How To Better Exploit The Potential of Data with IoT

Companies are increasingly aware of the power of data to establish new business strategies or get to know their customers better. Having devices connected to the Internet (Internet of Things) in the company makes it possible to count on numerous data that, once managed and analyzed, allow us to continue on this path of knowledge.

As expressed in 2019 by market researcher IDC, by 2025 there will be 41.6 billion IoT devices, which will generate almost 80,000 zettabytes of data. This demonstrates the power of technology to generate information, which needs to be addressed to harness its potential.

IoT and Data

If for whatever reason, a company deploys an infrastructure of sensors and objects connected to the Internet, it already has a good source of data collection. Once the network of IoT devices has been deployed, the objects interact with each other or with the environment, and the company obtains a large amount of data from which relevant information can be extracted. To do this, it is necessary to have an adequate infrastructure, which allows the information to be transmitted and even analyzed in real-time.

To obtain this data, it is not necessarily necessary to deploy these sensors or objects on the walls, floor, or ceiling. They can also be in the form of a wearable complement; for example, a sensor on the helmet of a bricklayer to know the ambient temperature or a camera installed on his glasses to see the terrain where he works.

Having the data in a centralized infrastructure and not scattered in several, facilitates the work and saves costs in its treatment or storage. Once in this ‘base’, other technologies are used, such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or Cloud Computing, to manage this large amount of information and get the most out of it. With these technologies, the data is also analyzed to generate reports that facilitate new work perspectives with the aim of enhancing the business.

In addition, the combination of IoT with big data saves time and money for the company. The technology automates processes that would otherwise be slower and more expensive. In short, you can do ingest, storage, analysis… work that would otherwise be impossible for a human.

On the other hand, by having analysis tools that give results in seconds or minutes, employees save time in these jobs, which they use to create business or marketing plans with the results.

Before deploying the IoT network, the data management and analysis strategy must be decided. That is, it is necessary to know how it will be analyzed in order to prepare the entire infrastructure accordingly. These decisions can be flexible and change over time, as the company’s needs change or as more departments access big data.

Advantages Of The Union of IoT and Data: Data Analysis with IoT

The advantages of using IoT to obtain data include:

• Expanding the variety of data types and quantity. A sensor can be placed in a wearable, as mentioned above, and even in a tilled field or even under farmland to obtain data. In addition, the deployment of a sensor network increases the amount of big data that was previously obtained from external sources.
• Analyze instantly, in real-time, by combining them with technologies such as artificial intelligence and deep learning.
• As we said before, some ‘human’ tasks are digitized and help employees to focus on other tasks.
• Make more and better decisions.
• In short, save costs and resources. Collecting and analyzing information personally involves a very large investment of time and personnel that disappears when IoT and big data are combined. This improves the company’s bottom line while obtaining higher quality information.

The advantages also affect the public space: by linking IoT with data, companies can develop lines of business related to smart cities and create the cities of the future.

Examples of Exploiting Data with IoT

Here are several examples of how to take advantage of IoT devices in different sectors:

• Agriculture and livestock: From crops to animals through food or water tanks, these sensors warn about the state of irrigation or plantations and forecast future weather conditions to make decisions accordingly.
• Industrial plants: Connected machines in a production plant or warehouse provide information on their activity or warn of their maintenance.
• Health: Sensors in a patient’s body, a blood pressure monitor or a glucometer collect vital signs to monitor the patient. But not only that: but in the long run, this information helps to predict the diagnosis of other people or to design treatments. Monitoring alerts to problems in the present and anticipates them in order to avoid them in the future, or at least to have faster diagnosis and treatment.
• Transportation: Goods trucks with sensors send information to a cloud platform shared with other vehicles and workers: traffic status, need to pass through the workshop… In addition, packages or containers can be equipped with sensors that serve both large companies and small traders waiting for the goods.

At Plain Concepts, we specialize in adding value to the sensors your company has deployed. Working together, we design solutions for collection, cloud storage, and big data analysis that help you discover new business opportunities at a lower cost and free up human capital for other tasks.