How Internet of Things Services have Fueled Big Data in Recent Years

Much before the advent of the Internet of Things services, millions of connected sensors & devices which were capable of generating mammoth-sized, unstructured & real-time data were then quite enormous. In order to occupy these billions of networked data, both small and large scale entities moved over to the cloud computing. Internet of Things has played a major role in helping the companies redefine their IT architectures by integrating big data and create more agile and scalable ways to manage their data.

If you think that the internet has changed your life, think again. The IoT is about to change it all over again! Click To Tweet

The above video is a quick introduction to big data by Bernard Marr 

Big data refers to the enormous amount of data that engulfs business operations on daily basis. The amount of data isn’t important, but how enterprises manage these large volumes of data matters. Big data is gathered, organized, and then analyzed for insights, thereby helping organizations make better business decisions.

Before going through this post on big data and Internet of Things services in detail, let’s have a quick and interesting questionnaire session. Go through every statement mentioned below and determine if the statement is referring to big data or the IoT –

1. Every minute, 204 million emails are generated followed by 1.8 million Facebook likes, 2,78000 tweets, and uploading of 2,00000 photos to Facebook. Answer – big data
2. In 2011, 12 million RFID tags which were used to capture data and track shipping. It is predicted that by 2021, this number will increase to whopping 209 billion. Answer – Internet of Things
3. By 2020, the number of devices that connect to the Internet will rise from 13 billion to whopping 50 billion. Answer – Internet of Things
4. The value of the global IT industry in 2013 was $10.2 billion and by the end of 2017, it grew up to $54.3 billion. Answer – big data

The above Q&A brings us to the point of this post:

So, are these both related? Let’s get into this in detail.

Ever since big data has been used in the Internet of Things services, many enterprises are now finding it easy and important in implementing IoT in their business processes. It is only because of the big data that the Internet of Things is used at such ease. Big analytics performs is at its full potential when it is used for IoT.

Big data comes with enormous potentiality and below are its top advantages –

The concept behind the Internet of Things is to mainly connect any kind of electrical device with an on and off switch that gives access to the Internet. These devices could be anything including cell phones, earphones, bracelets, coffee makers, washing machines, lamps and also components of machines such as a jet engine of an airplane or even the drill of an oil rig.

The above video is a quick introduction to IoT by Pouria Ghatrenabi

IoT service offerings are now booming and in future, it’s going to be a household name. Business processes are now carried out more efficiently through connected devices and network sensors.

How IoT services and big data boost each other?

These days, the advanced devices connect with each other through embedded sensors. The intelligent devices use data to broadcast, assemble, analyze and forecast accordingly, thus leading enterprises to make strategic business decisions. Because of the IoT network, all the business devices can have their own IP address. And when millions of devices dealing with mammoth-sized data are involved, security becomes a challenge.

In such cases, it becomes necessary for big data to empower Internet of Things services in a positive way. In order to make IoT and big data two sides of the same coin, they need to work on empowering each other. Enterprises like Athena, who implement data analysis and processing on their Internet of Things, have already renovated their data storage facilities in a broad manner. Such companies have opted for cloud storage solutions to manage the abundant load of heterogeneous data. This has further persuaded them to invest in cloud-based solutions such as Platform-as-a-Service model.

IoT services companies use connectivity options such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and well-defined protocols like Message Queue Telemetry Transport to transmit messages. Most of the organizations, such as Athena, have also started integrating the best technology platforms to manage the influx of heavily loaded data. A perfect example is given by Athena in using various technology platforms such as –

Big data & Internet of Things services work together to handle security

When heavily loaded data is used, security becomes a major concern. Enterprises should integrate advanced security measures so that the Internet of Things and big data can actually boost each other, and the end user is ultimately benefitted. Since its integration into IoT is fairly new, the ally becomes vulnerable to breaching of data along with the IoT devices.

Companies should ensure making significant changes to their security infrastructure to protect the influx of huge data and the growing number of IoT devices. Network segmentation and advanced security systems should be installed in IoT devices to prevent cyber-attacks.

The final verdict

Both IoT and big data are not just two sides of the same coin, but they empower each other. There is no IoT without big data, and big data can only make use of its potentiality when it is integrated into IoT. If you’re trying to find out how the Internet of Things services and big data can dramatically transform your business? We are here to help!