The Rising Intelligence of Personal Devices

The massive consumerisation of technology that is underway once combined with emerging BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) policies in the workplace are about to shift the balance of personalised automation. This approaching technological convergence between devices and users is becoming increasingly possible due to the interconnected nature of modern devices. Research firm Gartner is already estimating that by 2020 over 30 billion connected devices will be in use in the world.

“The Internet of Things will create greater economic value for all organisations, and for the global economy,” said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of Research.

This phenomenon of interconnected technologies, called the Internet of Things is also slowly giving way to the Internet of Everything ; an emerging trend where every device, from enterprise to domestic, is developing communications protocols across the internet platform. This continuous sensing and storage of real time data is making the internet of everything an exciting and highly profit centric opportunity for enterprises.

Almost invisible in its obvious presence, cell phones, environmental controls, automation systems in organsiations, cloud schedulers, and even wearable consumer technologies such as Google Glass and Samsung Gear, along with similar products, are 24/7 trackers of user behaviour and preference, gathering data with extreme accuracy and relevance.

As precision data collection, through sensors on personal devices, user environments, online behaviors and personal preferences is centralised on cloud platforms, enterprises find the demand of intuitive and cognizant intelligence from their technology an essential feature. Analysts are estimating that at current rates of analytic and prediction applications growth, smartphones will become more intelligent than users by 2017.

“Mobile phones have been our trusted companions for years, channeling the natural need we have to communicate with others and express ourselves first with voice, then with the internet, and more recently through applications,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “Smartphones, their technology and operating systems have been radically changing other devices from PCs to televisions. The era of personal cloud is empowering users as well as devices to get access to and share more and more data. Over the next five years, the data that is available about us, our likes and dislikes, our environment and relationships will be used by our devices to grow their relevance and ultimately improve our life.”

As personal computing transitions to a cloud driven and data sourced platform, the seamless interaction of digital experiences between devices will make the phenomenon itself invisible .

Moreover, as the number of connected devices increases and extends beyond smartphones and tablets, we see new ecosystems emerge, which are in high demand to make productivity and workflow efficiencies a key priority.

“The traditional IT market is not going to grow at a faster rate any time soon, if ever. Increased growth will come from the non-traditional IT market,” said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of Research. “While in 2015 the combined IT and telecom market will hit nearly $4 trillion, the incremental revenue generated by the Internet of Things’ suppliers is estimated to reach $309 billion per year by 2020.”

Most interconnected devices are no longer solely hardware dependent and increasingly driven by the different third-party or custom designed applications that can leverage the cloud data platform and provide made-to-order value to enterprises. More than 50 percent of this applications development is estimated to be by new start-ups and nearly 80 percent of the offerings will be services oriented rather than product based says a report by Gartner Research.

The stages of this shift are happening in two major movements that a spread across many increments. The primary goal is to increase the automation of basic tasks that are generally more time consuming to users. These tasks include scheduled time-bound activities and events such as system updates, group task coordination, general email correspondence and pay-roll management type activities.

The second stage to this shift comes in the form of deploying intelligent and intuitive actions in an automated manner that can impersonate a human user. By allowing apps and services to manage tasks beyond day-to-day functions the human element can be deployed for more strategic business outcomes – this shift would be considered the era of cognizant computing.

The intelligence brought to the table by these new services will not replace the intrinsic value of the human component but augment it through technological advancements in predictive analysis and contextual operations. The prevalence of cloud and data accessibility will make technology appear and act in intelligent ways allowing users to make better use of their time.

As the nuts and bolt of this revolution take on a life of their own, its overarching impact on the way business conducts itself is unpredictable. For most enterprises engaged in process industries and automation oriented systems, the easy answers include enhanced precision in operations, higher productivity and predictive analysis that will enhance business intelligence .

But the remaining companies, who inevitably deal in consumer oriented products, this new and dynamic environment will only tolerate innovative thinking and design. Be it predictive analysts that enhance customer experience or retail applications producers that allow products to seamlessly become a part of the customer’s lifestyle ; the advantages from the rise of intelligent devices for any enterprise are restrained only by the depths of their leadership, innovation and above all – imagination.

Image courtesy of Cisco