latoga labs

Clarifying My Vision of the IoT Journey

June 15, 2016 3 Comments

With all the customer and partner conversations I’ve had over the past few months, it’s always good to sit back and document your vision and work to clarify it over time. In that sense, here is my vision of how IoT is a Journey to a Dynamic Ecosystem:

IoT is a Journey to a Dynamic Ecosystem…What’s Your Destination?

All the IoT related discussions I’ve had starts off with one or more types of Things.

Stage 1 is always connecting that Thing to the Internet (link level initially and eventually data communication level) and then collecting data from that Thing. I’m actually a bit amazed at how many customers, in early stage projects, have no vision of what’s beyond that! They are usually focused on just the operational data that can be captured from the thing and collecting it into a big data repository of some sort. Yet so many don’t focus on the operational aspects of all these things out there…how to efficiently scale their connection to your solution, keep them all organized, and track their state within a lifecycle. Some ignore this need all together while others try to build this operational capability (taking time away from adding true value).

Stage 2 is the logical extension of Stage 1, I have all this operational data…let’s analyze and optimize! This is where a data scientist may be employed to analyze all the collected data to understand trends. If we’re talking about Industrial Internet of Things then they are looking to predict when a Thing may fail and/or optimize it’s run time state. Even for the Internet of Other Things, there is still a need to understand the state of a thing to optimize it’s usage (like turning off the Thing when outside it’s hours of usage). Being able to allow certain people or systems to send commands to a Thing over a control plane is key in order to mitigate a failure or negative consequence of a failure. And integrating with other operational data sources in real time to broaden the operational view.

Stage 3 is where most of the more advanced customer’s I’ve talked to have their visions initially set. They know they need to expose and share the data and access to their Things with others. And this is where the excitement builds for them as this is where new revenue generation models get defined…and redefined. This is also where I start to shake my head at a few “IoT Platforms” that have come along recently that claim to help solve the monetization problem of IoT.

Monetization is the secret sauce that you need to create for your IoT Solution.

Someone else can’t do this for you. The true root of the monetization challenge is being able to support dynamic ecosystem security, a method of controlling access across the entire ecosystem of people, things, and systems in a fashion where you can programmatically change the access levels. Without that that type of security model you can’t control which different groups of users have access to different aspects of a Thing and charge for the increased value that is provided.

Stage 4 is the constantly evolving stage (not calling it an end state as this journey doesn’t end) that true visionary companies and projects seem to have, one that involves sharing of their data and Thing access across multiple 3rd parties and combining it in real time with multiple 3rd party data sources. The number of different users and groups who need access to the control plane as well as the number of data sources hooked together on the data integration plane is complex and evolves with the demands of the business.

This is my view of how IoT is a Journey…where do you agree or disagree?

(and yes, there is a platform out there that allows you to build IoT Solutions to meet every stage of this journey…but that’s another post…)

Ecosystems are Key to Unlocking IoT Value

May 13, 2016 Leave a Comment

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Yesterday I spent a few hours at the Internet of Things World expo in Santa Clara, CA. One common thread that appeared again and again in conversations was how ecosystem enablement is key to unlocking the promised value of IoT.

During a conversation about IoT enabling medical devices and the types of data and actions that they need to support, the conversation quickly elevated into how that device needed to be part of a larger ecosystem. The device manufacturer (the gentleman I was talking to) needs to see low level operational data from the device in order to sell value added maintenance services to the buyer of the device. But the buyers of that device needs to be able to see all the devices they own and where they live in the device lifecycle (ready for deployment, at a hospital, at a patient’s home, being recovered from deployment, etc.). And then here are multiple levels of users of that device: The Hospital needs to be able to see data from all devices they have deployed, grant access to slices of the data collected from the device to a doctor or nurse based on who’s currently on duty or assigned to a patient; The patient also wants to have access to the information from that device to feel empowered and part of their care program. And then there is the HIPAA requirements and privacy concerns regarding the data coming from those devices, how do you support all the above use cases and ensure privacy? And then consider the security around sending commands to that device to adjust the monitoring parameters or the amount of medicine being dispensed.

And this was just one of the conversations from yesterday. Same trend happened when discussing automotive telematics system, a hospitality industry personnel optimization project, a travel industry concierge project, a manufacturing operational monitoring project, and even a consumer based mobile application for social engagement. All different vertical or industry focused solutions…same horizontal need, participating in a larger ecosystem.

Many people who start down a path to creating an IoT solution (or just IoT enabling something) don’t realize that the real value that IoT enables isn’t just around connecting and collecting data. It’s about how that device needs join a larger ecosystem of people, data, and legacy system. Real value starts to be unlocked when there are win-win-win scenarios across the entire ecosystem. And many of those scenarios won’t be visible immediately but will evolve over time.

After having hundreds of IoT conversations over the past 6 months this is the strongest recurring trend I have seen. Many times just understanding each of the groups of users who need to interact with a Thing can be a challenge, let alone all the nuances around security and different levels of data and access to the controls of a Thing. And that Thing needs to interact as part of a large ecosystem that doesn’t just include people but also other things, legacy applications, and other data source.

Are you’re IoT plans being built around Ecosystem thinking?

