The End of the Beginning

In his Tech Futures talk at the a16z Summit in November 2018, Andreessen Horowitz Partner Benedict Evans walks through where we are now in #software eating the world and how things may continue to change over the next 10 years. #Mobile #IoT #IIoT

What’s the state of not just “the world of tech”, but tech in the world? The access story is now coming to an end, observes Evans, but the use story is just beginning: Most of the people are now online, but most of the money is still not. If we think we’re in a period of disruption right now, how will the next big platform shifts — like machine learning — impact huge swathes of retail, manufacturing, marketing, fintech, healthcare, entertainment, and more? Especially as technology begins to tackle bigger problems, in harder markets, at deeper (and more structural) levels?

Digital Trends and Predictions for 2018

With software and adjacent technologies continuing to eat the world, we see the pace of #digital transformation accelerating in 2018 as organizations strive to enhance their customer and operational intelligence.

Organizations will grapple with a variety of digital technologies and skillsets this year to become more data-driven in order to improve their agility and decision-making capabilities. As always, they’ll be looking for ways to simplify operations and get more done with less. We predict the concepts and trends listed below will light a path for organizations to show them the way forward:

  • Climbing the Stairway from the Edge to the Cloud

The ongoing journey to move data, apps and other digital assets from private, on-premises data centers to public clouds will continue unabated as organizations look to reduce or eliminate internal ICT functions and responsibilities. Even in the midst of cutting costs, organizations will still struggle with concerns around cloud vendor lock-in via PaaS which will benefit IaaS virtual machines, container technologies like Docker and container orchestration technologies like Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, Mesos and Marathon. Overall, Amazon AWS plus Microsoft Azure and Office365 will continue to be the biggest beneficiaries of the public cloud megatrend. Along the way, one of the stair steps that remains on-premise is something called the Fog or the Edge. If you’re familiar with how content delivery network (CDN) proxy servers around the world cache and speed the delivery of Web content to your browser, Edge gateway devices do something similar. With more and more of an organization’s compute occurring in distant, public clouds, Edge devices residing on the local network can cache, aggregate, analyze and speed up cloud content to give employees inside the office a better experience. Edge devices can also be used with the Internet of Things where they connect to machines and cache, aggregate, and analyze data locally instead of waiting for that data to be transported to a distant cloud. Since neither people nor machines are vary tolerant of too much latency, expect the adoption of Edge gateway devices and associated local storage to surge in 2018.

  • Enhanced Networking Inside and Out

As organizations reduce the number of digital assets and activities that take place in-house, the primary role of ICT departments will be to create and maintain fast, reliable connectivity via wired and wireless technologies. Wired networking will be “more of the same” as we push speeds forward with fiber optics and Gigabit Ethernet to shuttle employees out to the Internet. Wireless is where things get more interesting. Inside the office, organizations will continue rolling out 802.11ac Wi-Fi access points running in the 5 GHz band to deliver data and high-bandwidth content like HD video to any device. Outside, the 3GPP has officially signed off on the first 5G specification which promises to deliver greater bandwidth, lower latency, better coverage, lower battery consumption and a higher number of simultaneously connected devices. As you might imagine, it will take some time to roll out technology based on this spec so we will look to get more mileage out of 4G technologies like LTE Advanced. On the slower side of things, you have Low-Power, Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) technologies that are making great strides for certain Internet of Things use cases. The ability to create a large wireless network in places where no cellular coverage exits is compelling for organizations capable of managing such a system. If you have devices or machines that don’t send much data every day, require years of battery life, or need to send data over long distances, one of the many LPWAN technologies might be a good fit. Whether you’re inside or outside, looking for narrowband or broadband, there’s plenty of wireless choices for organizations in 2018.

