As technology continues influencing how we live, IoT (Internet of Things) is becoming more of a handy and real concept. It is not just that our refrigerators, door locks, alarms, coffee machines and air cons are getting smarter and intelligent but IoT has also taken over everything from street lighting, field sensors, and security systems to health monitoring and more. It is not easy to ignore how data science and smarter robotics is becoming all pervasive. However, the increasing influx of these data systems is also bringing on new challenges in the enterprise environment. Modern businesses are now more frequently indulged in data aggregation, visualization and interaction with a variety of information sources. Luckily, there also exist programmable APIs that offer a front-end dashboard to interact with this data. A common feature of all these configurations we work in is a web browser that helps us to deploy and interact with web applications.
One of the most logical choices in this case for enterprises is creating a web application using HTML5 and JavaScript. Currently, the most widely accepted and adopted technology, HTML5 offers a framework that is used by web developers to create powerful and flexible user interface. Further, these RESTful based APIs alongside JavaScript frameworks allow developers to connect a wide range of IoT devices. This gives enterprises a cost effective and more importantly, an easy medium to control these devices. Consequently, we already have several developers across the globe working on similar frameworks to gain expertise in web based technology. Once deployed, it brings about huge cost savings and time reductions.
Huffington Post suggests that today there are a minimum of 5 billion devices connected to the internet and this number will be growing to 50 billion by 2020. Now, each of these devices is continuously collecting terabytes of data every day. This includes everything from user behavior to network usage. One of the most interesting developments in this line has been the development of self-driving vehicles. Analysts believe that by 2020, more than 250 million self driven cars (driverless) would be roaming our streets and will be powered by IoT and Artificial Intelligence. We already have a variety of smaller devices and gadgets that program themselves to cater to our needs, understand our priorities and make our life easier. These include technologies like Google Glass, Fitbit, and even smart clothing.
Here are some cool services that have been made possible by integrating IoT data and web technology:
1. Enjoysthin.gs
An Artsy social sharing website, enjoysthin.gs offers real-time publishing by sharing items life to users on the website. The popularity of the platform has already increased and so has the flowing stream of real- time feeds from across the web. All of it is based on the type of content the specific user is looking for.
2. LazyFeed / YourVersion
Both of these are currently offering real-time discovery tools that unearth web pages, blog posts and a wide variety of resources that interests a user. Its like a broad, personalized and topical search with high spam control. Useful and fun, the technology powering it has been IoT.
3. Pip.io
Pip.io has become one of the most unusual and useful online platforms for shared experiences. Using XMPP and AJAX, it lets users perform communicative actions in social networking (person to person sharing / messaging) in the metaphorical apps in the browser sense. The most interesting part is that you can chat while watching Netflix and YouTube videos!
4. Aardvark
This would be a question and answer platform that self determines what topics you keep knowledge of, what interests you and who can be your friends/connections as per that. While your questions are routed to the most qualified user for an answer, the most satisfactory answer is instant-messaged to the users phone. The technology taps into the real-time web of people wherein your real-time presence would be the key asset.
5. Olark
Another out-of-the-box web service using Internet of Things at its backend, Olark allows a chat window over any web page and helps users communicate with other visitors in real-time! This has been a huge advantage to online service providers who want to immediately connect to people who are about to leave a website or having some sort of problem/unanswered queries. Thats huge for any online business!
6. Lexalytics
Lexalytics is all about a new listening technology that leads to faster responses. Using conceptual analysis, the idea is that if you are looking at an individual story, a human user will always beat a machine assistant. The service identifies real-time blips, events of interests, and data that help manage real-time reputation management.
7. Kaazing
Using HTML5 at its backend, Kaazing is a real-time infrastructure service that pushes financial data to web interfaces, to be used by banks. It helps deliver all kinds of data in a new and refined way and is something that locally serves users that installed software fail to do.
The Internet of Things is here to stay and using a variety of data sources (in-store sensors, smart meters, automotive sensors, wearable, web apps, etc.), organizations can use to start optimizing their businesses. A recent survey done by Vitria suggests that a lot of organizations are already implementing such HTML5 goals. In fact, more than 48% businesses that have been surveyed for their report have real- time analytics as a part of their process. IoT has become a core investment strategy and HTML5 gives the best control.
Real-time analytics for IoT is getting mainstream and it is more of a requirement than an advantage. This is especially true for the predictive insights and web behavior that can be captured using real-time analytics. Together, the technologies have been facilitating better predictive maintenance, network monitoring, security monitoring, fraud detection, demand response management, supply chain visibility, M2M revenue optimization, field service management and lot more. Consequently, it necessitates saying that if your organization hasnt already thought in these lines; its high time that you move forward.
