er goods to develop actionable insights. The Smarter Cities initiative takes the same information and combines it with traditional information sources.
The two concepts are not in conflict with each other, but Smarter Cities seem to be better developed than the IoT as it was described last week at the International CES. Frase told us:
The two systems are not adversarial. But I think [Smarter Cities strategies] are larger. For the Smarter Planet and Cities, yes, we need IoT data. But we also need data from internal data sources, from the processes and applications people run. We need the traditional data that is located in databases, as well as these new sources. I don’t want to paint it as adversarial, but I think we are focused on slightly different outcomes."
Developing Actionable Insights
While the IoT it is really only beginning to evolve, IBM has been working on the Smarter Cities and Smarter Planet initiatives since the launch of its Smarter Computing strategy at the Pulse conference in March 2011. Actually, the concept was first proposed by former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano during a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in 2008.
This is not to put the IoT and Smarter Cities in conflict with each other, but to point out that at least in the public sector, the concept and practice of taking information from all kinds of devices to provide actionable insights has a long history both in and outside the US.
From this experience, Frase points to one of the issues that will have to be resolved by vendors that are working with the IoT. One of those issues, she said, is how individuals and enterprises are going to manage the information that is being provided by a world in which almost everything has a processor. She asked:
In the discussion around the Internet of Things, there is almost a sense that if all these devices have sensors that are reporting their status all the time, that does not automatically make us more intelligent and give us more insight."
The point, she said,, is that while there are clear advantages to having information available from all kinds of devices, there are also considerable challenges in dealing with the amount of information that will be available and how that information can be used.
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