  • Mobility for People and IoT for Machines

While the mobile device revolution has been the biggest megatrend of this new century, the torch has now been passed to the Internet of Things. When you think about it, they’re not terribly different from each other except for the endpoints. Mobile device endpoints are proxies for people and Thing endpoints refer to machines (intelligent or otherwise). They’re both sending data about themselves and other topics of interest over a network. Both interact with apps, analytics and other on-prem or cloud data sources to derive value and business intelligence. In order to regain a level of simplicity and perhaps sanity, organizations will push back against the use of multiple enterprise platforms for Mobile people and IoT machines. Additionally, many organizations will wring their hands of having to understand an alphabet soup of protocols and myriad IoT standards and revert to using the same Web and Internet standards they already understand. Just like they currently do with Mobile and the Web, organizations will insist that IoT sends and receives JSON data to and from URLs over HTTP/REST while being displayed via HTML5, secured with TLS and brought to life with JavaScript. This use of familiar, widely-used, “good enough” Web technologies will win the day over the more advanced but esoteric technologies currently employed by IoT platforms. This move to simplicity and familiarity will reduce friction and help the Internet of Things deliver value and fulfill its promise the way the Mobile, Web and the Cloud have. Expect big changes in IoT for 2018 along with a big shakeout of the hundreds of Internet of Things platform companies.

  • Digital Twins make Everything Digital

The rise of Digital Twins will give every organization the starting point they’re looking for to begin their Digital Transformation. A Digital Twin is essentially a digital representation of a physical object. It can be a machine, a person, a complex mechanical subsystem, a collection of machines working together on an assembly line, or even a process. These twins have attributes or properties that describe them like a person’s heart rate or a motor’s temperature or current revolutions per minute (RPM). Organizations can assign key performance indicators (KPIs) to the current values of these properties. A red heart rate KPI might be 200 whereas a green motor temperature KPI might be 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Digital Twins can exhibit behavior by executing programming language and/or analytics code against the combination of their current property values and associated KPIs. Not only does this bring everything in an organization to life, it also facilitates the running of simulations to see how things will behave when different types of data points are fed to these Digital Twins. This is definitely the most promising and exciting technology for 2018.

  • Security, Privacy and GDPR cause Organizations to Stumble

Unrelenting cyberattacks keep organizations in a defensive posture rather than moving forward with important digital initiatives and deployments. While we won’t cover the myriad security steps every organization must follow in order to stay ahead of individual and state-sponsored hackers, this is one of the most important functions of an ICT department. Organizational leaders who don’t take this seriously by not funding the appropriate security technology or staffing the appropriate security employee headcount do so at their own peril. Needless to say, organizations must prioritize the privacy and protection of data, people (employees and customers), and systems if they want to remain viable. To turn up the heat a bit, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becomes enforceable on May, 25 2018. This regulation gives control back to EU citizens and residents over their personal data by strengthening data protections for all individuals within the  European Union as well as the export of personal data outside the EU. Quite a few companies operating in countries across the globe play it fast-and-loose with the security and privacy of individual data without user consent. This comes to an end in May when companies can be fined  up to €20 million or 4% of their global annual revenue, whichever is greater, for violating this regulation. Any company operating in the EU must obtain explicit consent for all data collected from an individual as well as reason/purpose of using and processing that data. Additionally, that user consent may be withdrawn. Many companies around the world haven’t made the necessary changes to their digital systems to be compliant with GDPR and will be in for a rude awakening in 2018. Data privacy and security matters in a big way.

  • Making Sense of an Avalanche of Data with Advanced Analytics

While data and analytics systems have been around for decades, the amount of data collected for analysis by organizations has increased exponentially. With a 50x growth rate from machines alone, the Internet of Things has become the newest data source for organizations to analyze. Lots of little data integrated from people, machines and business systems adds up to an overwhelming amount of Big Data to make sense of. Luckily, there are an increasing number of streaming and batch analytics systems and tools to tackle this job. Making this trend better is that most of these technologies are open source and free which helps level the playing field between small, mid-sized and large organizations with varying amounts of money to spend. Head over to Apache.org. Another interesting trend in data science is how Python has surpassed R as the most popular language for Machine Learning. An increase on online courseware, an abundance of scientific libraries, and the fact that Python is one of the easiest programming languages to learn, means you don’t always have to be a PhD in Statistics to get the job done. Virtually every organization in the world is looking for Machine Learning/Deep Learning expertise, so this trend should help the supply side of this equation. The last analytics trend that is coming on strong in 2018 has to do with where data is analyzed. It will no longer be the exclusive domain of the cloud or large clusters of servers. The need to answer questions and make decisions more quickly is driving analytics of all types out to the Edge. Thanks to Moore’s Law and the need to eliminate latency, more and more edge gateway devices will be performing IFTTT and even Machine Learning predictions (with models trained in the cloud). There’s no shortage of important trends that are simplifying advanced analytics for organizations in 2018.

