The machines are joining the conversation; are we listening?

•  Fast data, big data and the Internet of Things

By Keith Rayner

From back-office to human-centric

Not too long ago, in a bygone era now retrospectively dubbed the “first platform,” machines ruled the IT world. Largely invisible to the public, computers churned away in back-offices of commercial enterprises or government establishments, handling daily transactions and number crunching to produce reams of reports, all served by very obedient IT programmers and operators.

The advent of personal computers, and above all the Internet, changed all that, heralding in the era of the “second platform” and putting a very human face on all things digital. At first the web provided a previously unparalleled way for people to access information, but then rapidly evolved to allow more people to contribute to the body of information out there with the creation of personal websites, blogs, and the like. 

And now with the advent of social media, anyone can fire off a rapid succession of messages on a variety of devices, and upload a stack of images, which potentially the whole world can view. That’s created a lot more interaction, along with a lot more information, defined by social interaction, mobility, cloud, big data, and of course the next label in line, the “third platform”.

To add to that, a whole range of other, smaller, but still intelligent machines have joined the conversation and have been making their voice heard. But are we really listening? Because if you think your best friend was a digital chatterbox, rest assured they are no competition for machines.

 

Devices joining the conversation

We live in a world where billions of connected devices, from smart cards to intelligent packaging, generate huge quantities of data. By the time your friend has posted on social media that they have just bought a wide-screen TV at the electronics store, the point of sale register has already sent that information to the central system to be correlated with your rewards card, along with the four other items in their shopping card that your friend didn’t bother telling you about. And if you’ve done your shopping online, the system has recorded not only what you bought, but also what you looked at, but didn’t buy, on your way to the virtual checkout counter.

By the time that you receive a text message that your package is about to arrive at your office, en route the GPS tracking system on the truck has already sent a thousand messages to the logistics centre, which is now busy calculating the most efficient route for the next 10 deliveries. 

The term Internet of Things (IoT) has been introduced by industry analysts in acknowledgement of this next level of machine engagement with its environment, along with the term M2M, highlighting how machine-to-machine dialogue has joined the conversation 

 

Clear path to business value

These M2M conversations have primarily served as a means to reduce cost and improve operational efficiency, but now organisations today are looking for more innovative ways to harness ever-increasing amounts of data, and use it to drive smarter decisions, enable new services and business models, and reduce costs.

For the next level of IoT, machines not only generate and collect data for human consumption and analysis, but also now have ability to take real-time actions. For example, when fire sensors in a warehouse detect an alarm situation, an intelligent IoT device can trigger the water sprinkler, take a snapshot from the security camera, send an emergency message to local fire station and warehouse manager, and deliver security access information to a mobile device, in addition to recording the alarm data for analysis. With Smart Grid monitoring, apart from providing sub-second real-time views of grid health, the IoT system can automatically isolate a problematic network element before it can potentially trip the whole grid.

This ability to correlate high-velocity data generated by millions of devices from multiple types of sensors has bought us into the world of Fast Data. Business opportunities opened up by this device-to-data centre world, with billions of Internet-connected devices generating Big Data and Fast Data, are the next big thing. But there’s a lot needed to gain real business value from the Internet of Things, and first and foremost is effective communication among all elements of the digital and human landscape.

 

Common language from the edge to the data centre

To coordinate activities effectively across the value chain, it is essential to have an integrated platform that manages data from any device (machine-centric or human-centric) to the data centre, and have the ability to harness and then analyse the data. The first architectural element is a device-to-datacentre platform with technologies that streamline development & deployment, integration automation, and protection & compliance.

Major players in the IoT and Industry, including Oracle, have joined hands to evolve a common standard and architecture called OneM2M.1

Oracle Java Embedded Technologies are a key part of this platform, bringing intelligence to a wide range of connected devices. While devices often talk in their own language and are understood only by their peers, the Java platform offers the possibility of a more standard, flexible, and lower cost language for IoT devices. A stripped-down Java runtime runs on microprocessors, binding with the particular device to take care of the low-level operating system. That enables a single Java program to run on multiple devices hosting the Java runtime – create anywhere, run anywhere. 

