REDIFINE ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE IN 2015: INTEGRATION MOVES INTO THE CLOUD

Enterprise technology has become scattered, as an increasing number of cloud-based apps, virtual services, and connected devices and sensors have proliferated across company departments. In 2014, businesses realized they needed to connect the new cloud solutions they had adopted with on-premises systems that make up their traditional IT portfolio. Established middleware, including enterprise service buses and custom code have proved to be insufficient to keep up with demand. In the coming year, businesses that have not adopted a rapid integration strategy will have to focus on finding faster, more efficient ways to connect the expanding universe of data and endpoints.

Cloud-based integration platforms will provide the fastest and easiest way for companies to ensure that new technologies are quickly linked to the rest of the organization – including legacy, on-premises systems.

Three integration innovations will redefine enterprise architecture in 2015: virtual integration, cloud-based platforms, and managed APIs:

• Virtual integration allows applications to access information from external systems without actually moving data from one application to another, delivering immediate insight across systems, a smaller storage footprint, and eliminating the need to synchronize redundant datasets.

• Cloud integration platforms enable a new generation of hybrid integration designed and managed on a single cloud platform that can run in the cloud or securely behind the firewall.

• Managed APIs are the new building blocks of digital business. Managed, integrated APIs are not your father’s SOA API. They are specifically designed for today’s scale and security needs, delivering massive throughput, throttling, analytics, monitoring, and centralized lifecycle management.

Together, these new integration innovations will redefine how we do business with our customers, partners, and employees.

Death of ESB & Rise of Real-Time API Integration

The importance of big data and the cloud has forced companies to rethink their traditional IT infrastructure in order to leverage the vast stores of information coming from the Internet of Things, cloud, social and mobile endpoints.

For example, the Internet of Things demands a new level of high-volume, external-facing APIs that operate in real time. The ESB integration model architected more than 10 years ago, before the cloud revolution, was never designed for the scale or speed of modern digital commerce. Instead, the next generation of integration technologies, such as PaaS integration platforms, delivers a new level of agility, and connectivity, in minutes instead of months.

Self-Service Integration: The End User Shift

With more business processes leveraging connected applications and data, integration solutions will become increasingly accessible to the average business user. Instead of relying on IT specialists to connect different business processes across various applications, the modern wave of integration solutions will empower line-of-business users to manage links between the solutions that they know best. As end users demand more control over the technology they use on a day-to-day basis, business IT and integration providers will focus on opening up APIs to allow people across the company to quickly bring on and connect new technologies to legacy solutions.

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MONETIZE FROM M2M INITIATIVES

Simply selling more device units will not result in the massive spike in profits manufacturers are hoping for as they make a play to compete in the Internet of Things (IoT).

In addition to selling more Internet-connected devices, businesses will have to figure out how to make money from the software they develop that flexibly configures their devices and powers functionality — and they’ll also have to leverage software licensing and entitlement management as the mechanism to capture those additional revenues.

Simplify, differentiate, drive revenue, grow market and protect your IP are the five tips that can assist you to monetize from M2M initiatives.

5 tips to monetize from Internet of Things:

Simplify

You need to build a single device model that contains all capabilities and capacity then use licensing and entitlement management to configure.

Differentiate

You can drive more value from your device with software and monetize all aspects of your solution.

Drive revenue

Device + software + licensing will assist to drive new, recurring revenue streams.

Grow market

Move into new markets quickly by slicing and dicing your product by features, capacity and more.

Protect your IP

You can protect your devices and applications against IP theft with licensing.

Manufacturers will have to reinvent their business models to profit from the Internet of Things.

Monetizing the software powering Internet-connected devices via licensing and entitlement management is key.

The key to monetizing the IoT is to use licensing to turn on and off features and capacity in different combinations to create additional value in the devices themselves and in the software that runs on top of them.

For instance, device makers could provide different product tiers — e.g. basic, premium and platinum — using licensing to unlock the appropriate features — without having to manufacture separate models. They could then upsell customers later by leveraging software-driven control of the device and licensing to make it easy for customers to upgrade to more expensive models.

Device manufacturers can use different licensing models — like metered or pay per use — to create demand from new types of customers or in new markets. For example, a small community hospital previously unable to afford a million-dollar MRI machine might be able to acquire one using a pay-per-scan licensing model.

By using licensing and entitlement management to monetize the IoT, device manufacturers also open up new hardware- and software-related revenue by making it easier to sell new products and services to existing customers on a regular basis, and upsell them as new product features and software versions are released.

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Technology, used responsibly, can be both an accelerator and an enabler for the world of tomorrow.

Growing pervasiveness of the ‘Internet of Things’ (IOT):

We stand on the verge of a new wave of change transforming the plethora of devices in our physical world into a seamless extension of ourselves. IoT is making the concept of ‘One Entity’ a reality. We are in the age of any-time, any-place for any-one, to any-time, any-place for any-thing. At the core of IoT is to bring together people, data, process, and objects or things, and connect them to communicate smartly taking the user experience to a different level altogether. It also raises fundamental questions around geographical boundaries that determine our legal systems, and issues of personal privacy.

