It Will All be About Integration

Cloud Communications

It Will All be About Integration

By Peter Radizeski, RAD-INFO Inc.  |  April 27, 2015

We have hit a time when mobile is flat. Everyone has at least one device and studies show that households have an average of 7 Internet-connected devices. This morning, one person mentioned that he has 30+ devices connected in his household.

The Internet of Things is about taking sensors, technology and connectivity to provide a lot of data – Big Data – which is then analyzed for relevance. IOT is about connecting things, like cars or bridges or people, to data collection. Then that data is manipulated by algorithms into something usable.

Fred Wilson wrote that enterprise SaaS (News - Alert) companies’ “entire value proposition is building on the open APIs that most enterprise SaaS products have released in the past few years. If you are in finance, or HR, or marketing, or sales, you are now using a host of SaaS applications to get your job done and a big trend in the market is new applications that tie all of those together (via APIs) so that you can have a single view into your workflows.”

One of the downsides to UC has been that systems weren’t really integrated. Components were stand-alone and, except for click-to-call, didn’t really combine to add value or productivity. It wasn’t even close to a unified inbox – more like inboxes and windows.

Once these systems start meshing together, the gains for a business will be noticeable. I don’t just mean the phone system to provide click-to-call through CRM and Outlook. I mean more like how Google (News - Alert) Now looks at your calendar, traffic and GPS to let you know that you have to leave now for your appointment. That kind of useful behind-the-scenes integration is scary, but helpful.

When you can scan a menu with QR codes to grab calorie count, that will be seen by your Fitbit to alert you that you need 20 minutes extra on the bike today – and btw drink an extra glass of water, since you have had just coffee and alcohol in the last 15 hours. Or that the Fitbit will track food intake and sleep patterns. These are the interactions that will make it all remarkable enough to be mainstream. It has to be invisible, connected, useful, easy to use – and then it will be widely discussed and adopted.




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
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