However, once those devices start the conversation going, the IoT value chain can become extremely complex, but also very powerful. Fast Data enables real-time actions through complex event processing which makes sense of millions of events being generated per second and takes proactive actions, much beyond the capabilities of any human-centric systems. Smart devices can process data on the spot, while sophisticated event processors can be embedded in intelligent IoT gateways close to the source for faster coordination of localised actions, or can be deployed at the Data Centre for system-wide actions.

To support this, Java provides developers with a comprehensive security framework for writing applications while also providing users or administrators with a set of tools to manage applications including cryptography, secure communication, authentication, and access control.

 

Making sense of all this data

In parallel with these developments, the back-office machines have evolved to become much more powerful tools, and also become available in the cloud, as corporations, governments, and other organisations have harvested the benefits of turning data into information, and extracting knowledge that fuels positive actions. That has historically been done using structured data – data that is packaged into structured databases - which facilitates rapid slicing and dicing, and enabling real-time analysis with visualisation in the form of graphs and interactive dashboards.

But now we’re talking big data and fast data, characterised by huge volumes and varieties of data types that arrive at such a high velocity that extraction, transformation, and loading of all this data into predefined structures at a single compute point is no longer feasible in real-time. 

Oracle enables structured and unstructured data to be processed, analysed and integrated with transactional systems in real-time, providing actionable business intelligence and supporting better informed decision-making throughout the enterprise. Unstructured raw data is stored “as is” on distributed storage, with compute capability local to the storage. When a deep dive into the unstructured data is required, it is orchestrated through parallel processing, and uses analytic techniques that go beyond structured tables, understand documenting structures and mining information from raw data. This certainly consumes more time and effort but can return much more insight into the relationships within that data, and in turn about relationships between disparate but connected things that happen in the real world.

 

Real business benefits

As a leading technology vendor, Oracle is well-position with all elements in the IoT chain, leveraging Java at the device and gateway level, Engineered Systems in the Data Centre or Cloud, through to database transactional, storage, and analytic technologies. Oracle brings its most powerful assets to bear on this new wave of innovation across numerous industries including telecoms, healthcare, automotive, utilities, and industrial automation, making sure that the maximum value is extracted out of each byte of information while reducing the cost of storing and processing.

Now, retailers can understand more about their customer preferences and engage with them on a more personal level both in-store and online, for example offering them discounts on the products that best suit their tastes. Smart meters installed by utility companies help consumers get real-time information on energy use, and give them the ability to manage their energy consumption, save money and reduce emissions.2 Telemedicine, powered by intelligent monitoring systems and smart homes, enables remote patient monitoring and delivery of healthcare services, and facilitates tracking of patient vital signs from their home, such as blood pressure levels, and blood-sugar levels for diabetics. This 24/7 monitoring allows people to remain in their own homes without hospital visits, giving them greater independence as well as reducing costs, while at the same time allowing for faster emergency response to sudden medical emergencies.3

Telematics also plays a vital role in traffic control and safety. Advanced signal control systems are used to optimise the traffic flow across a broader transportation network,4 while individuals can make more intelligent local decisions while driving, choosing the optimal route based on daily conditions. And smart insurance companies are tailoring premiums to customers driving behaviour based on profiles derived from on-board telematics. Benchmarks for optimal driving behaviour can be set by collecting second-by-second telemetric driver-analysis of a group of professional drivers against which the driving styles of consumers can be compared on an ongoing basis. Insurance firms will then be able to set premiums based on the accurate level of risk represented by individual drivers.5

With machine data blending in with human data, an enormous increase in the volume of data also correlates with an increase in the potential value of that data to the business in a way that is changing the world. Smart companies are already preparing for IoT and the next wave of big data to gain competitive differentiation. Helping them along the way, Oracle’s complete technology stack delivers the functionality required to turn massive streams of IoT device data into real, actionable insights and enables decisions that will get the CEO and other leaders excited, ultimately bringing tangible change to businesses and the broader society.

(Keith Rayner is an Oracle writer with almost 20 years’ experience in information technology. Currently based in Beijing City, China, Rayner has made himself at home in several major cities around the world, including Paris, Berlin, New York, and London.)

Footnotes

1 www.onem2m.org

2 www.gov.uk/government/policies/helping-households-to-cut-their-energy-bills/supporting-pages/smart-meters

3 www.raconline.org/topics/telehealth

4 www.civitas.eu/content/congestion-monitoring-using-telematics

5 www.rospa.com/roadsafety/adviceandinformation/vehiclesafety/driver-telematics.aspx