Industrial Internet hype is reaching its peak, but companies are only now beginning to take advantage of the new possibilities.
Industrial Internet hype is reaching its peak, but companies are only now beginning to take advantage of the new possibilities.
Major companies such as Cisco and General Electric (GE) have raised the hype around the industrial Internet over the last couple of years. Their visions feature intelligent sensors, increased device uptime, advanced machine learning, and data transmission between billions of devices, all in the name of smarter, smoother globe.
Now that the discussion on industrial Internet is going strong, we can take a look of the coming year. A new report by research firm Forrester highlights the most important industrial Internet trends for the coming year, as well as their impact for companies. So, where the world is going?
According to Forrester, the development of the industrial Internet is entering a new phase, in which more companies will begin to utilize the available technology.
So far there has been much talk about the futuristic gadgets such as wearables, sensors and new wireless technologies. The next priority, however, will be new software platforms and cloud services that allow devices to communicate, upload and perform analytics securely.
Large companies such as GE have already begun to offer platforms that make developing industrial Internet applications easier than ever. The main focus of the recent developments have not yet been in transforming businesses or in the introduction of completely new business models, but in operational efficiency and cost reduction.
The ability to cut costs has been hailed as one of the most important benefits of industrial Internet. The possibility of enabling devices to communicate intelligently with each other will help companies to reduce costs in areas, such as maintenance. In reality, this will lead to job losses in machine maintenance.
What’s also expected is a growing need for industrial Internet experts. Here the need will of course depend on decisions made by Finnish companies, but in Silicon Valley things are already happening fast. CIOs have now even more to lose if they do not follow carefully the developments within their industry.