Solving Advanced IoT Analytics with the Databricks Just-in-time Approach

Although the Internet of Things (IoT) is a relatively nascent concept for many businesses today, 19% of organizations surveyed by ESG report already having IoT initiatives underway, with an additional 51% reporting plans to deploy advanced IoT analytics in the next 6 months.  Why are companies so bullish on IoT? ESG’s recent 2016 IT Spending Intentions Survey reveals that both organizations in the throes of IoT, as well as those with plans to go down that path, anticipate that IoT will create business value across several categories including operational efficiencies, better customer service, new products and services, and new business models.

Beyond these core business drivers, fundamental technology changes are acting as catalysts for acceleration of IoT initiatives. Increasing options for connectivity—including wireless wide-area and local-area networks—combined with lower costs and availability of sensors and chip sets are making it viable to connect virtually every type of product and type of equipment. However, two other IT meta-trends are having a significant impact on IoT: big data and cloud computing.

Big data is a key catalyst for increased IoT focus since the data collected and analyzed from connected things will yield information to power business transformations ranging from improved operational efficiency to net-new business models. Organizations are recognizing the importance of big data and analytics: Among IT leaders, business intelligence/data analytics initiatives were ranked by respondents as the second most important IT initiative for 2016, trailing only cyber security. But IoT presents unique data challenges such as high volumes of data, low-latency analysis requirements, multi-source data streams, and the integration of disparate data sources. Cloud computing also acts as an accelerator for IoT, and our most recent IT spending intentions survey shows that 75% of companies are already currently using public cloud services. The combination of cloud services for scale and security, with big data and analytics, has positive implications for enterprise IoT initiatives.

The key to unlocking the potential from IoT analytics is in transforming data into information to drive business value, but the fact that IoT architectures extend from the edge (where IT meets operations technology) to the cloud makes this a challenge. In this solution showcase, we will specifically examine how a cloud-based analytics approach can empower advanced analytics for low-latency IoT requirements. Additionally, we will discuss how Databricks’ zero-management cloud analytics offering can address specific IoT and big data challenges.