Convergence of Technologies

I’ve been in the technology space for over 25 years and seen many technologies come and go.  My area of speciality is product development and products that use a wide range of technologies to create solutions for customers.  We’ve all seen some amazing products that customers love, but there are also a lot of product failures.

Some of these failures are due to technical faults, where the boundaries of technology are sometimes being exceeded and/or the product was released too early and wasn’t ready for prime time.

And then there are failures due to a company with a new technology, but without a problem of significance to solve, or if there is a problem, the customer isn’t willing to pay for it to be solved.  Or there is already a solution that does the job (Better Mousetrap).  And then there are situations wherein reality the product just can’t meet the hype generated.

While I’m always on the lookout for new technologies, I’m more interested in the application of those technologies; the 'killer app'.

In recent times, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the following technologies in particular:

• Hardware Development

• IoT (Internet of Things)

• AI (Artificial Intelligence) & ML (Machine Learning)

• AR (Augmented Reality - data overlay of the physical world) / VR (Virtual Reality - 3D simulation of the data and environment)

So why these technologies?

While each of these technologies are interesting in their own right, I’d suggest that the real magic is where they overlap - think about it:

• Hardware devices with sensors generating data

• IoT allows you to collect the sensor data and remotely transmit it into the cloud

• AI / ML process the data and turn it into insights and actions

• AR/VR allowing you to visualise the data/information to make decisions

• And then based on the decision, you can push commands out via IoT to the device to perform an action

The other important aspect is timing.  Up until recently, each of these technologies have been in varying levels of maturity.  But they have come to a level of maturity where all the pieces can click together as a seamless solution.

Let’s look at each of the technologies in turn, to understand what has changed and why now.

Please note that I’m not an expert in these technologies, but hopefully these descriptions are sufficient to understand the points I’m making.

Hardware Development

Gone are the days of dumb devices designed to serve a single purpose.  Modern technologies are making it easier, cheaper and quicker to design and build prototypes of the devices.

• The ability to build a mechanical prototype quickly has been possible due to advances in 3D printing, both in terms of cost (don’t need to create the tooling) and speed (it could take multiple weeks to get the tooling made).

• Low cost and rapid development of electronic prototypes using development boards such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, etc.

• Cost of the hardware falling dramatically (i.e. Moore’s Law): electronics, sensors and communications.

• Software is becoming a bigger component of the hardware (ie: firmware, embedded software) meaning that through a configuration change or software update, the device can be modified/improved/upgraded after deployment.

• Hardware is connected to the internet (refer IOT below) meaning that the hardware can be updated as above OTA (over the air) and even new features are made available as we are seeing with phones and now more commonly for cars.

IoT (Internet of Things)

While some people may think that IoT is a new thing, machine-to-machine communications has been around for many years, only now being referred to as IoT as connectivity has become ubiquitous and low cost.  

But what has changed is the performance of the technologies:

• Reduced power consumption: the devices can continue operating for months and in some cases, years, before a new battery is required.

• Lower cost: hardware and data transmission

• Standards: rather than proprietary protocols for specific purposes there are now a number of communication protocols that are supported by major vendors and platforms, e.g. wifi, bluetooth, 3G/4G/5G, LoRaWAN, Zigbee, etc. The developer can select the protocol, or combination, with characteristics relevant for their application.

• Coverage: System operators or user groups with sufficient incentive - whether a business case or community good - that are able to provide connectivity at scale and low cost.

There is a range of different IoT technologies/networks that can be used depending on the particular use-case, eg: low bandwidth with low power consumption (devices that can run for months/years without requiring the batteries to be replaced) vs. high bandwidth that consumes more power (devices that may be recording video requiring a higher bandwidth for the data feed).

AI (Artificial Intelligence) & ML (Machine Learning)

It’s one thing having lots of data, but it comes down to how that data is used.  Big Data and algorithms have been around a while, but there have been some amazing advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.  And there’s a trend that all the big players (Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM) are moving towards commoditized AI offerings where you don't need a PhD in AI but simply call an API service.

There are also chips that have been purposely developed that allow you to do this on-device in favour of lower communication costs and faster decisions, as well as data privacy and the ability to run offline.

As a middle option, there is dedicated hardware that is available that provides AI on the Edge (e.g Google's Coral) that brings the processing closer to the device.

One of the issues is training an AI model that can take a lot of data and resources. The cloud providers have recognised this barrier and many offer pretrained models to use.

AR (Augmented Reality) / VR (Virtual Reality)

It’s been interesting watching AR and VR in how it is being used for (or at least being proposed to be used).  We’ve seen AR devices like Google Glasses enter the market, but it’s not necessarily the technology that’s been the issue, but people not liking the idea that they might be recorded and the person they are speaking to are looking at something else - refer “Glasshole”.  There seems to be more applicability of the Microsoft Hololens, but then there was the hype and potential failure of Magic Leap.  So this is the case of the technology not being there yet for a seamless experience, but if there’s one thing that you can count on, it’s that the technology will get better, and I’m really looking forward to what is going to be possible in the not too distant future.  Perhaps AR is the ‘killer app’ when 5G becomes widely available.

And then on the VR side of things we’ve seen a range of uses from immersive gaming, to a training device for the simulation of surgery.

Business models

The other change that we have seen is around business models.  It used to be the case that you would buy a product upfront and that was it.  With advances in the technology that mean that the devices can be frequently updated, and enable additional value-add services that the company can provide as their product is being used.   And the gaining popularity of Software as a Service (SaaS) is starting to be adopted outside of software, eg: Hardware as a Service (HaaS).  It is worth bearing in mind that connected products often have ongoing operating or support costs, and a XaaS business model ensures that revenue is able to meet these ongoing costs 

So what does this all mean and where are the opportunities?

Over the last 10 years, software has become a big player.  But the technological advances as described above are in some way creating a renascence for hardware - smart connected devices.

So if you are a company developing products, how can you benefit from this convergence?

If you already have physical devices, think about what further value you could provide your customer with by processing data collected on the device and the information that can be provided back to the user or changes it can trigger in the physical world.  The phrase “Data is the new oil” comes to mind, where there is data available, but it’s not being collected or analysed adequately.  This could be an opportunity to leverage the advances in IoT.

If you are a software company, think about how your software can interact with the physical world with a physical device or sensor.  How might you use AR/VR to visualise the data to support understanding and decision making?

And lastly, think about new business models.  The software industry has shown the advantages of recurring revenue as opposed to only when the product is sold.

We are already seeing some interesting new products, eg: Halter - while it could just be seen as “remote control cows”, but there is a lot more it can do in terms of using sensors to capture data and turning it into information that the farmer can use to support the management of a farm, including improving animal welfare. The reality is that we live in a physical world and what is changing is our ability to connect with objects and our environment to collect meaningful information.  The limit of what is possible is only our imagination. Elon Musk has ambitions on this also with the development of Neuralink having the potential to revolutionise life as he has done with electric cars.

Are you ready to plug into the Matrix…..

As mentioned, I’m not an expert in any of the technologies, but I have people in my network who are, so feel free to reach out if you have any questions and I can connect you with them.