TECHNOLOGY. There’s somethin’ about the Internet of Things

Picture a managerial Utopia — your professional and personal lives are managed for you by invisible assistants who do all the humdrum tasks, while you chuckle away with the credit. Imagine an office where the fax machine sends a prompt on your smartphone when a fax comes in for you; or the coffee maker checks with you at a scheduled time and keeps the coffee ready for you on the go.

And when you get home, the garage door opens up automatically as you reach the driveway, the temperature controller at home adjusts to the temperature you like, and the television turns on your favourite programme as you sit on the couch. Farfetched?

Well, not really. The once fantastical space of sci-fi synchronicity, of technological servitude at the snap (or click) of a man’s fingers, has actualized in the ‘Internet of Things’ (IOT).

From a purely technological standpoint, IOT is the technology that amasses and manages massive streams of data from sprawling networks of sensors and devices, processes it and then shares with other connecting things — which all sound really complex, and it is.

But viewed from a conceptual and a functional lens, IOT is brilliantly simple — it’s about getting you what you need done, when you need it done, in the way you like it done. And we may be talking everything, here!

But everything may take time. For now though, what IOT helps you achieve definitively is higher productivity, in both the personal and professional aspects of life. This is perhaps the key to the treasure chest that the managers have always been searching for to streamline operations and make workforces agile, resilient and efficient.

The Internet of Things (IOT) has opened a whole new world of possibilities for practically every industry type. From managing supplies better with IOT-enabled fleet tracking, to geriatric care in hospitals, smart metering for better power distribution, and real-time traffic monitoring or stock-out prevention in retail.

What several management paradigms have tried to achieve in the last 30 or 40 years, IOT promises to do the same much faster and more efficiently.

That is why every industry vertical, be it transport, healthcare, retail, entertainment, home automation, media or entertainment, is exploring how IOT can impact their topline and bottomline.

IOT is a smart enabling technology that empowers smart businesses that need smart managers and smart workforces. It is estimated that 50 billion devices are going to be connected by 2020. Going by that, more and more people are going to be well-equipped with machines that are capable of taking over most of the transactional and tactical work. A day in the life of an IOT-enabled manager could somewhat look like this – gets an early alert on the phone updating traffic conditions and the preferred route to work, gets a detailed calendar view of his day and listens to important messages/mails while driving to office, has all his meeting requirements (presentations, reports, statistics) synced on his hand-held device that are updated in real time, walks straight into meetings, uses different tools and apps on his hand-held to generate reports and shares with his team or bosses, gets more time to interact with people and drive strategic work. Whether on a BYOD (bring your own device) or CYOD (choose your own device) model, this technology is a sure-shot at delivering time, efficiency and speed to people who are constantly striving for more. And what’s best, IOT is proving to be secure and cost-efficient as well.

IOT is the hotbed of technological disruption at the moment, and as you would imagine, all the big names of hi-tech are foraying into this lucrative space. In addition to Apple (its Homekit manages third-party home automation accessories), Google (acquired Nest Labs, a home automation company), AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and ADT, there are innumerable players specialising in the home automation segment. Some of them make for interesting examples of connected consumer devices, like Control4, Savant, Netgear, Belkin, Qualcomm AllJoyn, DropCam, SmartThings, Sonos, Lutron, Revolv, LiftMaster and Chamberlain.

In the end, IOT is not just a new technological disruption, but a new perspective on the consumption of technology. It’s the manifestation of the evolution of technology, and its assimilation into our lives.

The next twenty years will see IOT make day-to-day tasks at home and work more intelligent, and simpler to drive up the quality of life and work. And who is set to gain the most out of it? Who else but the managers of the world!

The writer is Senior VP, Marketing, Regalix, a co-innovation company based in Palo Alto