Australian software company, Readify has staged a series of roadshows around Australia with Microsoft that, it says, were “seeking to demystify the Internet of Things (IoT) for business decisions makers.”
According to Readify CTO, Mitch Denny, there are many devices deployed in Australian organisations that have the potential to produce useful and actionable data, but at present exploitation levels are low.
Denny told IoTAustralia: “We see four pillars making up IoT. There are the devices like sensors deployed in the field, then there are the communications linking those, and the ability to ingest large volumes of data in real time. Then there is the integration piece pushing that data out to where it can be actioned, and that is how we see IoT in an enterprise context.”
Readify says it Roadshows gave it the opportunity to breakdown the components of an IoT solution for IT decisions makers, highlighting specific scenarios where IoT delivers value and explaining how to practically develop a solution over time.
At present, Denny says, the potential for IoT technology is underexploited. “There is a lack of understanding of the art of the possible. I think this is why Microsoft has started to focus on the data collection and integration piece first because you want to make decisions based on good data.”
He adds: “We are a software services company and that includes an element of systems integration work. … Our role would be more around implementing the collection of data from sensors that have already been deployed and then doing the analysis.”
“A lot of companies are approaching IoT gently gently. They are not rushing out and spending a lot of money. They are saying: ‘What would happen if we just correlated these two sets of data?’ And I think that is the right way to go about it. You can’t do this too quickly or you will end up spending way too much money and maybe not getting any results.”
He sees plenty of potential to leverage IoT in Australian industry. “I would say that, in certain sectors, there are plenty of devices deployed, for example the mining sector. They have plenty of sensors deployed but perhaps they are not leveraging these as best they can.
“And take healthcare. They have plenty of equipment but it is not well integrated. If you walk into a hospital, how many pieces of equipment in their emergency department have the ability to be networked, but have not been? Hospitals do not necessarily have the resources to do this themselves.
“So I think Australia is in a good position, but we need to do more integration.”
He adds: “We have seen the prices of systems on a chip going down and the functionality going up. And we have the capability to do a scale of processing that we did not previously have.”
Denny said that Readify was already working on major IoT projects bringing together its embedded operating systems, cloud computing platforms and data platform experience. However he said he was unable to reveal even general details of any of these for fear of breaching NDAs.
