/). Therefore, I asked Fasih if he would provide my tech readership with a second post, this time giving us an overview of the current state of the Internet of Everything.  

The following text is what he submitted to me:

The Internet of Everything (IoE) is a term that was coined by Cisco Systems (NYSE: CSCO). IoE is defined as the networked connection of people, processes, data, and things that makes it more valuable and more relevant, turning information into outcomes that matter to customers and shareholders. IoE includes three types of connections: 1) People-to-People (P2P), 2) People-to-Machine (P2M), and 3) Machine-to-Machine (M2M), and as such, it allows convergence, orchestration, and insights across the previously stand-alone and disparate systems. Data-driven business agility is at the heart of the IoE economy, facilitating decision making for new kinds of innovations, business architectures, and operating models.
   

Watch the Keynote Speech of John Chambers, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Cisco, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held January 6–7, 2014, in Las Vegas, Nevada, in which he along with Toni Vives, Deputy Mayor for Urban Habitat, Barcelona City Council, Spain; Ralph de la Vega, President and CRO, AT&T Mobility; and Rick Smolan, CEO, Against All Odds Productions (The Human Face of Big Data), shared how the IoE creates new capabilities, richer experiences, and unprecedented economic opportunities for countries, enterprises, and individuals.  

Cisco and Partners to Build World's Largest Global Intercloud, Key Enabler of "Internet of Everything"

On March 24, 2014, Cisco made an announcement to invest $1 Billion over the next two years to build Cloud Services to harness the potential of IoE. The Cisco global Intercloud is being architected for IoE, with a distributed network and security architecture designed for high-value application workloads, real-time analytics, “near infinite” scalability, and full compliance with local data sovereignty laws. The first-of-its-kind open Intercloud, which will feature APIs for rapid application development, will deliver a new enterprise-class portfolio of cloud IT services for businesses, service providers, and resellers.

Cisco plans to deliver Global Cloud Services with and through Cisco partners such as Telstra, Allstream, Canopy, Ingram Micro; Logicalis Group, MicroStrategy, OnX Managed Services, SunGard Availability Services, and Wipro Ltd. It expects to expand the addressable cloud market from $22B to $88B between 2013 and 2017. Cisco also claims that its cloud services will be the world’s first truly open, hybrid cloud and will leverage OpenStack for its open standards-based global infrastructure. Cisco's plan is to support any workload, on any hypervisor, and interoperate with any cloud.  

Additional Resources:

• Cisco’s Robert Lloyd Platform blog on Cisco Intercloud
• Cisco Cloud Services opens New Opportunities for Partners by Bob Gault, VP Cloud and Managed Services Partner Organization

• The Rise of the Intercloud by Fabio Gori, Director Worldwide Cloud Marketing Cisco
• Cloud Services to Move the Internet of Everything -- and the SP Business -- Forward, Faster by Doug Webster, VP Global Marketing and Corporate Communication Service Providers Cisco
• http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/innov/IoE.html
• http://internetofeverything.cisco.com/

Big Data and the Internet of Everything (IoE)

Cisco has estimated that 25 billion devices will permanently connect to the Internet by 2015, rising to 50 billion devices by 2020. At that rate, there will be nearly 7 times more devices permanently connected to the Internet than people in the world!

Gartner estimates that there will be more than 200 billion devices that intermittently connect to the Internet by 2020.

According to the IDC, the installed base for the Internet of Things will grow to approximately 212 billion devices by 2020, a number that includes 30 billion connected devices.

As a result, all of these connected devices around the world will generate a tremendous amount of data that needs to be stored in databases and made available for operational and maintenance reporting and predictive analytics. Hence, vendors such as AT&T, Cisco, HP, IBM, and SAP could facilitate and/or could foster partnerships with the municipal, provincial, and federal governments to digitize their service offerings and have a real-time insight into demand and supply. The leading players in the Internet World will play a pivotal role in developing and implementing use cases for applications in the Utilities, Transportation, Healthcare, Education, and other sectors.  

