Bringing Alien Worlds Together in the Internet of Things
In the 1990s, I, like millions of others, read the book Women Are from Venus, Men Are from Mars. This best-seller suggested that the frequent misunderstandings between genders make it seem as though men and women are from different, alien worlds. But it’s not just men and women who appear to be from different planets. Today, every organization that has begun an Internet of Things (IoT) deployment is bumping up against a fundamental disconnect between information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT). In many cases, these two groups are alien to one another—with separate technology stacks, network architectures, protocols, standards, governance models, and organizations.
In the first wave of the Internet, data and technology systems fell solidly in the realm of IT. IT systems focused on the flow of data across an organization, and with a few exceptions, did not get involved in production and logistics environments.
However, in many companies, a parallel organization—commonly called operational technology —has grown up to monitor and control devices and processes that act in real time on physical operational systems, such as assembly lines, electricity distribution networks, oil production facilities, and a host of others. Continue reading “IT Is from Venus, OT Is from Mars”
Providing Business Intelligence (BI) reporting and analysis used to be a service that IT provided for their line-of-business counterparts. In recent years, however business users have increasingly taken the lead for their BI and analytic solutions.
Buzzwords. There seems to be a new one every year that people fall over themselves trying to get into conversations. Companies pounce on the new word, like a tiger capturing its prey, and set-up ‘Tiger Teams’ to determine how they can embrace the changes afoot that the said word will bring about. And, let’s not forget the rush to update LinkedIn profiles with the buzzword because everybody, of course, is now an expert in it!
I often think buzzwords highlight opportunities that have been overlooked and are things we should already be doing.
Content marketing, for me, is one of those buzzwords. It is after all simply, ‘marketing’. And more crucially it is marketing that both stimulates and engages your customers into a conversation. Marketing has always featured content. But what we have all woken up to is the fact that content must be authentic, relevant to your audience and human if it is to stand any chance of being conversational.
A ‘one size fits all’ broadcast approach to marketing doesn’t work anymore. Did it ever truly work? No, probably not. Past success could partly be attributed to lack of brand competition. But with more brands today competing for customers’ attention, customers have purchasing muscle – and they’re not afraid to flex it. It is now important more than ever that your brand stands out and helps customers who want to talk to you. But how?
Marketing is and has always been about storytelling. Storytelling has existed since the beginning of time and has been used by brands for hundreds of years. A carefully crafted story that resonates, creates brand attachment and a reason to engage is a sure fire way of building an authentic relationship.
What a customer experiences on their buying journey should not be underestimated and it is our job as marketers to quench their thirst for knowledge and provide them with relevant content.
Content and storytelling is nothing new. So why the hype around ‘Content Marketing’? Maybe other buzzwords such as ‘Big Data’ took our attention away from what we are fundamentally here to do……tell stories.
Marketers must re-familiarise themselves with the art of storytelling. It is the experience you create and the skilful way you tell your story that will retain customer and attract new prospects.
So in summary, instead of focusing on ‘Content Marketing’, let us focus on Marketing and the art of conversation. Talking and listening to customers with messaging that engages, resonates, ignites passion and creates emotional attachment to your brand.
The next time you hear a new buzzword. Ask yourself this; what is it highlighting that you have overlooked?
In a recent TechTarget survey, it was noted that despite the hypes about numerous benefits of SD-WAN – one of which is the ability to create a hybrid WAN environment (i.e. MPLS and Internet or LTE links), something Gartner claims will be “the new normal,” – only 10% of enterprises plan to deploy hybrid WAN in the next 12 months. The greatest concern for the slow uptake is whether Quality of Service (QoS) can be done over Internet connections. In addition to that, management complexity and security vulnerabilities by going to Direct Internet Access (DIA) are also top of mind. Of the 1,437 that were surveyed, 54% is still in the consideration stage about SD-WAN, and the number one considering factor is to reduce WAN costs. This is not a surprise, but a perplexing issue for CIO, CISO, and IT Admins especially when analysts, like Gartner, and respondents in an April 2015 ETAB Survey, are prescribing SD-WAN as the enterprise’s top IT priorities for the next 3-year.
We will examine the following in this post: a) the State of the WAN in 2015, b) what we hear from customers, and c) a successful, real world SD-WAN deployment. Continue reading “Proving the Value of SD-WAN”
The electric utilities sector is facing some challenging times as it struggles with a regulatory model designed for an earlier era. As increased renewable integrations into the grid intensify, electric utilities will need to take steps to accommodate the variable output of distributed generation and develop new insights and technologies that will shape the future of the grid. In fact, my colleague Rick Geiger recently authored a blog with his thoughts on what the future of the grid looks like.
