It is not my thing, really, to join strangers for dinner – I
tried a couple of times and did not want any part of it. Yet, when my financial advisor sent me an
invitation to the annual client conference to be held at Four Seasons Hotel in
Denver, where the topic would be Rise of the Machines, after reading the
description it was clear we should not miss it. “A new wave of disruptive
innovation is upon us. Intelligent machines – from driverless cars and
commercial drones to medical robots – have advanced enormously in
sophistication, and falling prices make them increasingly accessible, the
promotion said. “Join us to hear what we think they will mean for the markets,
the economy, and your portfolio.” I sent a RSVP promptly to let them know
Richard and I were in!
The IoT buzz started some 18 – 24 months ago, riding on the
cattails of the Big Data. Of course IoT in reality is way older, as we all
became aware when the plane that wasn’t found yet was sending engine information
to its manufacturer. Closer to home? A
conversation with our friend who had a pacemaker installed and who was called
by the hospital while she was going home – they asked her to get right back as
her pacemaker was sending disturbing messages. WTH! She had no idea she had a
talkative device planted inside her!
Just this week Apple came out with its watch – and if you
read AARP magazine (yours or your parents’) you will see at least 4 ads in
each issue for the life saving medical alert devices. Apple will eat creators’
of these devices lunch, so I think it is only fair that I’ll eat my financial
advisor’s dinner while listening to the talk! As I wrote this, my phone rang –
somebody offering a free life saving device – just sign in for the monitoring
program! It’s been only a few days since
Apple announcement but already near-panic is setting in!
All I can think about is who is going to process, store and
act upon the information all the things are providing. Most of the applications
that my financial advisor mentioned, and most that I’ve encountered so far, are
critical in nature, and it is unthinkable that the data could get lost, action
delayed, or even worse, be compromised by the criminal or terror-minded person
or group; the scenario of someone tapping into a pacemaker has been played
countless times, by various folks, petrified of the power that is being unleashed.
Yes, it’s all on the Internet! Almost every hospital went ahead and added a
power generator so as not to be caught out by power outages in the middle of
the medical procedure; have they all got a live backup system for the medical
data they are collecting?
The presentation at the dinner last night did not deal with
the processing of all the information machines are generating. Nobody wanted
clients to get upset, so there was no discussion of risks. Most of the audience
wasn’t technically inclined anyway, and I thought the level of the presentation
was quite appropriate – we got an assurance that the researchers at the firm
are aware of the trends and analyze to their heart’s content over the impact
these trends have on clients’ portfolios. As dumbed-down as the presentation
proved to be, it spoke of the specter of even greater volumes
of data yet to come.
The topic of Rise of the Machines brought a little smile,
though, as I recalled recent videos by Martin Fink – you will need The Machine
to process all the data the machines produce, won’t you now?
Comments
There are already cases reported of
- cars being remote-controlled by hackers (public demo)
- "Next generation" heatings (IoT) being remote controlled (actual break-ins)
So while the promised of IoT are indeed great, I will be rather careful with becoming an early adaptor.
It's progressing too rapidly and is being embraced in too many industries so it's now back to us to figure out how to make sure the who access is the right who.
IoT applications for consumer devices would typically not require NonStop characteristics in the backend. So we might narrow down our focus a little bit on Industrial IoT or critical infrastructure (like power grids) also requiring IoT capabilities these days. Here, Nonstop is actually well positioned within HP's Converged Plant Infrastructure, taking the role of a reliable and secure database server sitting behind those banks of (mostly virtualized) standard servers running industrial applications.
Any of those app servers might fail (and another one can kick in quickly) but the really critical data and also the persistence of the business processes is maintained via the NonStop SQL database.
Anyone coming to the Hannover Fair
(April 13th to 17th) is invited to visit the HP booth C24 in hall 8, right at the "Forum Industrie 4.0" to learn more about HP's Converged Plant Infrastructure and the role of Nonstop in the Industrial IoT.