CIOTechOutlook >> Magazine >> December - 2016 issue

The Next Industrial Revolution: Innovation of Things

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In conversation with CIOReview, Chander Khanduja, CIO of a large corporation, shares his personal views on the current trends in Internet of Things (IoT).

With the advent of IoT, the dream for a connected world seems not too far. IoT has been deemed as the next industrial revolution. What is your opinion in this regard?
Absolutely! The IoT has been rightly termed as the next industrial revolution. The way in which businesses, governments and the consumers interact with the world is undergoing a major change. This change is not small in nature but revolutionary in the kind of disruption it is going to bring about. This could definitely be the next industrial revolution.

According to a forecast, the IoT market is expected to grow from USD 157.05 Billion in 2016 to a whopping USD 661.74 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 33.3 percent on a global scale. To what factors would you attribute such remarkable growth?
First of all we have to look at the advent of smart mobiles. That was the point which radically changed the way people connected with each other. Once people got connected the next step was to connect the products and the machines, and thus things were set in motion. The benefits that IoT will bring about will be in terms of operational cost which will be lowered along with the increase in productivity. It will also expand IT to new markets and create a new product offering. These basic factors have helped and given a momentum to IoT.

With smart objects steering us through our daily activities, what effect can IoT be expected to have on our lives?
First of all, let’s not look at IoT as ‘Internet of Things’ but rather look at it as the ‘Innovation of Things’. When we talk about innovation, it is going to impact everything that we do in our daily lives. For example, to get up in morning I have a smart watch which automatically aligns with my sleeping habits and also messages to my cook for healthy food.

So right from the time I wake up till I go back to sleep there are a wide array of other devices in between. With connected cars, connected factories and connected offices, we see that there exists a complete ecosystem. This will impact the health care sector as doctors will now be able to know your health as and when things are happening to you. It is reshaping your workplaces where now you know how much production is happening with the information coming directly from sensors.

Despite the overwhelming growth of IoT market, CIOs have expressed security concerns. A malicious command and the software could lead to major malfunction affecting businesses and our personal lives too. What is your opinion in this regard?
After the industrial revolution in India in 1990, the awareness about IT security came about in late 1990s. At that time security was still evolving. IT was limited to more automation aspects, and businesses preferred an IT security document and framework for implementing security standards. With IoT coming in, it has a huge impact on the core regular operations, personal health etc. As I said, it is a part of your ecosystem. So the major challenge would be to have security channels around IoT. Therefore it is very important for organizations to have a robust IT security policy. This has to be an evolving policy that should to be updated with relevant changes.

What are the major challenges that the vendors face today in the IoT market?
A major challenge is standardization which has not happened around sensors. Once you talk about IoT, it is all about sensors. So standardization of sensors with your own protocol has still not happened. The second part is the cost of sensors. Lastly, the third part is last mile connectivity. It is all dependent on how robust your last mile connectivity is. If you are talking about bringing IoT towards rural market it is very important to have robust back end connectivity for IoT to really give the expected results.

In your opinion, what are the challenges in sensing and delivering information from the physical world to the cloud?
Major challenge is information privacy and the second is security. The third is the robustness of last mile connectivity because if you are looking to push data to cloud from the IoT devices, you require a very robust last mile connectivity. These are the three basic challenges which I see.

A variety of wired and wireless connectivity standards are required to enable different application needs. How is the industry going to address this challenge?
I think it is important for manufacturing industry, software industry and industry bodies like NASSCOM and FICCI to work together and not in isolation. Earlier the world was not connected and IT worked in its own way. But now IT is a business and IoT is a business of businesses. It is very important that these bodies work together and come up with a nationwide policy which could be a part of Digital India as well. We need an IoT policy where we have the entire framework lined up. This will impact the cyber laws as well. That is why we should look at an angle which is generally ignored by the people. IoT is not simply about putting in a sensor and connecting it. It depends on how the country is geared up, what kind of laws you have, how aware is the public. Whenever you talk about an industrial revolution, you require a framework policy from the top.

Many IoT applications need to run for years over batteries to reduce the overall energy consumption. How important is the need for low power devices?
It is very important to have low power devices for the survival of this technology which in fact depends on the longevity of the devices. If you are looking to put IoT in far flung areas, you have to see to it that they don’t have power hungry requirements and they need to probably have longer gestation period. With the current technology, these devices last three to five years. So we need to look at technology in a way that it can be sustainable. I see a potential in solar energy as well. We’ll see IoT devices being solar enabled so that they are able to thrive on the power of their own.

IoT will be a complex structure of hardware, sensors, applications and devices that needs to communicate geographically and across verticals. How important is the need for global standards to exchange data across different organisations?
Here the role of cloud comes into the picture if we talk about a global standard. Because whatever data we will be getting from IoT is ultimately being pushed into the cloud. And the data exchange will not happen between devices because we are talking about billions of devices. There are many cloud standards which are being accepted globally like CSCC (Cloud Standards Customer Council). So the good thing is that cloud has already evolved in terms of standards and there is already a global cloud computing scorecard in place. So this will help in information exchange between various IoT enabled devices.

IoT is a complex structure though IoT app development needs to be easy for all developers and not just for experts. How is the industry going to achieve that?
Necessity is the mother of invention. What we have seen so far is IoT being the top agenda for all the organisations. All the major organisations be it Microsoft, Oracle, HP or IBM, now have a different business vertical named IoT. This is because businesses have already seen a lot of value coming in and they are putting the necessary investment in training people. If any organisation today does not have a robust trained team available, they are going to bite the dust. The good thing is awareness and the necessity from the push and the pull coming from the market is forcing all the vendors to have a very sound team in place and I see lot of action happening in that area.


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