The electric utilities business model is being disrupted and the days of the regulated monopoly appears ripe for change. So, how exactly can electric utilities work to modernize the grid? The answer is by addressing current customer requirement trends taking place in the industry through the collection and analysis of pertinent data. These utility industry megatrends include:
Changing customer expectations resulting from the digitization of services allowing anytime, anywhere personalized services.
Rise of social networks and the ability to quickly form communities of interest and communicate instantaneously with a billion people globally via text, video and/or voice.
Pervasive connectivity and computing that is unlocking a sea of change in productivity gains for businesses, disrupting existing businesses and creating new opportunities for agile firms.
Expansion of energy markets for distributed energy resources are enabling greater adoption and increased transactions.
Financial innovation that is enabling a wide range of customers to amortize initial capital costs of DER to align with benefit cash flows and make a stronger value proposition.
Energy technology advancements for power system and distributed energy technologies are accelerating at exponential rates while also leveraging breakthroughs on business models and system performance.
These trends are disrupting utilities’ ability to effectively manage the grid as customers become more involved in the way energy consumption evolves. As we look at the integration of renewable services or renewable generation from wind, solar, biogas and others, the grid is now becoming a two-way system. Take solar panel installations on rooftops. You now have customers generating electricity and sending it back into the grid – it’s not just coming from the generating plant anymore. In order to stabilize the grid, we need to collect data and be able to make decisions that impact the outcomes seen.
In order for utilities to successfully meet these customer requirements, they must create an intelligent energy network platform that is:
Observable – enabling full determination of grid state – deep situational awareness.
Intelligent – enabling ability to gain situational intelligence to support operational decisions.
Automated – ability to rapidly adapt to changing conditions with minimal human involvement.
Transactive – dynamically balancing diverse resources and distributed market participation.
If you consider blackouts that have happened in the past, having an automated grid with the ability to collect and react to data may have helped with those cascading power outages. That is the problem modern-day utilities are solving. Electric utilities are changing their mindset about using data analytics to meet customer requirements and in my opinion, data analytics will be one of the best ways of effectively managing the grid. Harvesting reams of data opens up new, great opportunities for both utilities and ratepayers, which in the end reduces the cost of managing the grid and gives utilities real-time capabilities to deal with issues that may impact grid performance. One of the market entrants in the utilities sector taking this approach is Bit Stew. Continue reading “Modernizing the Grid: Utilities and Data Analytics”
In the last two years, we’ve used Cisco Cloud Consumption Assessment and helped many customers discover and understand their cloud services, costs and security risks.
The results are surprising! On average, enterprises use nearly 675 cloud services, have much more risk controls needing attention, and use the same cloud services across multiple categories like compute and storage. After a cloud assessment, most IT and business leaders find themselves faced with a TON of cloud usage. So what should they do next?
When evaluating cloud services, many organizations make the mistake of focusing largely on a service’s contracted price. While this takes into account the initial outlay and operational cost of a cloud service, it fails to consider the potential losses a business can incur when a service that does not accurately meet all of its specific needs.
As Philip T. Kiser details in “Deciding Between Public Cloud and Managed Services”, you have many options when building out your cloud. These different options offer varying levels of reliability and availability. Commodity-class public cloud services, for example, offer low cost but they provide only best-effort service. If these services support a critical part of your organization, service failure can bring your business to a standstill. For some companies, downtime can be measured in millions of dollars an hour and likely many dissatisfied customers.
Managed services can come into play for applications needing minimum levels of reliability. Managed services are implemented in your data center but managed by your cloud provider. This frees you to focus on running your business rather than managing your network. Depending upon the provider, you can also get public cloud services with enterprise-class performance. For example, every cloud provider offering Cisco Powered services provides, at a minimum, enterprise-class service backed by SLAs that guarantee 99.99% to 99.999% uptime. With more than 600 Cisco Powered providers and resellers offering 575+ services, there are local and global capabilities available to you throughout the world.
Some applications, however, need an even higher level of reliability and availability. For example, if the voice services for a contact center go down, this can quickly escalate into severe revenue losses for an organization. For this reason, cloud providers like TeleSpace take their Cisco Powered services to the highest levels: carrier-class availability.
TeleSpace achieves this by building redundancy throughout its network. Consider that many organizations are powered by only a single circuit. If the power goes out, these organizations are limited by the capacity of their uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Because TeleSpace is able to share its cost among its customers, it can provide the highest levels of redundancy. With their own backhaul and six carriers coming into their cloud, the odds of a TeleSpace service going down are on a level with which an on-premises data center simply can’t compete.
However, not every application needs enterprise- or carrier-class service. In these cases, commodity-class service can be cost effective. But for the mission-critical parts of your business, downtime losses mean commodity-class services actually provide you marginal service at a higher cost. By selecting a service with the right level of reliability, you can avoid downtime losses that eat away at the profitability of your business and minimize the risk of losing dissatisfied customers.
