INTERNET OF THINGS

In our first report Things: Internet of Business Opportunities we reported on a tipping point concerning a dazzling impact on the whole economy. Connected things offer new opportunities to combat waste in the broadest sense of the term. This waste occurs among all parties: clients, suppliers, governmental bodies, service providers and the manufacturing industry. Applying digital things, sensors, actuators, apps and SMACT demands a certain mindset as well as concrete actions to optimize process and event chains, and to translate surprising new opportunities into new products and services. Our report offers an overview of recent developments and tips to accelerate your Things approach.

In the second report we focused on the personalized internet of things. We are witnessing a computer boom in terms of kinds, shapes and sizes – around, on or inside the body. Therefore we explored the coming transition toward a more empathic and contextual form of computerization. The emergence of wearable computing and other forms of empathic ‘things’ seems a logical further step: even more intimate, more human-oriented, and ubiquitous. We explored this development and present seven manifestations that can define the impact on business, such as the ‘quantified employee’ and the ‘body as the new password’.

In our last report we took the city as the centre of things and asked ourselves: when will the Internet change our cities like it changed our lives? The report shows how the five basic SMACT technologies are moving the creation of 21st century urban environments into top gear. We provide a status update on Smart Cities today and how developments like Senseable Cities and Cities as a Platform provide both new dynamics and opportunities for blending the digital and the physical infrastructure of our world together. SMACT will transform the city into a platform to blend bricks and clicks seamlessly together. The report provides a analysis of how this is already becoming a reality for retailers and presents what companies and organizations of all trades could learn from the accelerating convergence of bricks and clicks.

The fourth stage of the Industrial Revolution is upon us due to the far-reaching integration, accelerated by the Internet of Things, of Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT). This creates completely new opportunities as a result of new combinations of mental, physical and mechanical work by integrating the internet, sensors and embedded systems. The Internet of Things enabled IT/OT convergence leads to cost reduction as a consequence of predictive maintenance, speed and intelligence, thanks to Machine-to-Machine communication and improved forms of Human-Machine Interaction. M2M interaction between and within machines and systems is the cyber-physical heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. End-to-end ecosystems – from design and production to client interaction and advanced Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul (MRO) – should be focused on a future in which appliances, devices, things and machines for professionals and private people will communicate with central systems, with one another, and with users for the purpose of providing the best possible facilities to makers, service providers, legislators and customers. Organizations should put IT-OT integration on their digital transformation roadmap, focusing their attention and knowledge from various disciplines, ranging from connectivity, infrastructure, standardization, work processes and risk management to human resources and marketing. The new VINT report provides insights into the IT-OT fusion and presents three recommendations to speed up this integration.

This VINT report explores the internet of things and industrial internet opportunities and presents: GE’s Industrial Internet (of Things and Services that is) What Customers Want and Expect: Connected Service eXperience (CSX) Things and Services from Michelin and Philips IOT with Sogeti