
Many will benefit with same data
The complexity of different owners of data sources will be a big stumbling block if we can’t find the right business model of sharing the data. This will defeat the purpose of IoT when its main suppose is to fuse different data sources. It’s like building several cellular base stations (towers) at the same location which provides similar coverage to the users. It’s such a waste of investment when we can’t actually reuse the same cellular tower. The same goes with IoT. Can the same sensor provides service to different stakeholders with different usage?
Who wants to send different groups of people to the tops of Himalayas mountains to get same sample of data? Who wanted to send spend billions of dollars to Mars to get the same photos? Who wanted to send different Astronauts to International Space Station and doing the same experiments? It’s a no brainer that we shouldn’t waste our money for doing the same thing. In fact, we have to find ways how to recoup back the investment by monetising the rare data that has been collected.
However, there are several issues and concerns that need to be address first:-
- Privacy and authenticity of data – there is a possibility that the data might reveal weakness of a system, open to security breach or fake data which results in wrong insights
- Determine the right value for the data – how much people are willing to pay that kind of data?
- What kind of data is worth sharing – Capturing the wrong sets of data will results in unnecessary investment
- How much detail of the data needs to be captured – since the infrastructure has been built (sensors, gateways, connectivity, towers, etc), we shouldn’t waste capturing only a single data point. Why can’t we use the same infrastructure to deploy different sensors too?
Internet of Things are quite similar to the current Internet – Millions or Billions of data sets are now sitting around in the World Wide Web whereby many of that same data is being used many times by different people in different ways. The question is – why can’t IoT do the same thing?
About the Author
Dr. Mazlan Abbas is an IOT Evangelist, Thought Leader and CEO of REDtone IOT. You can reach him on LinkedIn at https://my.linkedin.com/in/mazlan/ or Twitter at http://twitter.com/mazlan_abbas . For further details, check out http://about.me/mazlan.abbas

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