PEOPLE & SKILLS
ADVANCED SENSOR TECHNOLOGY connected to the so-called ‘ Internet of Everything ’ ( IoE ) is forging unusual business relationships between companies , and generating entirely new forms of value . Mihail Botez , IoT Strategic Product Sales Specialist at Cisco and Vishal Barapatre , Chief Technology Officer of In2IT Technologies , reflected on these new opportunities at a recent joint event held in Johannesburg .
Botez noted that aircraft manufacturers are embedding sensors in the tails of airplanes that can pick up sophisticated meteorological data . This information , generated “ naturally ” while a plane is simply going about its normal business of flying passengers around at 40,000 feet , can then be sold to weather services to inform their predictions .
However , the newly-created value stream doesn ’ t stop there . Once the data from the aircraft sensors has been combined with other sources to predict local , short-term weather forecasts , that information can be further sold-on to insurance firms . Knowing that hailstorms are on their way to a certain area can trigger an SMS from the insurer to the relevant customers , suggesting they put their cars undercover , for example .
This kind of value-creation is what economic scientist and writer Umair Haque terms ‘ next-generation business advantage ’ – something that is not simply competitive , but “ generative ” i . e . the creation of new value that does not involve the repl acement or destruction of other forms of value .
Creating unique business opportunities According to In2IT Technologies South Africa , technology is the lynchpin in achieving this . Using crowdsourced , sensor-generated information that is plugged into the sprawling new web that we refer to as the IoE , companies can share and
‘ Up to 50 billion connected sensors , devices , machines , and people are expected to comprise the IoE in the year 2020 ’
8 August 2015