Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Get Ready for the Era of the iOT



Prepare for the iOT


By Harish Bijoor

The Internet of Things is here then. An evolution of the productized version of what began as a service.

Last fortnight I took you through a journey of how it all began. Time now to cut to the present and the future.

In the beginning there was communication that was 1:1 between friends. And then in came telecom. Two machines at either end facilitated the conversation between two friends sitting in different geographies. In came email and this communication ceased to remain 1:1 even. And now, viola! In comes the iOT.

Out here in the era of the iOT, every thing around us is getting more and more intelligent. The era of the tracker is here. Fitbit is a motion tracker. You wear it round your wrist in a silicon bracelet and it tracks the numbers of steps you walk, how you sleep and how you don’t as well.  The basic technology of the motion tracker is here. This tracker sticks close to your body in an appendage, and tracks your every move. You can track yourself via GPRS if you wish.

Your life is personal no more. If you wish to broadcast the news of your body, the news of your activity, the news of your sleep-pattern to the world at large, you can as well. There are community sites where people post how they sleep. And guess what, people compete with one another in the virtual world to sleep better than the next guy around. People compete on steps as well. Did I walk more than you did today?

The Internet of things, in some ways begins at the lowest common denominator level of the motion tracker for a start. Imagine 10,000 people in Delhi competing with one another on the steps they take every day. Imagine a million people doing the same with one another all over India. Imagine a point of time when your doctor’s desktop or for that matter his mobile phone receives news of how sedentary you were today. Imagine your virtual trainer in cyber-space sending you a shove or a poke on your mobile phone, insulting your sedentary day. Imagine, imagine, imagine.

The power of the motion tracker alone is a very big power. The tracker tells you what you did. The tracker compares what you did as opposed to what others did. The tracker communicates to your doctor and virtual trainer as well. Tomorrow, expect your tracker talking to your Insurance company on a regular basis. And expect your insurance company offering you a rebate on your health insurance premium just because you took an average of 30,000 steps a day last year, as opposed to a national average of 5000.

The Internet of things is just about stirring. It is a revolution that is slated to wake up and shake us all up.  It is a device and tracker led revolution. This is a device and tracker and connectivity and communication led revolution.

The world today has 10 Billion devices. Of these 7 Billion are mobile phones. The other 3 billion are sundry other devices. As of today, the 7 Billion phones talk to one another when enabled by their human owners at both ends. When you make a call to Mrs. Kapoor, you are enabling the call. Mrs. Kapoor at the other end will decide whether to enable her mobile phone to receive the call, or terminate it.  To that extent, this connectivity is all about permission-oriented connectivity.

The era of the iOt is however one that is going to be one of intelligent connectivity, enabled just once. Once you have done that, at times by just accepting to have an intelligent chip in your device, communication is going to be a continuous, and at times a two-way process. You will possibly buy a refrigerator tomorrow, which has an intelligent chip in it. The intelligent refrigerator will talk directly to your web-enabled grocer.  When the Coke bottles are nearing empty status on your bottle-rack, your doorstep will have a replenishment delivery. You will never run dry of Coke then. Ever.

Take that one step further to the B2B application. Your grocer will have his intelligent-shelf chip talking to the local Coke distributor. The grocer will never ever run dry of stock. Take it further then. The Coke distributor has a chip that talks to the local bottler.  And the bottler has a chip that talks to possibly Atlanta direct. The possibilities are therefore endless.
Forget the mundane. Imagine possibilities. Predictive manufacturing is already a reality. The Mercedes Benz you bought yesterday in Hoshiarpur is possibly talking to the manufacturing plant direct. Its brake lining is speaking to Berlin. The moment it is wearing out, it is alerting the plant to produce and make it available in time at the local dealer in Hoshiarpur possibly. Think. Imagine. Fantasize even!


This is not science fiction. This is reality today.  The world is getting progressively penetrated by devices. And devices are getting intelligent. Intelligent devices are connected to one another.  The prognosis for 2020 is that there will be 46 Billion devices. Each intelligent and each talking to one another.

We are at the doorstep of this revolution. Even as it unfolds, there are serious security concerns that are being flagged. The security industry is working overtime to fight that one possible Trojan that might infect and take over. They seem to be winning the fight as of now.

In many ways, nothing is private and personal anymore. Privacy is dying if not dead, and no one seems to be complaining. Have you noticed how the young amidst us love to have their lives public on social media? Have you realized that the young love to flaunt more than the old in our midst do?

