My colleague, and Cisco’s Chief Futurist, Dave Evans first introduced Cisco to the ideas behind The Internet Of Things (IoT) in 2011. The term, first coined in 1999, holds that as more and more things become connected it changes the way we interact with the world around us.
There’s no doubt we are living in a connected world. Our televisions, cars, and even our appliances are part of the Internet of Things – these connected devices even outnumber people! Likewise, the devices we use every day like smartphones and tablets allow us to stay in contact with each other like never before, but they also let us interact more fully with the other things in our environment.
Earlier this month, Dave introduced us to the next phase of this amazing transformation, the Internet of Everything (IoE).
In the Internet of Everything - the intelligent connection of people, things, data, and process on the Internet – we are starting to realize the potential of these connected things, and entering an era where the Internet has the power to improve the lives of everyone on the planet. According to Dave this shift will be driven largely as connected things gain context awareness, increased processing power and greater sensing abilities, allowing them to turn data into actionable information.
In this excerpt from Dave’s latest blog, he discusses how the real value of the Internet of Everything lies in the value of connections among people process, data and things, not simply in the sheet number of things that are connected:
When your car becomes connected to the Internet of Everything in the near future, it will simply increase the number of things on the Internet by 1. Now, think about the numerous other elements to which your car could be connected—other cars, stoplights, your home, service personnel, weather reports, warning signs, and even the road itself. It is from these multiple connections that your driving experience will become better than it is today. You will be safer, more informed and entertained, arrive on time, and even save on fuel and maintenance costs as you travel to your destination.
In order to measure this value, the team is creating the Cisco Connections Index. The index will quantify the value of connections, which the team defines as “information flows,” across five enterprise domains—customer intimacy, employee productivity, supply chain and logistics efficiency, innovation, and asset utilization. When completed, the index will measure the extent and quality of these information flows for companies around the world.
Read the full blog post by Dave here.
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