The Internet of Things World Forum (IoTWF) is an exclusive industry event, hosted by Cisco and widely recognised as the premier thought leadership forum designed to evangelise and energise IoT. The event brings industry leaders together to collaborate, network, partner, and solve the challenges facing IoT.
Previously held in Barcelona, Chicago and Dubai, this year the IoTWF came to London’s Tobacco Dock.
The IoTWF provides a thought leadership event, opening discussions and it sets out to share the best practices on every front - flexibility, scalability, security, availability, and connectivity - as individuals, companies, and governments accelerate their use of IoT to seek out its promise of gains in efficiency, economic value and quality of life.
Chuck Robbins,CEO Cisco.
As a global gathering Cisco C Level executives were present in force including CEO Chuck Robbins, who delivered the opening keynote address. Robins noted that ‘Every leader and every organisation is having to move faster than ever before, and as companies, cities, and countries around the world look to drive digital transformation, the Internet of Things sits at the centre’.
“IoT is happening now, but we’ve only just begun to fully realize its potential. IoT is helping create a new world of value as we securely connect things, and capture, understand, and act on data, and this process is fuelling innovation across the entire market.”
Whilst IoT is indeed happening now there was in the conference agenda a great deal of forward thinking.
Don Tapscott, author of ‘The Digital Economy – 20th Anniversary Edition’ told delegates that the physical world is being animated.
“It’s coming alive as physical objects are imbued with the ability to not just sense, process, and communicate information but to think, learn and transact. But if these billions of things are to participate fully in the economy, our institutions and our daily life they need a commercial platform.
The Internet of Everything needs a Ledger of Everything enabling it to do business, transact and generate economic value.”
We think that Tapscott makes an accurate prediction that the current Internet is evolving from a platform for information into a platform for value – based, he says, on the biggest innovation in computing science in a generation – blockchain. This Internet of Value enables us to animate the physical world and adopt powerful new business models. All this will change the nature of the firm and the way governments operate. It also has profound implications for IT strategy, architecture, and leadership as through it, every business can finally become a digital business
People are asking question of IoT and its potential future impact upon on society and culture, jobs and the global workforce. What is the role of business and technology leaders in preparing the world and the workforce for the exponential challenges and opportunities speeding towards us?
The Role of the Service Provider
As this magazine has often said, particularly in the context of UCaaS and Digital Transformations, the network plays a crucial effect in deployment and realisation of potential benefits and this is also the case with IoT.
Chris Penrose, President, Internet of Things (IoT) Solutions at AT&T Business, says that the service provider plays a crucial role in the evolution of IoT.
“From consumer wearables to large equipment to smart cities, connectivity will be the backbone of delivering on the promise of IoT for companies, citizens and the world. As IoT matures, the need for a variety of network solutions is driving operators to look at new models and technologies to meet customer needs. What new technologies will be emerging and how can we work together to deliver the most value for our customers?”
So, once you have the connectivity in place how can you unlock the full value vale of the date it provides?
Harriet Green, General Manager, IBM Watson IoT at IBM, “The potential of intelligent analytics and artificial intelligence is driving organisations to a fully enabled IoT environment. All the data that is collected from sensors and devices that can be rolled up and analysed makes great business sense.”
The Promise of Business Transformation
According to Jason Zander, Corporate VP for Microsoft Azure, industries are moving quickly to achieve business transformation through the promise of the Internet of Things.
“IoT raises many familiar questions and is driving the need for collaboration between technology and business decision makers. How are line-of-business problems being solved by technology? What is the role of cloud and edge in a hybrid infrastructure? What does all this mean for security? And, how can we work together to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more?”
These are big questions and significant issues for the industry to address and solve but the fact that they are being articulated now is more than encouraging and Comms Business Magazine will continue to report on future developments for
our readers.