Last week it was Hannover Germany in pursuit of the elusive Internet of Things (IoT) where the weather had been in the 70s until I arrived. This week, still in pursuit of the elusive IoT, I’m in a chilly and wet Las Vegas at Dell Technologies World where I’ve talked IoT for some three years.
For two years, Michael Dell featured IoT in his keynote. Last year, he brought VP Andy Rhodes on stage for a highlight. Rhodes has since moved on to another group, the GM of IoT is also the CTO of VMware indirectly reporting to the President of OEM and Global Channel (and IoT). So on the one hand IoT has been elevated in the organization twice in a year. On the other hand, there seems to be less glitter.
Meanwhile this year, Dell brought up IoT in the context of data. Data being in the service of Digital Transformation. In fact, Dell said, “Dell Technologies is in a unique position to integrate innovation for Digital Transformation.” He noted that companies can use data to improve products and services which in turn attracts more customers which generates more data which is analyzed and so the process goes.
However since IoT generates data and date attracts attacks, security is an essential element of the system. Interestingly, I met with Zulfikar Ramzan who is CTO of RSA, the Dell security company who talked in terms of recognizing and managing risk. Making risk visible and using analytics are key strategies.
There were also two briefings with the Unstructured Data Group. So much of our industrial data is in historian databases. But the growth of Websites and IoT has generated unstructured data that must be stored, retrieved, analyzed, and used in order to support business
Trends for IoT within Dell Technologies? After conversations with CTO and GM Ray O’Farrell and my longtime contact Jason Shepherd, I’d say the big thing is that IoT has grown from being a small division—almost a skunk works sort of thing building a product and solution infrastructure to becoming part of the DNA across all Dell Technologies companies. Therefore the fruit of moving the locus of leadership higher in the organization and placed with people that can build alliances and partnerships. And these partnerships now include channel partners as well as solution partners. I’d call this growling maturity.
