Integrating the Internet of Things with Society

A conversation with Abhi Ingle, Vice President, AT&T; Simon Hackett, Board Member, Internode/iiNet; Raad Mobrem, CEO, Lettuce; and Bob Borchers, General Partner, Opus Capital Ventures; hosted by Chetan Sharma, President, Chetan Sharma Consulting

Raad Mobrem: There’s been a shift in how things are transferred from one data source to another. Systems that don’t have open access will be the losers.

• One solution to a problem is a solution; 100 solutions is a problem. We need solutions that provide a central processing location. 

Abhi Ingle: How do you take the tangible physical world and bring the data to bear? For example, a vending machine should be able to communicate what it runs out of to stockers and predict, based on patterns in weather, etc, what it will need more of.

• Small companies are emerging that are connecting cloud data. 
• The key is preserving user choice. Most people are very self-aware.

Simon Hackett: We’re getting to the point of billions of sensors, but they’re all still speaking different languages. We’re missing out on the network effect. This is a big opportunity.

• Once the verticals are out there, we’ll be able to build more and more horizontal linkages. 
• Ninja Blocks, Smart Things will connect nodes; some other company will do the infrastructure.

Bob Borchers: Hope to see small ‘s’ standards come out that groups align themselves with rather than big s standards.

• Most likely aggregators will be the people who add value to the data they’re aggregating. Eg. Apple’s control of musical content: Add value of music marketplace, etc.
• It will be verticalized and security will be important, but just one level.
• IFTT is a very exciting company. Being a simple interface will be the distinguishing factor.