Key Takeaways from CES 2016
THE FUTURE OF CONNECTED AND AUTOMATED ECOSYSTEMS
NTT i3 recently sent a team to attend the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the world’s largest electronics show. Each year, CES brings together established technology companies, consumer brands, startups, reporters, analysts and more, as together we catch a glimpse of the big trends in technology, and this year was no exception.
But why should an enterprise-focused company like NTT attend a consumer product based show? There are a few reasons. First, the distinction between enterprise and consumer technology has started to blur in recent years. This can be clearly seen as medical devices begin to leave the hospital and remerge in smartwatches, or as machine automation leaves factories and lands in smart homes. Second, the creativity exhibited by consumer products can bleed into enterprise solutions: as voice control, touch based interactions, fitness tracking, remote sensing among other technologies become ubiquitous and the norm outside of work, users will begin to demand similar experiences and enhancements within the work environment. Examples include fitness tracking factory workers to prevent injury, or touch screen based dashboards within data centers.
The team saw many products, from healthcare innovations to virtual and augmented reality systems to remote controlled drones. We also visited a number of well-known product companies ranging from medical device makers like Phillips and GE, to sensor innovators like Bosch and Honeywell as well as automotive leaders like Toyota and Audi.
Gap in Actionable Insights
Yet, despite the presence of these established brands, the team walked away with the general sense that something was missing — we were inundated with so much technology, but many things felt like refinements of existing innovations.
Within the context of enterprise solutions, a key observation we made was that while sensors and data collection methods have gotten better, actionable insights from the data are still largely missing, and in this field is where the opportunity for NTT exists.
In general, for a future characterized by connected and automated ecosystems, we foresee 3 waves of technology.
First Wave — Emergence of Data Gathering Platforms:
Based on our observations at this year’s CES, the industry has reached the peak of this first wave. Sensing technologies are starting to become commoditized and widely saturated, and today, companies like Bosch and Phillips are already ahead of the game. The tech standards we saw included ZigBee, Z-Wave, ANT+, but these standards were not enough to show a clear movement towards non-proprietary solution just yet.
Second Wave — Growth of Analytics and Insights:
The second wave is where NTT i3 believes it should focus on. This wave has three key pillars of opportunity:
1 — Data Analytics and Machine Learning
Enterprises are focused on gathering data, but without insights, all this data is meaningless. It is imperative that data have meaningful patterns and insights are derived. Furthermore, the limits and capabilities of big data must be understood as today, many fall into the trap of saying, “We need to do some machine learning on a problem…” without truly understanding what machine learning means or is capable of. As the monitoring of first wave technologies becomes more affordable and reliable, focus must be given to specific use cases.
2 — Interoperability
Currently, many enterprises see any gain from proprietary sensor systems as an improvement, but the lack of industry standardization — such as in healthcare and heavy machinery — is a business challenge that must be addressed as enterprises and technology mature. For example, one only needs to look at networking convergence on TCP/IP and PC’s standardization of MS-DOS to recognize that similar patterns will repeat themselves in this new field of technology. The key now is to identify and build systems that are ready to adapt and work with other solutions.
3 — Better Decision Making
With emerging patterns from data and the formation of new analytic models, enterprises will begin to find new areas for savings on costs, such as those related to production, energy and delivery, as well as discover efficiency gaps and improve enterprise-wide productivity. The technology provider who is able to bring the most effective decision making insight will emerge as the winner.
Third Wave — Optimization and Automation:
As enterprises arrive at Better Decision Making, the stage for the third wave will be set. And in this “what if you could” scenario, this wave means enterprises will eventually have fully automated systems that enable enterprises to realize monetary savings, better production, improved safety, and efficient delivery of new products. This phase of the technology cycle will only be achieved after the second wave has set the stage.
