Want to Be Successful with the IoT? Learn to Forge Smart Partnerships

Currently, there are roughly 23 billion connected devices on earth. By next year, that number will jump past 28 billion. By 2020, we will be contending with some 50-odd million connected devices. As those devices accumulate, the amount of data escalates, as well, doubling in size about every two years. By the year 2020, there will be 5,200 gigabytes of data for every person on the planet. This will account for an additional 40 zettabytes, which is about 57 times the number of grains of sand on all of the beaches around the globe put together.

If you’re struggling to keep a few dozen or a few hundred users connected with reliable speed, performance, and security, imagine what it will be like as these predictions come to fruition. To be effective with the IoT, you will need to develop smart partnerships. Here are the partnerships you need to start forging now so that you’ll be on top when the IoT tsunami hits the business world.

Partner With Device Manufacturers & Application Developers

What devices do you need? What data do these devices need to collect for you? Find a device manufacturer and/or application developer that can get you what you need to be competitive in your industry.

There are two ways to approach this. You can adopt the off-the-shelf devices and apps that are being developed for your industry. Or, you can be the innovator and partner with manufacturers and developers who can help you build new devices from the ground up. Either way, you will need to have the devices relative to your industry, as well as a means for collecting, storing, securing, and analyzing it.

Partner With Cloud Vendors for Data Storage

Since the storage infrastructure needs of businesses are rapidly outgrowing what they are capable of managing in-house, cloud storage vendors will be in high demand. While the cloud is often touted as limitlessly scalable, the fact is that cloud-based data warehouses are facing the same issues everyone else is. You can only invest in and add so much storage in a given amount of time. Expect prices to climb until supply is ready to meet demand.

Partner With Offloading and Data Integration Vendors

How are you going to get all that data offloaded from various devices, systems, etc. and into your data store, such as Hadoop? IoT devices come with a plethora of different data formats, which means connectivity and compatibility issues have to be overcome before you can leverage all that sweet intel on your business, operations, finances, and customers. Partner with a vendor capable of managing all different formats and types of data that the IoT brings with it.

Partner With Analytics Specialists

The shortage of data scientists isn’t just something to fill up blogs and sell tech magazine subscriptions. Companies are already challenged with finding the talent they need, which means you’ll need to partner with a firm or consultant with those skills to make up for the staff you don’t have in-house. Choose your platform carefully and find a vendor with those specialties, because an expert in Hadoop may or may not be able to manage an infrastructure on another platform.

Partner With Other Companies to Consolidate & Share Data Streams

Big data isn’t useful so much because of its size. In fact, the size brings so many quality issues that it actually becomes an inhibiting factor in gleaning useful analysis. The value of big data is in its complexity. You’ll get far more insight and useful analysis from five data streams than from three, or from ten rather than six. This means forming partnerships with other companies who hold data that you need. Together, your data will be much more insightful than either of your data streams would alone.

Partner With Security Vendors

No data initiative is complete without a solid security plan in place. This means beefing up your own security and assuring that you partner only with cloud providers and other partners with top-tier security policies and procedures.

Ah, you don’t get far with a big data discussion without bumping up against security, do you? The IoT is expected to attract hackers like picnics attract ants. You’ll need the right security partners to assure that your big data initiative is a big success, not a whopping data breach waiting to happen.

Where will you find all of these essential partnerships? At a Big Data Week event near you! See the full conference schedule here.