Technology vendors are actually starting to refer to themselves as Internet of Things (IoT) software companies. At least that’s how Greenwave Systems likes to be known… but it will take more than a few smart acquisitions to really make the IoT grow.
Self-styled IoT software company Greenwave will presumably now be ‘even more IoT’ now that the firm has acquired Predixion Software, an analytics firm specializing in edge and cloud analytics for connected assets i.e. a really rather IoT-centric set of things.
But will some smart (some would even logical) acquisitions be enough to help the IoT truly proliferate?
I Predixion a RIOT
The new firm claims that the integration of Predixion’s RIOT heavily visual analytics software with Greenwave’s own AXON software suite makes for the most comprehensive IoT platform on the market.
“Through collaboration with a host of partners, Greenwave’s technology is integrated into numerous advanced networks and connected devices in what comprises the largest cumulative IoT deployment in the world,” asserts Martin Manniche, founder and CEO at Greenwave Systems.
Nice marketing spin for sure, but how does it help us grow and develop the IoT?
How the IoT will grow
In terms of what happens next, Greenwave’s head of business development Nate Williams has made some intelligent comments.
The problem, says Williams, is that the IoT software (and hardware and networking and so on) industry has failed to ‘abstract the use case’ away from the current application of devices in situ.
Or to put it another way, an industrial turbine sensor or connected home heating device are only good at what they do, in the single focused clear (i.e. not abstracted) application in hand.
Rationalizing the IoT opportunity
Williams says that Greenwave’s mission is to validate the IoT use case and rationalize the IoT opportunity for all the firms it seeks to work with. He also laments the fact that, currently, we are failing to capture and analyze all of the data produced by the IoT… and that this in and of itself is a wasted opportunity.
Indeed, as detailed here on Internet of Business, we know that this data waste is simply draining into the data
Isolated technology IoT islands
Greenwave says that despite the never ending hypes and the constant marketing of new networked ‘things’ in the headlines, the Internet of Things in its current state consists mainly of isolated technology islands — and so the IoT is still very far from becoming a valuable ecosystem.
The firm’s chief scientist and technology evangelist Jim Hunter provides the best takeaway thought here when he calls out the big mistake we have all been making by using the IoT term in the first place.
“The term ‘IoT’ is a misnomer. The Internet was always about things connecting, so we’re not reinventing the wheel, but simply refining it for purpose and for individual users,” said Greenwave’s Hunter.
It’s not the Internet of Things after all — it’s the Internet, with things in it, some of which are connected.
Perfecting that internetworking idea and then conceptualizing it out will ultimately give us the Abstraction Theory of Networked Data Analytics & Device Logic (AToNDADL).
It’ll never catch on.