Monetizing the Internet of Things: Will Cisco, IBM or Oracle Partners Win?
Can the Internet of Things -- which Cisco calls The Internet of Everything -- generate profit and revenue growth for channel partners and service providers? Cisco Partner Summit 2014 offered some hype -- and clues.
The Internet of Everything (Cisco‘s spin on The Internet of Things) generates lots of noise, hype and discussion. But can IoE (or IoT) generate revenues and profits for Cisco and its channel partners? And can Cisco IoE compete against IBM Smarter Planet and Oracle IoT efforts? Hmmm… Here’s some related chatter from a Cisco Partner Summit 2014 roundtable….
Sound bites:
- IoT is big, happening now, and happening across multiple geographies.
- Existing and new Cisco partners will participate in creating value.
- Cisco is making technology, go to market and program investments to speed the market formation.
- Traditional enterprise VARs, telecom service providers and new vertical systems/technology companies will get involved.
Internet of Things: Big Hype, Big Value?
And of course, Cisco offered some big predictions, claiming:
- 50 billion devices and objects will be connected to the Internet by 2020. But more than 99 percent of things in the physical world remain unconnected.
- IoT will generate $19 billion in Value at Stake over then next 10 years (2013-2022). That’s a lofty figure… and The VAR Guy tends to respectfully dismiss such long-term forecasts in IT since markets change so fast.
- Side note: Rivals like Oracle also are jumping into the IoT market. Java-enabled devices and Engineered Big Data systems will be core to Oracle’s strategy.
Internet of Things: Show Me The Money, ROI and Profits
In terms of actually monetizing IoT and IoE, Cisco and its panelists pointed to a range of examples. They included:
- Sujeet Chand, senior VP and CTO at Rockwell Automation, spoke about remote managed services for industrial manufacturing to help optimize business performance.
- Zones and Transwestern described how they renovated business building systems with sensors. Everything is integrated into a backbone to help drop operating costs while cutting annual energy costs by 21 percent.
- AGT International described IoE opportunities to address city traffic congestion. It sounded a bit like a page from IBM’s Smarter Planet strategy.
- Yasmin Jivral, president of Acrodex, described pro-active maintenance solutions that are part of the IoT trend.
Internet of Things: Big Competition?
Cisco says it will differentiate from IBM and Oracle on three fronts: Security, app enablement and easy of use:
- Cisco will focus on control and security from the device to the application to the network.
- In terms of app enablement, “you need distributed intelligence to do local control. You need to push the processing to the edge.” Cisco does that, the company asserted.
- Cisco’s SDN will ease the overall use of IoT and IoE, the company said.
- AGT International said they are betting the house on Cisco after careful analysis of strategies and technologies in the market. AGT didn’t mention IBM or Oracle by name, and other panelists did not weigh in.
Stay tuned for more updates.