To find a provider who can offer you enterprise- or carrier-class cloud services, visit the Cisco Partner Locator.
When you work at Cisco, the Internet of Everything (IoE) becomes more personal to each of us. However, for one Cisco employee, the Internet of Everything takes personal to a whole new level.
Just a few months ago, Karen Miller Morris had her “mom-ness” put to the test when she found out her 8-year-old son, Chase, was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Since Type 1 Diabetes is an auto-immune disorder, there wasn’t anything that Karen could change about Chase’s eating habits or exercise to help him. It meant monitoring and maintaining blood sugar levels through administering insulin for the rest of his life.
Her Cisco family was there to support her – she was able to take a month’s leave to make the changes needed –but as it turns out, the company was helping her in a way that’s uniquely Cisco.
“I thank Cisco engineers all the time for the contributions they make to the Internet of Everything,” Karen says. “If it wasn’t for the IoE mhealth (mobile health) solution I recently purchased, things would be a lot more dangerous for my son, and stressful for the people that love him.”
The cloud, the network, and the Internet of Everything (the networked connection of people, process, data, and things) make it possible for Karen to sleep at night.
Shortly after her son was diagnosed, a company called Dexcom came out with an IOE solution. She uses their continuous blood glucose monitor, which uses a sensor inserted into his arm that wirelessly communicates with a digital monitoring device (Continuous Glucose Monitor-CGM). That device shows what his blood glucose (BG) level is every 6 seconds. This data is then sent across networks into the cloud, which means she can see Chase’s BG level anytime, anywhere on her phone.
Karen, and “Team Chase” (a whole team of family members, nurses, teachers and friends) watch his numbers to ensure he’s in an optimal BG range. Plus, this IoE solution empowers Chase, and ensures all that he’s safe.
Karen’s sister also has Type 1 Diabetes, and she and their family didn’t have the technology advantage that Chase does. Parents of the past had to send their children to sleep with higher-than-optimal blood sugar numbers, so they wouldn’t get too low at night and end up in a coma – or worse. The trouble is, higher sugar numbers are also very dangerous over the longer term.
“I think about people who had to deal with this 40 years ago. They were living in the dark, making decisions without the data that we have today. This IOE solution helps us to ensure Chase lives a life where he can realize his dreams.”
That’s one of the many reasons Karen enjoys working at Cisco.
“I love working here, because it‘s like working for the U.N.,” Karen laughs. “We’re here for the good of all; to make sure that we’re helping researchers and companies that are doing these amazing things solve complex problems and provide ground-breaking solutions.”
Plus, she has a job that she says “if I was a millionaire, I would do it for free.” Her goal is to raise awareness about the technology careers of tomorrow. Not just encouraging college and high-school students; but, students as early as elementary school to get excited about tech, and the difference they can make (which is especially important for young girls when it comes to being intrigued by technology.)
Take, for example, her son Chase.
“He’s proud of his medical device and shows it to everyone,” Karen says. “It’s gotten him interested in becoming a young user experience designer. He thinks that instead of a negative alarm when his blood sugar drops, it should play a song like, ‘you’re going low.’ If he can make it cooler, maybe gamify it, he could make it better for the next kid that is faced with this challenge..”
Understanding the Internet of Everything, and getting kids excited about technology, starts with an inspiring story. Karen’s got hers, what’s yours? Share with us in comments!
I recently flew from Heathrow to San Diego to attend Cisco Live. About an hour in and the cabin crew started serving dinner. It was a full flight and, unfortunately for me, I was seated right in the middle of the economy section. As the cabin crew converged on my row it became clear they didn’t have enough food.
“Not a problem”, I thought to myself, “maybe they’ll get me some of the nicer food from the front of the plane!”
Nearly 45 minutes later, as my fellow passengers finished their meals and settled into a movie, there was still no food. But perhaps more frustrating – no one from the crew had talked to me about what was happening. If this had been a restaurant, I’d have got up and left. But at 35,000 feet I had nowhere to go.*
Fast forward about 72 hours…
I’m in a session at Cisco Live about how Cisco Midsize Business Solutions can power growing businesses. Seth Corriveau from SickKids Foundation was talking about how critical communication is to his organization. The SickKids Foundation is a midsized organization doing great work raising funds for SickKids hospital in Toronto. They had been having real problems with poor-quality audio and dropped telephone calls. This was an issue for donors who call in to donate their own hard-earned cash to support the treatment of very ill children. Complaints were escalated to senior VPs at the Foundation weekly. Continue reading “Solving Customer Problems with Flexible Solutions”
When you work at Cisco, the Internet of Everything (IoE) becomes more personal to each of us. However, for one Cisco employee, the Internet of Everything takes personal to a whole new level.