Preparation for the Internet of Things

Sources say that connected things will reach 20.8 billion by the year 2020.  Is your organization prepared for an Internet of Things (IoT) smart project?  There are many considerations of how the influx of smart devices, as it reaches the billions, will transform your departments and networks in the coming years.  Understanding the overall strategy and vision behind your IoT smart project goal and subsequent deployment is the first step for the IT leadership team.  However, there are several key steps involved along the IoT journey, all of which are important before embarking down the path.

State and local governments especially have the daunting task of understanding IoT effects on areas such as traffic and street lights, electric grids and HVAC systems that private business might not have to consider.  But, with change happening so fast in all different directions all at the same time in many organizations, there can be a systematic approach towards the key phases of your transformation.

After IT leadership has fully developed the strategic IoT long-term plan and designers have thought through having all bases covered over the next 5 years, the next critical step is keeping up with Cybersecurity.  The sheer number of increased IoT devices alone and their inferior security offerings mean improved security policies and procedures are crucial in order to protect enterprise infrastructure.  The integration of the security architecture across the entire networked ecosystem is an important factor as the new world of IoT takes shape.  For additional information on steps to prepare for an IoT project, read full article here.

 

 

 

States Take Advantage of New Data Center Technology

As some state organizations take a look at what to do with their older data center infrastructures; improving performance, efficiency and trying to predict the future on where the industry is going are among their top priorities.  Huge capital expense that would not get these organizations at least through a couple of years without having to go back to their respect boards for more money, has these public agencies looking at the newer technologies of modular design, hyperconvergence, virtualization and cloud computing.  Doing more with less resources and still increase data center performance is a top decision making factor when considering what these organization’s infrastructures will look like in the future.

For example, the Topeka and Shawnee County (Kan.) Public Library chose the cutting – edge technology of hyperconvergence to upgrade the performance of certain daily functions that were getting bogged down every day. Hyperconvergence is a type of  infrastructure system with  software-centric architecture that tightly integrates resources for compute, storage, networking, virtualization and other technologies from scratch in a hardware box that is supported by a single vendor.  This turnkey solution will offer greater efficiencies than upgrading  individual components  within the system over the long term.

In Connecticut when the state’s data center maxed out its’ cooling capacity, they opted for setting up a new modular design data center that would meet their long-term needs.  Read what other states are doing in the full article here.

 

Edge Computing Popular in Healthcare

If ever there was a need for Edge computing where a substantial amount of internet of things (IoT) devices consuming large amounts of data is growing, it would be in the healthcare industry. As more and more medical devices are being introduced into a healthcare organization’s IT ecosystem, Edge computing is becoming more popular as the demand increases for quicker ways that clinicians receive data  in order to better care for their patients. Medical devices and the IoT producing tremendous amounts of data at the edge of the network from the patient are going to greatly benefit if the data is processed at the source versus cloud computing which is not going to be as efficient in the handling this data.

At some point most all electrical devices will be part of the IoT.   However, Hospitals in particular have large amounts of IoT devices as most all medical devices are networked and put a strain on the healthcare organization’s IT infrastructure. To ensure rapid response times from the patient to clinician, edge computing will offer data analytic solutions to better care for the patient and support the data exchange at the edge. In the future, the driving force behind the increase in Edge computing is the sheer volume increase of the data being produced from the IoT being too large for cloud computing and its’ bandwidth restrictions. IoT devices are expected to reach into the billions in the future. Read full article here.