The Internet of Things (IoT) holds the potential to transform how decisions are made but only if the information it provides is successfully harnessed.
The IoT offers promise for every industry, offering the promise of advanced connectivity and insight in fields as diverse including telecommunications, healthcare, retail, and insurance.
While the potential use of IoT information may be thrilling, a question that remains is how the data will be tracked from all of these new interconnected devices.
A recent DBTA webcast provided a look at what the not-too-distant future will hold concerning the Internet of Things and how data is processed. The webcast featured Michael Hummel, CTO of ParStream, Robert Geiger, vice president of products at TransLattice, and Hannah Smalltree, director of Treasure Data, who talked about each company’s approach to helping customers derive value from IoT data.
“IoT is about sensing the world around you and responding in a way that creates business benefits - sensing real-time events which allow you to analyze and to drive improvements and speed in efficiency,” explained Hummel.
According to Hummel, industry research shows that it is not the volume of data streaming in from interconnected devices that is the concern, but the ability to analyze and leverage it in real time so that data is actually put to use. What makes ParStream technology ideal for this market, said Hummel, are its lockless architecture, massively parallel processing, and IP, providing the ability to track large amounts of data and process it in real time.
Describing TransLattice’s approach to IoT, Geiger pointed to the company’s commitment to providing an open source database. TranLattice’s foundation - made up of multiple open source technologies including Postgres-XL, Apache Spark, and Cloud Foundry - enables Translattice to combine write scalability and deep analytics for the data that is taken in. "An important part of the IoT solution is being able to get real value from all these technologies and present this value to your customers," explained Geiger. "It is our vision that in a very short time a system based on Postgres-XL and other open source technologies will provide an excellent platform for the IoT."
Treasure Data provides a cloud service to ingest bulk loaded and streaming data and allow it to be analyzed. What makes Treasure Data unique, said Smalltree, is that it is 100% managed in the cloud and is a pre-built service. According to Smalltree, there are many common challenges when it comes to databases and the IoT, including complexity in set-up, data collection confusion, performance of the analytics, architecting for scale and flexibility, and the start-up time and cost.
To alleviate these challenges, Treasure Data aims to provide a unique database experience. First, it is a cloud service with a monthly pricing model, with a monthly fee determined by the amount of data being processed, and the database a customer chooses. “You can scale as you grow,” explained Smalltree. Not only are customers purchasing a database, but they are purchasing an integrated service. With one contract, Treasure Data provides collection, storage, and analytic capabilities from a single vendor. “We really want to make that process simple and extract that complexity so that you can focus on getting value from the data,” said Smalltree.
A replay of the webcast, titled “Capitalizing on the Internet of Things,” is available for replay here.