There are already more connected devices than people on the planet. According to a Gartner report, by 2020, there will be as many as 26 billion connected devices on this planet. A consequence of networked things is smarter processes and services, which can support our economies, environment and health.

Having established IoT’s business advantages, perhaps we must look at the developmental challenges, especially from the perspective of emerging economies. For countries like India which are largely agrarian, IoT can impact productivity through soil data through sensors, and meteorological data on rainfall. In the utilities sector usage analysis and prediction results in smart networks can result in substantial resource savings. However, these technologies will need to be low-cost and affordable for a scalable solution.

Another critical area is healthcare. IoT would enable a connected, cost-effective, easy-to-use, healthcare system that would focus on preventive measures rather than curative, facilitating monitoring of patients remotely, cutting down the number of visits to hospitals.

Many countries are pushing the envelope on leveraging IoT. As per the Global Information Technology report 2014 published jointly by INSEAD, Cornell University and World Economic Forum, the countries leading the Networked Readiness Index are the Netherlands, Switzerland, the US and the UK. London’s Heathrow is all set to become the first airport in the world to use IoT technology to re-wire the experience of catching a flight.

While the US and Europe are moving ahead, China is establishing its leadership as well. A dedicated unit called China Mobile Internet of Things Ltd has been established to develop IoT and three verticals in particular are being focused upon—energy, transport and smart cities. The future of IoT raises two important questions—security and governance. But even before that, it is important to be sensitised with some other related issues.

Due to multiple entities involved in IoT, it is important to understand as to who owns your private data and who has the right to monetise it.

Interoperability is the first basic challenge as IoT involves different technologies and systems, so it is important to have one standard approach. As devices are spread across numerous locations, it will be difficult to ensure the operation, remote management and updating these devices. Data processing, networking and storage will consume enormous amounts of energy, and disposal of devices which are not very easy to recycle will be a challenge. So there are environmental issues to think about.

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NEED FOR SPEED: With higher internet speeds, the connection between humans and technology will tighten..

With higher internet speeds, the connection between humans and technology will tighten as machines gather, assess, and display real time personalized information in an "always-on" environment. This integration will affect many activities-including thinking, the documentation of life events ('life-logging'), and coordination of daily schedules. There will be changes across all aspects of life as internet connectivity advances by 2025.

As the internet closes in on speeds of 1 Gigabit, or 1,000 Mb, per second, it is expected to unleash a new set of applications, significantly altering the online as well as the offline existence of individuals and companies, impacting education, health care and business. However, it could widen the digital divide.

In the past every major advance in bandwidth has brought new innovation that has led to new services and applications to digital life. "In the internet's early days, slow modems facilitated email; faster dial-up modems helped websites become usable; early broadband roll out allowed for quicker sharing of relatively big files such as the MP3 music files that were shared on the first peer-to-peer services like Napster; later broadband advances allowed for streaming activities that have given rise to services like YouTube, Amazon Prime, and Netflix," the report said.

With higher internet speeds, the connection between humans and technology will tighten as machines gather, assess, and display real-time personalized information in an "always-on" environment. This integration will affect many activities-including thinking, the documentation of life events ('life-logging'), and coordination of daily schedules.

NEED FOR SPEED:

Things possible when Gigabit connectivity (1,000 Mbps) becomes more popular

• Your interactions with doctors, educators, merchants, and others will consist not of emailed forms or pre-recorded messages but of instantaneous, life-like video interaction that require no set-up or configuration.
• The past generation had to manually document their lives but we are looking at full video lifestreaming in the near future. Lifestreaming from ultrasound to final illness will be the killer app.
• It will be much cheaper and more convenient to have that monitoring take place outside the hospital. We will be able to purchase health-monitoring systems just like we purchase home-security systems. Indeed, the home-security system will include health monitoring as a matter of course. Robotic and remote surgery will become commonplace.
• Wearing clothes that are tailor-made, 3D-printed at home, will also become normal, with the previous day's clothes recycled efficiently; the school day will dis aggregate into a number of learning sessions, some at home, some in the neighborhood, some in pairs, some in larger groups, with different kinds of facilitators.

If there is a digital divide now, it will still exist in 2025. The divide's existence will be magnified by the new killer apps - who has access and who does not, beneficiaries and those left out.

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CIOs need to decide how they will position the IT organization in relation to emerging digital business technologies, such as the Internet of Things, 3D printing, wearable technology, robotics and cognitive systems.

Regardless of your industry, every CIO will need to prepare for the upcoming digital business technologies and the impacts it will have on the enterprise.

CIOs should use this research to start forming their positions on digital business technologies, and to prepare their IT organizations with the right resources and skill sets.

Two key attributes will cause some CIOs to hesitate in making digital business technologies part of the IT organization's responsibilities:

1. Digital business technologies are operational in nature. The IT organization is used to owning and supporting "back office" and infrastructure technologies. Digital business technologies are aimed at supporting "front office" and operations.
2. Digital business technologies are emerging technologies. Drones, the IoT and cognitive systems are not commonly part of the IT agenda.

However, we encourage CIOs to understand how relevant these technologies are, and will be, in their industries, and to give them a fair assessment. There is much at stake — in both business value and technology investment.

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