In a recent story for Mashable, Hewlett Packard Enterprise discussed its vision for the Internet of Things (IoT). This comes on the heels of Discover London 2015, HPE’s largest customer event with over 10,000 IT professionals in attendance. At the show, HPE announced IoT systems and connectivity solutions that will enable customers to more efficiently collect, process and analyze IoT data.
We’ve covered IoT in the past, and the news that HPE is beginning to seriously roll out systems that will allow IoT to become a reality is welcome. IoT is the idea of outfitting the physical world with connection to the internet, in order to allow the collection of data and the streamlining of processes. This will be completed in an infinite number of ways depending on the physical object and the industry it operates in. The big problems, however, come first with providing the bandwidth to essentially connect the entire world to the internet, and second with analyzing the towering amount of data that will be collected by IoT. It sounds like HPE is tackling the latter issue.
HPE explains that there are three key elements to IoT:
- Devices– Rather than just smartphones and servers, in IoT, “devices” can include everything from household items like thermostats and trash cans to industrial systems such as wind turbines and medical equipment.
- Data – The real value in IoT is harnessing the data from these connected devices and using the insights for better decision making.
- Connectivity – IoT requires a reliable network connection that allows data to travel seamlessly from point A (where it is collected) to point B (where it is processed and analyzed).
The article goes on to explain the difference between computing at the core and computing at the edge. Computing at the core means collecting data and sending it to the core of the system, usually a data center, for analysis. Central to HPE’s IoT strategy, computing at the edge is a recent idea that involves moving data acquisition and management to the edge of the network, outside of the data center. This allows faster access to data using less bandwidth. Data is sorted immediately so that only relevant data is sent to the core for analysis.
Ultimately, moving computing power to the edge will result in smoother, more efficient and effective analysis of the vast amount of data that IoT will produce. This is the crux of HPE’s plans for the future of its role in IoT.
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