With the advent of IoT will come a massive demand for storage for Big Data. According to Forbes, once IoT gets underway we’re likely to be flooded with data coming from IoT devices. While this is a valid concern, the fact of the matter is that Big Data is a perfect match for IoT and as more and more companies adopt the IoT standard, Big Data will come to play a huge part in how a company utilizes its IoT devices. Big Data allows for a unique way for isolating and tracking pertinent metrics to ensure that IoT devices are used to their fullest capability. As we can see, IoT stands to impact the Big Data fraternity in large part, thanks to its very existence.
Storage for IoT Collected Big Data
Big Data from IoT isn’t a misuse of the word ‘big’. Cisco estimates that by the close of 2019, we may be seeing as much as 500 zettabytes per year in data from the IoT. That works out to five hundred trillion gigabytes of data. In order to deal with IoT devices transmitting data constantly to the database, companies are looking at adopting platform-as-a-Service subscriptions, to utilize the flexibility of cloud servers to store and retrieve such massive volumes of incoming packets.
Changing Technology Paradigms
At current, IoT devices work through either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity. As we speak, companies have started developing ways to make these technologies more efficient in keeping with the dependency that we intend to place on IoT devices. IEEE mentions a number of different connection protocols that exist for use with IoT devices in order to establish a connection between themselves and the existing network of IoT devices and the server and the number of those that exist are quite surprising. Protocols for data exchange is likely to be one of the fields of research that information technology will find themselves invested in as the IoT progresses.
Security Concerns
When the IoT was first rolled out, numerous security concerns were raised about the networking and security protocols being used. Authentication and verification of devices became a real concern. According to Wired, in April 2018 there were still ways to exploit IoT devices that have not been properly patched. To this end, for IoT security to be maintained on a network, the onus is on the company to hire professionals that are well aware of potential security issues as well as how to deal with those issues. Verification and authentication of devices using PowerPoint templates still remains the main method of ensuring security on a network, and companies that utilize the IoT need constant vigilance to maintain those standards.
Analytics and Insights
Probably the biggest change Big Data will get from the IoT is where it sources its data from and what metrics it can track. Powerpoint templates are a useful way to visualize this data for presenting. At current, the amount of metrics that we have access to as data scientists is already immense. Adding the IoT devices into the soup will grow the pool of potential metrics many times over, making it even more important to determine which ones are important and which ones can and should be monitored and improved upon. In this sense, understanding that we can’t do everything is the first thing we need to accept. From there we can narrow the field to the relevant candidates.
A Changing Landscape
The world that Big Data has built is evolving before its very eyes. With proper planning and adoption of relevant strategies, Big Data companies can deal with this influx of data as well as set up processes that can be used to extract information from this data. However, as with all scientific enterprises, it’s a bit of trial and error in order to figure out what we should be tracking. Once we’ve worked that out, it’s a simple matter of keeping our eyes on the right metrics and suggesting things that can help those particular metrics improve.
