Technology Ramblings – latoga labs

Will HomePod be Apple’s Smart Home Hub?

June 6, 2017 1 Comment

It’s always fun to see what new things Apple announced at WWDC. After some thought and discussion time to process Apple’s WWDC 2017 Keynote, rather than focus on the AR demo (which I also think is the seed for some future disruption) I’ve been thinking about IoT and the smart home segment of IoT. One question remains to be answered for me, will the HomePod be Apple’s smart home hub?

Apple is playing catch up in this area and is obviously feeling the pressure if they are announcing a new product 6 months before availability, something that is very anti-Appleesque. Though one could argue that this is natural evolution for their product announcements since they all expand the Apple Ecosystem and you need to have developers connecting to the new device before they ship (especially when Amazon’s Echo has over 10,000 skills already). Every time they do this the hope fades a bit more within the Apple fan base around Apple every surprising us again with a killer new technology innovation, but that’s a whole nother rabbit hole to go down.

So when playing catch up, it’s not surprising that Apple would play to their strengths…music. The HomePod was introduced as a reimagined way to do music within the home (we should all be getting good at seeing thru the marketing rhetoric by now). It’s initial specs look like a great home speaker and integrated with Apple Music gives you more options than time in your life to listen to. And at the end there was an almost passing remark about the HomePod being part of the HomeKit. The HomePod page even mentions “it’s a hub for controlling your smart home accessories”. But, the current specs don’t talk about any local area communications, no Bluetooth, no Z-Wave, no zigbee.

Would Apple jump on the Z-Wave or zigbee bandwagons to quickly expand the Smart Home options and have their HomePod also become one of the core SmartHome bridges? Again, not very Appleesque. But I would expect to at least have seen bluetooth on the HomePod so all those HomeKit devices that use bluetooth and the AppleTV as their hub would have another way to enter the Apple Ecosystem. It just makes sense to use the HomePod’s processing power to also control and bridge the smart home to Siri and the Apple Ecosystem, but that is being seen as a side feature to the speaker. I’m expecting (or hoping) that bluetooth appears in the specs before the HomePod is shipped in 6 months. And it will be interesting to see what home kit integrations we see when the HomePod final ships.

What this shows is how IoT is an enabling technology but not something that most consumers think about buying directly. Consumers especially are spending discretionary budget on things they enjoy…like Music. And the ecosystem power is in pulling the consumer into this larger thing than just music without them realizing it. So again, while Apple may be late to the home speaker market, they have created something that consumers will understand the need for immediately and purchase. Compare that to the immediate thought many of us had when the Amazon Echo appears…”why do I need that anyway?”. I think the HomePod will quickly catching up to Amazon’s Echo in shipments and help push the smarts into the home faster without people realizing it.

Clarifying My Vision of the IoT Journey

June 15, 2016 3 Comments

With all the customer and partner conversations I’ve had over the past few months, it’s always good to sit back and document your vision and work to clarify it over time. In that sense, here is my vision of how IoT is a Journey to a Dynamic Ecosystem:

IoT is a Journey to a Dynamic Ecosystem…What’s Your Destination?

All the IoT related discussions I’ve had starts off with one or more types of Things.

Stage 1 is always connecting that Thing to the Internet (link level initially and eventually data communication level) and then collecting data from that Thing. I’m actually a bit amazed at how many customers, in early stage projects, have no vision of what’s beyond that! They are usually focused on just the operational data that can be captured from the thing and collecting it into a big data repository of some sort. Yet so many don’t focus on the operational aspects of all these things out there…how to efficiently scale their connection to your solution, keep them all organized, and track their state within a lifecycle. Some ignore this need all together while others try to build this operational capability (taking time away from adding true value).

Stage 2 is the logical extension of Stage 1, I have all this operational data…let’s analyze and optimize! This is where a data scientist may be employed to analyze all the collected data to understand trends. If we’re talking about Industrial Internet of Things then they are looking to predict when a Thing may fail and/or optimize it’s run time state. Even for the Internet of Other Things, there is still a need to understand the state of a thing to optimize it’s usage (like turning off the Thing when outside it’s hours of usage). Being able to allow certain people or systems to send commands to a Thing over a control plane is key in order to mitigate a failure or negative consequence of a failure. And integrating with other operational data sources in real time to broaden the operational view.

Stage 3 is where most of the more advanced customer’s I’ve talked to have their visions initially set. They know they need to expose and share the data and access to their Things with others. And this is where the excitement builds for them as this is where new revenue generation models get defined…and redefined. This is also where I start to shake my head at a few “IoT Platforms” that have come along recently that claim to help solve the monetization problem of IoT.

Monetization is the secret sauce that you need to create for your IoT Solution.

Someone else can’t do this for you. The true root of the monetization challenge is being able to support dynamic ecosystem security, a method of controlling access across the entire ecosystem of people, things, and systems in a fashion where you can programmatically change the access levels. Without that that type of security model you can’t control which different groups of users have access to different aspects of a Thing and charge for the increased value that is provided.

Stage 4 is the constantly evolving stage (not calling it an end state as this journey doesn’t end) that true visionary companies and projects seem to have, one that involves sharing of their data and Thing access across multiple 3rd parties and combining it in real time with multiple 3rd party data sources. The number of different users and groups who need access to the control plane as well as the number of data sources hooked together on the data integration plane is complex and evolves with the demands of the business.

This is my view of how IoT is a Journey…where do you agree or disagree?

(and yes, there is a platform out there that allows you to build IoT Solutions to meet every stage of this journey…but that’s another post…)

The (Possible) Dark Employment Future of IOT

July 27, 2015 Leave a Comment

After working with a client on a big data project (creating a big data service within their enterprise private cloud), I got intrigued by big data and swam up stream from it to re-engage with the Internet of Things (IOT) in a more active fashion. One tangent of this is the Industrial Internet, smart machines that can send data and receive messages to increase their efficiency or to perform the work at hand. For those not familiar this video from GE Software for their Predix Platform is a great overview of what is meant by the Industrial Internet.

So this morning, I was intrigued when I saw an article in my morning newsfeed that told a story about the future of work. Gideon Lichfield perfectly blends futurist and science fiction writer to paint us a picture of a potential future where all this IOT and Industrial Internet innovation is taking us. When all the sensors have been deployed, robots automating all mundane tasks, and algorithms written all that is left for some of the human tech workers is to react to when the system says there is a problem…also known as do what the automation/robots can’t do (at least not yet).

And yet the core human trait of questioning and wanting more still exists. And how will we reconcile that core need with this potential future that we create?

I found this an interesting (if dark) view of our not too distant future. I just hope that the worker in the story doesn’t end up being one of my kids. And the irony wasn’t lost on me that I used Pocket’s new Listen (text to speech) feature to read this article (to me) while I got ready this morning…