Clearly, 2018 is going to be a transformational year where properly-equipped decision-makers and leaders can shift their organization into the next gear to accelerate their digital transformation. Hold on tight.

VendLink Brought the Internet of Things to Life in the 1990s

The Internet of Things was launched in the early 1990s at a company called Real Time Data. #IoT

This was my first startup after getting out of the military. We brought vending machines to life with embedded software and hardware, early wireless data technology, and graphical software running on Windows.

Our IoT technology allowed operators to know the current state of their vending machines from across town or even across the country. This revolutionary service reduced costs, increased sales and enhanced customer satisfaction.

With VendLink up and running, route drivers only had to visit their vending machines when they needed restocking or mechanical service. Yes, we accurately predicted machine failures without Machine Learning technology. Furthermore, we learned customer preferences to deliver more of the products that people wanted which made each vending machine more profitable.

ROBTIFFANY.COM Named in the Top 100 Websites for IoT Industry Professionals

Top IoT Website

Thrilled to see robtiffany.com included in this distinguished group of the world’s top Internet of Things companies, news sites and individual #IoT influencers and luminaries like Rob van Kranenburg, Peggy Smedley, Stacey Higginbotham and Scott Amyx.

Years of innovating in the IoT, M2M, cloud and mobile industries combined with sharing my knowledge and opinions on https://robtiffany.com has been really rewarding for me.

Rob Tiffany Blog

Check it out at: http://blog.feedspot.com/iot_blogs/

Improve Employee Productivity by Moving your Win32 and Web 1.0 Apps to Mobile

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It’s time to migrate the millions of Win32 and #Web 1.0 apps that currently run global business to #mobile.

Global businesses are run primarily by Windows applications built in the 90s. While apps were created for DOS, the Apple II, OS/2, Sun Workstations, Win16, NeXT, SGI and the Mac in the 80s and early 90s, most were migrated after Windows NT/95 arrived. Y2K taught us COBOL on mainframes are still around. The larger mega-trend stemmed from low-cost PCs coupled to a graphical operating system working with minimal RAM and slow processors. Combined with drag and drop GUI development tools, a perfect storm took over the world of business. The resulting Win32 apps drove a tidal wave of productivity and innovation. Companies still have thousands of them in use today.

Something else happened in the 1990s. A giant network of networks called the Internet, combined with Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web, to create the next technology revolution. Web servers arrived and businesses created static web pages to establish a presence on the web and start marketing to customers. The Intranet was born with internal-facing web pages used to disseminate information to employees. Server-side data processing gave rise to Web 1.0 apps that didn’t have to be deployed to employee desktops the way Windows apps did.

The Win32 and Web 1.0 apps are still with us and must urgently evolve to fit in a world where untethered people expect to flexibly work anytime, from anywhere with mobile devices instead of desktops.

Improve user productivity by migrating legacy apps and websites to the mobile devices employees and customers actually use. What is your organization doing to unchain its employees from desktop apps?

Learn how to digitally transform your company in my newest book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform your Business.”

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Click here to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!

Reduce Business Risk by Enforcing Security Policies on Data with Digital Rights Management

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To enforce #mobile data #security policies directly, get an #EMM solution with #digital rights management to protect #data where it flows & rests.

So far, our EMM journey to secure corporate data has dealt with the issue by broadly securing the entire device via MDM or more narrowly securing the apps that deliver the data using various MAM techniques. The application of security can get narrower still.

