It’s The Design Stupid – Or Why I Think Autonomous Car Driving Adoption Will Depend on Innovative Design

It appears to me that when it comes to the consumer side of this new IoT phenomenon, style, usbility and design of the devices is critical. If the given device is both attractive and intuitive, it will also sell for a premium. Some of the examples that come to mind is the Nest thermostat and of course Google Glass!

I think it all started when Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPod. That design and usability were so completely new, simple, easy to use that it blew our minds. We now want this from all our devices.

In my opinion, autonomous cars will need to follow that trend to gain acceptance. They will need to have such compelling design, style and usability that will make driving secondary, and we will prefer to be inside the car to do things other than driving. I think that Mercedes might have come up with just that sort of vehicle design which was unveiled at the recent CES:

 

The challenge will be to add to the beauty of the style reliability of the technologies that will enable the vehicle’s autonomy to make us completely comfortable to enjoy the ride!

Daniel Obodovski explains IoT

My good friend Daniel Obodovski wrote a very good book, The Silent Intelligence, that provides an excellent overview of the internet of things phenomenon. He and his partner, Daniel Kellmereit, discuss topics such as connected cities, connected homes, connected healthcare, connected cars, and various other connected things, both industrial and commercial.

There are some key points that Daniel and I have discussed often which are well summarized in this video interview he did last year. The day Google acquired Nest (yes, the smart thermostat company!) for over $3 Billion Dollars, made everyone start pay attention to IoT, even though Daniel and I have been involved in this high tech area for over 5 years now!

 

 

Wireless Technologies, Big Data and Healthcare

Ok, this is a bit outside of the usual IoT area, but high tech and healthcare are becoming such a hot topic, that I wanted to share this presentation made by my friend, Dr. Mattison (here is his bio).  He spoke at an intimate gathering of TiE here in San Diego in September 2014. (Start video at 15 minutes if you want to go directly to the start of the presentation). In his presentation Dr. John covers everything from why you should wear your Fitbit, to genomics and social networking, and the transformation of what future of practicing medicine holds, and how doctors will again be healers with the help of these various technologies. In his first slide he has a list of books that he recommends, so stop the video and go to Amazon!

 

IoT and Security – Commnexus Panel Video!

Thank you Commnexus for uploading the video from last week’s M2M SiG panel discussion on the topic of “Making M2M Secure and Economically Viable”. We had an excellent and interactive discussion with the audience and the panelists. Sunvir Gujral from Qualcomm’s Alljoyn organization did a great job as moderator. I was very fortunate to be able to bring together panelists from companies like Viasat, Verizon Wireless, Intedigital, and my friend Neeraj, the CEO of Tagnos. I wanted to get perspectives from people like Neeraj Bhavani, who is actually deploying hospital M2M solutions, Viasat’s Ian Alison, a “hacker” who knows how to break into M2M systems, Verizon’s David Prill representing the carrier perspective, and Interdigital’s Phillip Brown who is in charge of standards in M2M.

 

 

 

 

Please see the video to get a good feel for the various views, and also to see the very interactive participation with the audience! Again, thank you to Commnexus, Latham and Watkins for hosting, and all the panelists for a great event!

IoT and Legacy Enterprises

“International Data Corporation (IDC) has looked at the components, processes, and supporting IT and connectivity for the Internet of Things and expects IoT technology and services spending to generate global revenues of $4.8 trillion in 2012 and $8.9 trillion by 2020, growing at a compound annual rate (CAGR) of 7.9%.”

These are very impressive growth predictions. One of the big questions for legacy enterprises is how to incorporate an IoT (Internet of Things) into their existing infrastructure to get the benefits of IoT that we all hear about. In a recent article in Computerworld, “The Internet of Things figures into this IT leader’s five-year plan”, ATS IT Director, Chris LeBeau answers several questions on his company’s 5 year plan for implementing an IoT strategy, and trying to figure out all the implementation issues and then how to articulate the benefits. And they have to migrate from mainframes! LeBeau admits that “The data coming off these [networks] would be significant, so how would you process and store that? You need to think about categorizing, correlating, giving it context and meaning so it’s not just data but information you can make decisions from.”

Enterprises that suddenly want to be part of the IoT wave really need to figure out their strategy. They need to understand what areas can best benefit from being part of the IoT system, it can be anything from self-reporting vending machines, to tracking your drivers’ behavior and tracking your assets in real time. It’s drones and self-driving vehicles!

On the back-end side, it’s all about the data, however, and, as Mr. LeBeau points out, how to make sense of it; the data analytics and contextual relationships between data elements!

In order to reach that predicted growth by 2020, there really needs to be a way to enable these large enterprises to more easily migrate from their legacy systems to these new IoT paradigms so that the benefits that we all envision can be made possible. This could be data aggregation and analytics engines, plug and play devices that can be easily deployed on any network, and of course we need to answer the interoperability and security issues.

 

M2M: How To Make It Secure Economically

Security in M2M or as it’s now better known as IoT has now become one of the main potential barriers to widespread adoption. How much security is really needed? What will be the cost of implementing and end-to-end security solution v. the risk of not implementing it?

These and many other security and it’s ROI will be discussed at the upcoming Commnexus M2M Special Interest Group session:

MAKING M2M: SECURE AND ECONOMICALLY VIABLE

I lined up an excellent group of panelists from Viasat, Tagnos, Interdigital, and Verizon Wireless, and I asked the Sunvir Gujral, the Product Manager for Qualcomm’s Alljoyn to moderate. I invite all of you to attend!