Harnessing the Power of the Internet of Things

By this point, most consumers and companies in the U.S. are relatively comfortable with the idea of “smart” objects. Even if we don’t refer to the home heating systems we can control by smartphone or TVs that learn what we like to watch as being part of the so-calledInternet of Things，我们都开始掌握日常物品数字化的诀窍——正好及时了解到，我们在下一个大创意：ThingAnalytics上已经落后了。

It’s the nameJohn Bates, founder of real-time analytics firm Apama and current chief marketing officer and head of industry solutions at Software AG, has given to the act of gathering and analyzing the huge amounts of data being pushed out by digitized things every day. Bates has spent his career on the pioneering edge of digital technology, and his obsession comes through inThingAnalytics：物联网的智能大数据分析, a short work recently published by Software AG that reads like a manifesto for harnessing the power of the Internet of Things to create positive change for both corporate and human interests.

The main goal of Thingalytics is to use all of the “fast Big Data” that is — and soon will be — rushing in through sensors on things like drink refrigerators in convenience stores, cars and machines in warehouses to track trends, prevent issues and make predictions. Many of its applications are noble — ensuring proper sanitation at hospitals, preventing massive capital markets fraud — but to someone not steeped in the cult of digital technology innovation, Thingalytics may seem a bit creepy.

In the introduction to the book, Bates describes the potential for nearby retailers to know when you’ve just made a purchase that might be complemented by something they offer, and to push a coupon to your smartphone. If you respond to that offer in this scenario, you could then receive, for example, an automatic coupon for a nearby restaurant. This could theoretically continue ad infinitum, until the customer changes his or her privacy settings. At least most of these consumer-facing apps are opt-outable; some Thingalytics implementations appear to give the customer less control. In another scenario Bates describes, a grocery store could track shoppers’ visual characteristics and even facial expressions whenever they walk past a sensor in order to show them targeted offers on nearby screens.

但是，即使ThingAnalytics面向消费者的方面听起来让你不安，贝茨还是提出了一个非常有说服力的论点，即每个人都可以分享好处。ThingAnalytics除了帮助公司最大限度地增加收入机会外，还可以帮助从资本市场到酒店和飞机的各个领域防范安全和欺诈。

这种数据处理方式的最大卖点之一是担心变得缺乏竞争力。“数字达尔文主义对那些等待的人是不友善的，”贝茨写道，引用数据显示，使用ThingAnalytics的零售商可以将其营业利润率提高60%以上。尤其是金融公司在一个“赢家通吃”的世界里运作，成为第一个和最快掌握数据消防水龙带的人，将带来双赢的结果。Forrester Research的Mike Gualtieri称，只有21%的公司在使用某种形式的大数据流分析——比2012年增加了61%，但仍然是一小部分。

The other most disruptive Thingalytics application may be its potential to both find new opportunities and prevent crises in the trading world. This is really Bates’s bread and butter, and he spends a good deal of the book explaining how proper gathering, handling and deployment of data through Thingalytics could forestall — or at least more quickly respond to — fat finger trades (mistyped orders) andflash crashescaused by rogue algorithms. The book also has a chapter on what Bates calls RoboCops, or regulatory policing systems that could learn to look for a certain combination of human actions — a trader chatting with someone they might not usually talk to, failing to take vacations, making a trade seconds before a news story is released — that could potentially predict criminal behavior. “Patterns can be discovered and crimes can be traced when monitoring and surveillance meet Thingalytics to form our own market RoboCop,” Bates writes.

The book is written with a mix of jargon and jovial, down-to-earth language — Bates is not afraid of exclamation points. And he’s anticipated some readers’ concern about algorithms becoming too intelligent and potentially making humans obsolete or, worse, prey. Sure, a mathematical formula known as VITAL (Validating Investment Tool for Advancing Life Sciences) has been given a seat on the board of a venture capital firm, but “we’re a long way from Skynet,” Bates tells Institutional Investor. And besides, with Thingalytics improving health care to the point of potential eternal life, Bates expects we’ll all need to move to other planets anyhow: “Otherwise, how will we all fit on Earth?”