Cloud Computing and the Internet of Things

There are millions and millions of connected devices, from smart vehicles to smart meters, generating an increasing amount of data. This worldwide network of connected devices is the Internet of Things (IoT). In a nut-shell, IoT is the name given to technology that enables the connection of both people and machines to the Internet.

Connecting devices is not some new phenomenon.  Manufacturing, Automotive, Aerospace and many other industries have been doing it for quite some time. However, many of these connections are:

Oracle Internet of Things (IoT) Cloud Service takes care of these limitations by providing a managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) cloud-based offering that can help you make critical business decisions and strategies by allowing you to connect your devices to the cloud, analyze data from those devices in real time, and integrate your data with enterprise applications and various web services.

Oracle IoT Service

With decreasing costs of technology, increasing availability of connectivity and shifts in market expectations, there has been a dramatic explosion in a number of things connecting–and it is set to be tens of billions in the next five years. As more and more devices are connected, the key questions become:

Oracle IoT Cloud Service provides answers to all these key questions through three broad ranges of value propositions:

How Partners Should Use Oracle IoT Cloud Service

There are many use cases for IoT, ranging from the novel–feeding your cat while you are away on business–to the life-critical–such as remote patient monitoring. Each case generates its own value. The two use cases highlighted below are ones Oracle partners could consider for their customers right away.

I. Monitor & Maintain

There is a need to understand how a product is performing, to optimize its use and better anticipate issues and failures. Reactive maintenance is critical but is very expensive for both customers and service providers. It also raises issues of customer satisfaction. Active monitoring to drive preventative or even proactive maintenance can help get one ahead. Keeping an asset running and when an issue does happen–minimizing the time and steps required to get the asset back up and running is of great value.

Also, this can help product development better understand how the product is performing–where are the issues that can be fixed in the next release, or where are the opportunities to innovate and add new value?

II. Asset tracking.

The most obvious use here is Track and Trace. Knowing where my shipment (truck, train, container) is and whether my goods will arrive in time and in condition for use or market. Think of frozen goods, milk, ice cream, strawberries, or any perishable item for that matter.

It also includes a rapidly emerging segment of usage based models supporting the shift from CAPEX- to OPEX-based models. For example: Car Rental, Usage Based Insurance or Insurance for young drivers, shared ownership schemes and car clubs for private vehicles, tires for commercial vehicles. etc.

Conclusion

Oracle IoT Cloud Service provides a Platform as a Service (PaaS) cloud-based offering. It helps you collect data from intelligent devices by removing abstract complexity associated with the device connectivity by standardizing integration of devices with the enterprise. It can analyze the data collected from intelligent devices and can reduce the noise and detect business events in real time and enable historical big-data analytics. It makes enterprise processes IoT-friendly to allow enterprise and mobile applications to control devices to make critical business decisions and strategies.

Learn more at: cloud.oracle.com/iot.

Nalin Sardana is Senior Manager, Global Partner Enablement (Cloud Security Services), at Oracle.