Are you’re technology decisions being made with Ecosystem enablement (now and for the future) in mind?

This is one of the core strengths that attracted me to joining Covisint last fall. The Covisint PaaS has three main pillars of functionality which work in an integrated fashion for ecosystem enablement:

Identity and Access Management to handle the dynamic security model that is required to enable an ecosystem and not only scale to support Millions of users and things but also handle the complex relationships that exists between all members of the ecosystem.
IOT Services to provide realtime messaging for Things and not only describe, manage, and secure the capabilities of each Thing at scale within the ecosystem but also to manage the lifecycle of each Thing as it lives within that ecosystem.
Messaging and Orchestration to not only integrate Things with legacy applications and other data sources, both internally and externally to an organization, but to also become the single integration point to open up all your legacy application and data.

Leave a comment and let me know if you agree or disagree with my observation around ecosystem thinking being key to unlocking IoT value. Let’s talk about your ecosystem…

Shifting of Focus

November 30, 2015 Leave a Comment

The past week was a nice period of downtime to try and catch up on the personal “not done yet” pile, spend some time with family and prepare for changes. The first change you should notice is a new look and feel here on the blog. I appreciate your patience as the last few tweaks are made to the site. The reason for this public change is to signal a personal shifting of focus.

Shifting away from Virtualization and VMware

After an amazing seven and a half years at VMware as part of their Global Accounts team, a new area of focus has been building for me personally and a new career opportunity came my way that enhances that focus. After today I will no longer be employed by VMware. My experience at VMware was career defining in many ways and I look forward to still keeping an eye on VMware as one of the cornerstones of IT infrastructure as well as a stock holder. Leaving all the friends and colleagues that I’ve built at VMware over the years is hard, but I know that the teams within VMware will successfully execute on the many opportunities that lay ahead.

As a parting gift to my VMware related readers, make sure you bookmark the Getting More Out of VMware webcast series. This has been a critical learning resource for all my previous clients who were heavily leveraging VRA and VROPS within their enterprises. You can also reference the historical webcasts on virtSanity’s page, thanks to Ryan Cartwright for maintaining this!

Speaking of maintaining, my VMW Launchpad will now be moving into historical snapshot mode. The Launchpad was a means of sharing the most critical VMware related links for my clients. Under it was the VMware Network Port List, listing all the ports used across all the VMware Products (a public resource that was built by many individuals across VMware); and my VMware Acronym page, helping to decipher the acronym soup that developed around VMware over the years. All these pages will not be updated moving forward but will be left in place for historical reference and existing links.

This also marks an end to my Virtualization Roundup (#VRU) tweets. This was a habit I got into, leveraging that tag when I shared Virtualization or VMware related items on twitter. And for my previous VMware clients, this will likely mark an end to the account newsletters that I published on a rough quarterly basis.

Shifting Toward Internet of Things (IoT) via Covisint

The new area of focus that I have been working on personally for over a year now has been the Internet of Things. Initially from a personal perspective as a user of consumer IoT solutions. Evolving to exploring how IoT could be leveraged to help members of the sandwich generation, like myself, assist our aging parents and ourselves with the challenges associated with aging, the needs of maintaining privacy, and the complexity of family being geographically spread. And eventually leading me to Covisint, a IoT Platform as a Service.

Internet of Things, sometimes referred to as Internet of Everything (IoE), is a term that has been around for at least 4-5 years (if personal memory serves me right). Over my tenure supporting Cisco as one of my Global Accounts at VMware, I heard that term often from Cisco leadership during internal vendor meetings and quarterly earnings calls. The simplistic way of thinking about it was devices, billions of them, connecting to the Internet requiring more IP’s and generating more traffic (and cynically requiring more networking infrastructure). But as this idea has been explored more over the years by many that physical connection becomes just the first step of a much longer journey around disruption of existing business models and customer’s expectations from the devices they own, evolving into a continual ownership experience through device augmented experiences.

Whether that device is a smart phone, watch, thermostat, sprinkler controller, automobile, tractor, or airplane the expectations of the user of that device have changed and that drives a whole new set of business opportunities for companies. Companies that have realized this shift of expectation are disrupting larger established competitors, disrupting themselves, or are on track to become part of the 50% of the S&P500 that won’t be on that list in 10 years. These opportunities are focused around data collection from the device, a cloud based platform to securely communicate with the device and the user, and true joint value add services for the device producer and owner. Covisint provides the cloud based platform that any IoT based services would need as part of their software infrastructure, allowing businesses to focus on quickly iterating on providing a new customer experience.

Personally, I feel we are entering the slope of enlightenment around IoT and the eventual plateau of productivity will change the world that we all live in and that my children will see as normal. Like any paradigm shift of this nature, there are risks involved. Not just around security but the large impact some of this change will have on business, laws, and society.

That is the focus shift that you will see here at latoga labs. I have joined Covisint as Director of Strategic Alliances and will be writing more about IoT, touching on the technology of an IoT PaaS, but focusing more on the business impacts of IoT and challenges associated with those impacts. And there will continue to be the occasional flotsam of other items that catch my interest. I hope that long time readers of the blog will continue with me on this journey and I look forward to the new readers and their participation.