Computerworld, Singapore: Cognizant’s Venture Leader of Engineering and Manufacturing Solutions Says Companies Seeking Game-Changing Innovation Must Quickly Embrace IoT

“The promise of ambient computing―electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people―is a powerful concept, which was once the stuff of science fiction, but is almost within our reach now,” writes Venkataraman Krishnan. Excerpts:

“Innovative companies are adopting the Internet of Things (IoT) strategy and technology to rethink their products and services and redefine their relationships with customers, employees and partners.

Collectively, the power of these technologies can be harnessed for businesses to save costs by improving operations and eliminating inefficiencies. The opportunities unleashed by smart products are seemingly limitless. Companies seeking game-changing innovation or new levels of efficiencies need to quickly embrace IoT in order to stay abreast of the accelerating IoT market.

However, building and outfitting IT environments with cloud‑connected, data‑transmitting and self‑aware electronics is only a part of the deal. For ambient intelligence to really work, smart devices, smart rooms and the smart things inside them need to speak a common language. Many organizations still face a road-bump as they await universal standardization and regulatory bodies to make IoT a reality.

The issues we face lie in the multitude of languages, protocols and standards, as well as the lack of agreement between each layer of the IoT.

Trying to achieve an industry‑wide acceptance of one unified standard might be a wild goose chase, even though this is not the best scenario for users across the extended enterprise.

This lack of standards might be overcome with a consolidated approach that meets the needs of various use cases and real-world deployments. In other words, ambient computing is moving away from a singular Internet of Things towards a plural “Internets of Things” that operate independently but can still connect to the public network as required.

Pioneering standardization groups may collaborate on different layers of IoT in areas such as consolidated protocols for devices and their connectivity; data management protocols, including collection, storage, modeling and analytics and application protocols that can be deployed to devices and desired ecosystems. The idea would be to develop an IoT framework that encompasses all the layers with hooks and connectors, covering all involved entities, from devices and networks to machine-to-machine and Web standards.”

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