IoT Tech Expo Europe 2016: It's time for large corporates to engage with SMEs, says EveryWare

EveryWare Ltd, the real-time analytics specialist, has ‘leapt forward’ in time at IoT Tech Expo Europe 2016, taking place in London.

Speaking at the event as part of the Connected Industry track, Nigel Maris, Managing Director at EveryWare, presented a hypothetical look back at the rise of IoT from the year 2025 and the impact of disruptive innovation, including how EveryWare technology has helped businesses save money.

“Ten years ago in 2016, we thought there would be 38.5 billion connected devices in the world by this year,” Maris said, speaking as if it was 2025. “In fact, there are 50 billion devices and the digital universe holds 50 trillion GB of data. IoT has earned companies over $18 trillion!”

While these numbers are colossal, he said, the size doesn’t really matter.

“What matters is how we utilise this information to further improve efficiency and that requires increasing levels of Big Data pattern recognition. What is really important is how we better connect the things that matter to each individual business, improving its efficiency and saving it money.”

According to Maris, pattern recognition and predictive analytics have become essential tools in doing this and improving business efficiency and it is time for large corporations to engage with SMEs.

“Large corporations and authorities have been saying at IoT Tech Expo that they want to work with innovative SMEs – it’s now time for them to take action. For us, the Internet of Things isn’t about gadgets and gizmos, but about the real business case and delivering efficiency, value and legal compliance to our partners.”

EveryWare employs disruptive innovation as a development philosophy, identifying the need to bring together dissimilar data points – be it temperature, traffic data or even electricity rates at peak times – in a way that allows businesses to predictively and proactively identify inefficiencies in their processes, or potential critical situations, and rectify them before they escalate.

Maris gave the example of a rural care home that is running low on bottled fuel with a spell of cold weather on the way. In 2016, he said, you would order your fuel manually. However, in 2025, the order is completed automatically, taking into account the effect road conditions would have on delivery and how predicted temperature would affect the amount of fuel required.

“By harnessing the power of the Internet of Things and implementing EveryWare technology, you can monitor factors that until now have seemed unconnected to identify the areas in which you can improve business processes and predictively maintain equipment and sites. This in turn saves a significant amount of money and, potentially, lives,” concluded Maris.