Computers,as originally
designed, were not meant for personal computing and entertainment purposes. During
early ages of computer world, computers were mainly used for complex
computations by researchers and scientists; Setting up this monster, computer, was
very tedious and cumbersome. A use case for home computing or using computers
for entertainment was insane idea during those times. However, the revolution
of home computing changed the industry and business expectations from
computers. Computer designs were made simple enough for general public to
embrace the computers and it’s advantages. Soon computers became part of home
computing and personal devices, which could be used for education;
calculations; document keeping etc. Industry was witnessing a revolution before
a revolution. Later on, Introduction of internet gave birth to “dot com boom” and changed how we perceive
the world around us. Businesses embraced the internet and took the advantage of
online business opportunities and changed how traditional business used to run
and operate. Wherein internet provided a playground of information resources ,
information era gathered those resources to draw conclusions and inferences and
landed us in whole new smarter world.
The changes we have seen so far
in the industry have become possible because of 3 main factors, as explained by
3 laws
- · Moore’s Law, according to which “The number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years”
- · Kryder’s Law , According to which there will be “40 % per year decrease in the cost performance of hard disks”
- · Roberts Law , According to which cost of data transmission over network would decrease every year.
As stated in Moore’s law ,we
have witnessed significant increase in number of transistors on the chip and
how that has helped industry in terms of storing more data; compact design of
storage devices; new use cases for technologies. Today, a compact memory card
or flash drive can store as much data as a whole hard disk could store, a
decade ago.
Use of computers and storage
devices has increase at an exponential rate because of one important factor i.e
cost. Cost and performance of the storage devices has reduced to a point where
industry can store any amount of information and data , as stated by Kryder’s
law.
On the other hand , information
era has become possible due to increased efficiency of networks and computers.
Today, we are living in a world, which is always connected ; any information is
just a click away from us.
Where is Industry moving?
Increased speed, power and
efficiency of computers, network and storage devices have shaped all the
industries and world around us but what’s next? Where the industry goes from
here ? if we follow the same track of progress that we have been following since
last one decade. What is the future of technology, if we continue to see same
progress over the next coming years? To answer all these questions lets unpack
our discussion a little more.
So far two worlds, computer
world and human world , have remained different to a large extent. Technology
helps in making our day to day decisions but we still can’t use the information
and technology as we can use rest of our physical objects. Our day to day
physical objects are still far disconnected from computers and networks. For
instance :Candle ,which is placed in front of me as I am writing this paper, is
still not connected to our information and computer world. What if technology
world and physical world start talking to each other? Our physical objects such
as chairs, dish washer, refrigerators, homes, keys, doors, plants, cars ,
dining tables, clothes could all be connected to computers and networks ;we
would land in a whole new smarter world
where we can efficiently use and manage these devices. What is the next big thing that the industry
is anticipating? As termed by the industry “Internet of things “ is going to
revolutionize our industry and going to make the world ever more smarter.
Internet of things , is set of connected devices , which can not only talk to certain applications but can talk to each other to take decisions and handle
day to day human activities more efficiently by reducing human intervention.
These devices are equipped with sensors and/or actuators to send the
information to other devices and can process information received from other
devices to take intelligent decisions. We are already on the track of paving
path for future world. Market has started flooding with smart things such
Fitness bands, smart watches, Health trackers, baby monitoring devices, smart
homes , smart cars , smart parking , smart bins, smart buildings, smart
lightings ,smart locks , smart doors and many more. Billions of such devices
are anticipated to be connected to network and as we all know once any device
is connected to network , it opens up unprecedented opportunities to utilize
the information generated by the device. Hence, Internet of things is going to
land us in a whole new smarter world, as we have seen in Sci-Fi movies or even
better. Big Market players have already started betting on the potential of
Internet of things and have started the journey towards future.
Future
of Manufacturing:
Even though, application area of
Internet of things is very huge covering health industry, Home appliances,
Energy Industry, Manufacturing industry, Health Industry and many more , we
will pick one industry vertical to discuss how future of the industry can be
imagined even beyond current state of Internet of things.
Internet to things hold true
potential to bring Fourth industrial revolution following- steam engine; the
conveyor belt; and the first phase of IT and automation technology. (Löffler 2013) . Smart sensor and
actuator based devices can not only be used to do a lot of automation in a
factory but they can also be used and become
independent processes in any manufacturing life cycle of a product. We can see
another revolution in supply chain management if we can intelligently access
the warehouse data, manufacturing units data and monitor logistics to make
right business decision at right time. What we have talked so far is reality
and industry is already in progress to use these devices to manage the
resources efficiently. If we think beyond current state of progress then we can
see that the possibility of linking all the physical objects used in the
manufacturing industry such as raw material, packing material etc to the network ; we can further reduce human intervention if all these raw
materials are intelligent enough to decide their final destination, location
and unit position in the product, based on the physical characteristics of the material.
In an extreme case these materials can be intelligent enough to know what customer
order they are going to be part of and how to arrange themselves in the
required fashion within given timelines for the given order. This is all
possible ,looking at the current growth of the industry and how industry is
utilizing the potential of reduced cost, better systems, intelligence built in
smaller devices and reduction in cost of transmission of data.
Challenges and concerns:
As we all know
convenience does not come without a cost so surely there are some disadvantages
of this new future. One of the major concerns that we can see or anticipate to
come across during our journey is privacy and security. We have seen history of
data breaches during information era and with billions of more devices coming
to network this situation would only worsen. Therefore , security and privacy
is the major question that industry is trying to find an answer for. Another
social problem associated is digital divide, the gap between set of people who can
access the information and who can’t access the information using modern
resources. It limits one’s ability to take part new market dynamics. New
technological tools for businesses give new opportunities to business to
compete in whole different way. However,
Digital divide can limit this participation.
It will be interesting to witness this journey.
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