Is Business Ready For The ‘Internet Of Assets’?
For the first time in history there are more active mobile connections in the world than there are people on the planet.
Digital analyst GSMA Intelligence’s real-time device tracker estimates that there are now more than 7.28 billion active mobile connections globally compared to 7.20 billion humans as per the US Census Bureau’s world population clock. What is more, these gadgets are multiplying 5 times faster than we are.
These intriguing statistics are not just about smartphones. They represent the interconnection of all sorts of uniquely identifiable devices [including M2M connections] across the worldwide internet infrastructure. It’s about the ‘Internet of Things’ [IoT] and the ‘Internet of Everything’ [IoE].
What is clear is that consumer products are spearheading this trend – we love our smartphones and tablets, our streaming media, and our wearables. Soon we’ll be living in smart cities with smart services. In many respects we are even giving up our privacy in return for real-time intelligence about our lives.
But what about business and the ‘Internet of Assets’?
As a market, we’ve reached several important milestones. We have the technology building blocks in place. The cost of entry is coming down. It has the potential to revolutionise every aspect of enterprise asset management [EAM]. Industry events like RFID Journal LIVE! showcase an array of stories about technology trials and early-stage implementations. But compared to the consumer market, we’ve been somewhat slow and unimaginative on the uptake.
We at Relegen believe business needs to shift its obsession with the technology [such as RFID tag form factor and cost] and focus on how to create value from the data and insights generated by it.
We need to spend our time exploring the ways it can be applied to make our businesses not only run better, faster, safer but value-creating activities that deliver differentiation and brand new ways of doing things.
Only when we are less defined by the technology and driven more by what it can accomplish, will we begin to unlock the true potential of the ‘Internet of Assets’ [IoA] and the power of enterprise asset intelligence [EAI].