28 Aug Got Edge?
Last week I did a dinnertime talk in Houston for my friends at Atomiton. We had executives from quite a few companies including Halliburton, McDermott, Southwest Energy, Bechtel, Schlumberger and Chevron. While this is not a transcript of the talk – hopefully this is what they heard.
Enterprises who build or use construction, healthcare, oil, gas, energy, agriculture, water, textile, or industrial printing machines are starting to think about their edge computing strategy. As a CIO or CDO, what should you be thinking about? What should your edge strategy be?
Let me start with an observation that up until now, most of the software and hardware technology we’ve built has been for the Internet of People (IoP). Whether that’s an eCommerce site or a CRM application, we fundamentally believe there is a person at the other end typing on a keyboard or scrolling thru their phone.
But, as I explain to my Stanford kids, People are not Things, and Things are not People. Why do I say that?
There will be way more things connected to the Internet than People. John Chambers is widely quoted, as saying there will be 500B things connected to the Internet. That’s nearly 10x the global population.
Things can be where people are not. Things can be in your stomach as a smart pill. Things can be a mile underground in a coal mine and Things can be in the middle of the Australian Outback. Things can be where people are not.
Things have more to say than People. The best we can do is type, move a mouse or scroll down a screen. Modern day wind turbines have 500 sensors on them. Things have much more to say.
Things can say something much more frequently. The best we can do is press on our touch screen or type on our laptops. A long wall shearer in the coal mining industry has roof top vibration sensors that run at 10,000 samples per second. That’s a lot faster than any of us can type.
And finally , we can debate this. Things can be programmed. People can’t.
So if Things are not People, then why would technology built for the Internet of People work for the Internet of Things?
The smart phone is the edge for the Internet of People. One of the reasons sensor technology has plummeted in price has been the rise of smart phones. Modern cell phones contain up to fourteen sensors including accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers and thermometers. Some phones have a built-in barometer, which measures atmospheric pressure. It’s used to determine how high the phone is above sea level, which improves GPS accuracy. Samsung Galaxy pioneered the use of an air humidity sensor in their phones. That data is used to tell whether the user is in their comfort zone. Some phones, such as the Galaxy X5 have heart rate monitors. Finally, you might not be surprised to know a Sharp smart phone sold in Japan contains a radiation sensor. These sensors interface to a big computer with lots of storage and connect out to three different kinds of networks. This hardware is all driven by innovative software from Apple and Google, which built software development environments that have given us millions of apps.
So what’s the edge of the Internet of Things going to be? As someone who is responsible for your enterprise edge computing strategy I’d recommend you consider five major components.
Compute & Storage. It’s no real news, but you can now get high-powered computers with 1.4Ghz CPU, 1GB memory and 128GB of storage for less than $75. By the way, that’s the spec of the iPhone6. The days of PLCs and 8-bit microcontrollers are long past us. What are your edge compute & storage requirements? How much power is required? Do you need to run on batteries? Disposable? Rechargeable?
Communications. Your edge strategy should include a much wider range of connectivity options than just Wi-Fi and 4G. In addition to Wi-Fi and 4G you may consider LoRa, SigFOX, NBIoT, Zigbee, 5G Cellular and even 60GHz wireless. How much data do you need to transmit, how frequently? How much power can you consume? And how far is your edge from the cloud? Remember Things can be where people are not.
Sensors. While your smart phone has a handful of sensors, the range of possible sensors is far greater. TE Connectivity’s catalog has 1632 different kinds of sensors. Sensors can have many different quality levels. Just consider the light sensor in the camera on your phone. Did you know you can purchase an 8 megapixel camera with a sensor that is 1/4 the size of another 8 megapixel camera? Obviously a larger image sensor has more surface area exposed to the available light, which will result in a better quality image. What will your sensor strategy be? How many sensors? Quality of the sensors?
Software. Windows, Android and IoS were all developed for the Internet of People. Remember Visual Basic was built to make it easy to interact with people so much of the focus has been on building better and more responsive people interfaces. But Things are not People. What software stack will you use? Will it enable you to interface with a wide variety of sensors and communication technologies? Does it provide a robust application developer environment?
Software Management. Just as the edge of the Internet of People, the edge of the Internet of Things will increasingly be driven by software. Consider that in 2016 the Porsche Panamera had just 2,000,000 lines of code. The 2017 Porsche has 100,000,000 lines of code. As you’ve already seen on your smart phone, software needs to be updated to improve performance, battery life and security. So what will your strategy be for the management of the availability, security and performance of your edge software? How will you implement identity and access management for your Things? It’s not likely that you can make them change the password every 90 days and add a special character.
So as an IT professional there is much to learn, but as we have seen the edge for the Internet of People (your phone) has transformed the consumer experience. The edge for the Internet of Things promises to transform enterprises including oil, gas, water, industrial printing, transportation, construction, healthcare, agriculture, textiles and energy. So get started on your edge strategy.
Timothy Chou has been lucky enough to have a career spanning academia, successful (and not so successful) startups and large corporations. He was one of only six people to ever hold the President title at Oracle.