The use of digital rights management (DRM) allows IT departments to apply policies directly to documents keeping data secure no matter where it flows or resides. Sometimes DRM is clumped-in with the broader mobile content management (MCM) component of EMM. This security applied directly to data is an effective method of DLP using a combination of enterprise directory services, encryption, user identity along with server and client software to keep information in sensitive files from being viewed by the wrong people or systems.

Imagine the scenario where a confidential business document is uploaded to an Internet file sharing provider or emailed to a competitor. Traditional corporate security mechanisms like firewalls or file server access controls lists won’t save you in this situation. If DRM encryption and security policies were previously applied to this document, it would be unreadable by anyone who tried to open it. This is arguably the most difficult of the EMM security components so not many vendors will offer this.

Reduce risk to your organization by keeping sensitive data secure no matter where it travels or where it rests. What is your company doing to protect its critical data?

Learn how to digitally transform your company in my newest book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform your Business.”

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Click here to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!

Reduce Business Risk by Protecting Corporate Assets and IP from BYOD Employees

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Send “Bring your own Device” #BYOD #mobile employees to the #Internet via a separate Wi-Fi #network versus giving them direct access to internal servers.

Many companies today have a guest network. This is a separate Wi-Fi network that visitors use to access the Internet when they come meet with employees. Some of these guest networks require a password given to them by the person at the front desk and others don’t use security.

Now imagine a guest network on steroids serving all your mobile employees when they’re in the office and extending the data plans on their personal devices.

I’m sorry, but I still don’t believe in the concept of the trusted enterprise wireless network where mobile employees have direct access to internal servers. Compromised mobile devices and apps can unwittingly attack those networks and servers. Send them out to the Internet and have them come back into the Intranet through a secure path. Your company has already spent a lot of time and effort creating a secure Extranet for employees who need remote access. Put your reverse proxies, firewalls, routers, VNETs and switches to use for all mobile employees. Instead of maintaining two classes of access to internal resources, just reuse the one you already have.

Moving into the future, Intranet resources will disappear as everything migrates to the cloud. Concepts like remote access and internal servers will vanish and your super-fast guest network will look like a stroke of genius.

Reduce Risk to you corporate assets and intellectual property by blocking direct Wi-Fi access to Intranet resources. Is your organization allowing employees to access internal servers with their personal mobile devices?

Learn how to digitally transform your company in my newest book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform your Business.”

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Click to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!

Improve Employee Productivity by Enhancing Corporate Infrastructure to Support BYOD

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The “Bring your own Device” #BYOD #mobile phenomenon has moved employees from 1:1 PC computing to 5:1 mobility requiring enhanced infrastructure & #cloud workloads.

More and more BYOD employees are using their own laptops, tablets and smartphones to access corporate data, apps and other services to do their jobs. It started with email in the early 2000s, progressed to synched calendars and contacts, the mobile web and then an explosion of apps. This transformation took employees from Ethernet-connected PCs to multiple, wireless-connected mobile devices.

Imagine you live in a city with 100,000 citizens. Over the course of just a few years, the population swells to 500,000. Asleep at the wheel, city leaders and civil servants didn’t build new roads, add mass-transit, increase the sewer systems or deploy new power cabling to meet the needs of this larger city. This reflects the infrastructures of most corporations today.

The BYOD tsunami combined with the impact of the Cloud and IoT requires significant infrastructure upgrades in order to cope:

  • More bandwidth via redundant, Internet connected and private fiber circuits.
  • Faster routers, switches, proxies and firewalls with increased capacity.
  • A managed Wi-Fi infrastructure using multiple channels, higher access point density and the most bandwidth possible.
  • Dramatically beefed-up DNS, email and line of business servers with shorter DHCP leases.

Improve User Productivity by building a corporate infrastructure that supports the unique needs of today’s BYOD workforce. What kinds of improvements has your organization made to its infrastructure to handle of onslaught of mobile and IoT devices?

Learn how to digitally transform your company in my newest book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform your Business.”

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Click to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!