Investments into the Big Data Startups

Big Data startups such as Cloudera and Platfora are attracting tech giants and venture capitalists to make investments into the space. On March 18, 2014, Cloudera raised $160 million from T. Rowe Price, Google Ventures, MSD Capital, and several other top-tier institutional investors.To date, Cloudera has raised $300M in venture funding. Previous investors include Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, and Ignition Partners. Currently, Cloudera is one of six distributors of Hadoop, which is open source at its core, and the market is expected to consolidate. Two versions are from other venture-backed companies, MapR Technologies Inc. and HortonWorks Inc., both of which have talked about going public. The other three are from Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), and Pivotal, which is a joint venture of EMC Corp. and VMware Inc.

On March 19, 2014, Platfora also raised $38 million. The investment was led by Tenaya Capital, which brings Platfora's total financing to $65M. Also participating in this round are Citi Ventures, Cisco, and Allegis Capital, as well as prior investors Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, and In-Q-Tel.

On March 15, 2013, EMC's Chairman and CEO, Joe Tucci, announced the division of EMC into three groups: EMC Information Infrastructure (EMC II), EMC VMware, and EMC Pivotal. Later on, EMC Pivotal, a company at the intersection of big data, PaaS, and agile development, was officially founded on April 1, 2013 and headed by the former CEO of VMware, Paul Maritz. On April 24, 2013, General Electric (NYSE: GE) announced an investment of $105 million in Pivotal that gave it a 10% stake in Pivotal, valuing it at $1 billion. In 2013, GE also opened its Global Software Center in San Ramon, California.

 SAP HANA is eyeing to be the solution of choice for different industries for the real-time, next-generation database deployed on an in-memory computing platform from IBM, HP, Fujitsu, Cisco, Dell, and Hitachi to deliver the Predictive Analytics solutions.  

Big Data Use Cases in the IoE World

Healthcare | SmartGrid | Retail | Service Provider | IBM's Big Data  

What About “Security,” “Privacy,” “Data Integrity,” and “Liability” in the Internet of Everything (IoE) World?

One of the biggest challenges with the early adoption and proliferation of the Internet of Everything (IoE), Internet of Things (IoT), and the Industrial Internet concerns information management and legal aspects that surround the storage, distribution, and sharing of the information. Due to its sensitivity and the impact on the governments and people, the National and Internet Regulators (Aviation, Railways, Shipping, Transportation, Utilities, Healthcare, Telecom, etc.) have to work in tandem with the National Security and Intelligence Agencies to develop policies, standards, guidelines, and best practices and to enforce compliance through some kind of rating system as that of Financial Markets.  

What Does It Mean for You?

In my opinion, the success of businesses and professionals in the Big Data Age will depend on their capability to constantly learn, unlearn, and relearn the emerging and cutting-edge technologies with solid skills in leadership and diversity as the world will become a true global village with the mobility of people and businesses. As a result, new business models will emerge! Technical and functional skills in cloud computing, converged platforms, big data, information management, and information security will be in demand and open source solutions backed up by tech giants such as IBM, HP, Cisco, and GE will become more prevalent in the world dominated by the IoE.  

Author Bio

Fasih Sandhu is the Director of Greater Golden Horseshoe Consultants in Ontario, Canada, currently residing in the Greater New York Metropolitan Area. He specializes in optimizing IT and telecom ecosystems to extend business capabilities, cut costs, and drive ROI. His background as an advisor, management consultant, project manager, and ICT leader has provided him with a unique look at how improved workflow, technology, robust project delivery, and optimized organizational structures can impact business growth, innovation, and productivity. Fasih holds the PMP certification and is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC). He also has a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer and Information Systems and is a senior member of the IEEE.

Fasih can be reached via info@gghc.ca or www.gghc.ca.