Privacy goes to the cleaners. On that note, it’s ok when your washing machine is talking to your grocer. Imagine a time when your washing machine is taking to Mrs. Khanna’s washing machine. The gossip starts then. The problem starts then! Touche!

Harish Bijoor is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
twitter @harishbijoor| email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Saturday, April 04, 2015

The iOT And An India Of Things


The iOT And An India Of Things



By Harish Bijoor


All of us have heard of it by now. The era of the iOT or the
Internet OF THINGS is here. Some marketing and technology evangelists have dubbed it an era of the iOE or the Internet OF EVERYTHING even. An era where the Internet as we know it becomes incidental. So incidental,that we even forget the way the Internet of today exists and we start co-living with the Internet as if it did not exist at all. An Internet era where everything is literally governed by the Internet and an era wher you do not go to the Internet but the Internet comes to you. And eventually an era where the Internet is a part of you and are a part of the Internet at large. A point of time when you will not know where you end and where the ubiquitous Internet begins even.


Ouch! That sounds bizarre. Painful even. Intrusive for sure.


The iOT is a productised evolution of what began as a service. Let me trace it's history. In the very beginning we lived in an era where one person spoke to another and made friends physically. If you had friends, you possibly had ten of them at maximum, and you spent time with them when you could. You had enough time on your hands. So much so that you could meet, talk for long hours over a cup of coffee or an even more exciting beverage, you could go to the movies, play a game of cricket on Sunday and maybe do lots more.


And then time became a scarce commodity. Time stopped being a commodity even. Time today has become a very important part of consumer currency. The consumer has two things on hand today, money and time. Both are valuable currencies. Time is something that you cannot earn back. Time is something that you can only spend. It is limited and cannot be topped up at your nearest telecom re-charge outlet. Money on the other hand can be spent and earned. While time is God-given and limited without top-up, money is that much more flexible. Consumers then value time more than money. They should.


When you don't have enough time to spend, what do you do? You look for ways and means to keep those friends of yours, with
time saving means and devices. In comes the telephone as an instrument, and wow! You are able to keep the conversations going, even without being out there physically at your favourite 'Adda'. Yes, it is nicer to be there physically, but when you cannot, a lovely conversation with your friends on the phone will do. As time passed, in came the mobile phone, and you could carry these conversations with you wherever you went. The machine(in this case the mobile phone) intervened and life was made more comfortable. Still good. You were still in touch with your ten friends. You were now in touch with your friends not 1:1 physically, but virtually. Sub-optimal and a compromise, but still good for you. Out here, you were using a machine(the landline or mobile phone) to intervene and continue the contact. You used your mobile handset and dialled your friend and your friend used her mobile phone and picked up the call. This was what I will call human-to-human conversation facilitated by the machine and the connectivity possible between those two machines due to the intervention of the telecom service provider. This is what we do today.



In comes the era of the Internet then. In comes the ability for people to send e-mails to one another at the basic level. These emails are sent by you using a machine(your desktop, laptop, tablet or smart phone) and your friend and maybe thousands of them even, receive it when they open their e-mails using the machines at their disposal. This is less intrusive than the mobile call. In many ways it is permission-oriented communication at its best. If someone wants to open the email you sent them, they can. If they don't want to, they can press the delete button. And this is surely the era of mass contact possibility. One email could touch thousands for sure. In came social media then. In came Facebook, Twitter, Tagged, and all the other exciting social contact mediums you use openly and at times using the confidence and trusted space of your bedroom or bathroom alike. Out here, you could continue conversations in an interactive manner. Instead of having just ten friends, you could have a hundred. Geography is history. The new geography of your friendship was the virtual space of the social media you were using. This then was the early emergence of 1:Many communication between one human being and maybe a hundred others. Again this was machine facilitated. Again this was permission led. The exciting part of this is the fact that people do not have physical friends anymore. The friends are as virtual as the bits and bytes that help you use the computer. Data then: an average youngster below the age of 25 in
Pune has 321 friends on The social mediums of his choice, all added up. This includes Facebook, and the three other mediums they co-habit and inhabit. In Bengaluru this number today stands at 316. Ouch! This is still 1:Many communication, still facilitated by two machines operated by two human beings talking to one another through the use of data and text. Nice.

More exciting things to come? What is this iOT all about?


Wait. Let me stop. This is the day and age of brevity and I have gone on too long in this piece. That is the subject of my next installment. We are in the cusp stage of the iOT. I will tread that path next fortnight.


Till then, enjoy those physical friend you still meet at your favourite hangout. Hangout till technology will allow you to.



Harish Bijoor is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

twitter @harishbijoor| email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com