Using mobile devices, cloud, smart data, analytics, and the Internet of Everything, digitalSTROM (Switzerland) is opening up a new front and fundamentally transforming the way we will live. As CEO Martin Vesper explains, the company provides the tools and technologies needed to create the smart home.
New Business Opportunities Begin at Home
Smart homes have been the subject of a fair number of automated home fads over recent years, such as light management systems controlled by movement sensors. But most of those never managed to connect the dots, being isolated point solutions that barely scraped the surface of integrated home automation. Connecting those dots is key because it’s through connectivity that new business opportunities, and ultimately an entirely new marketplace, will emerge. digitalSTROM will be at the heart of it.
More importantly, however, is the fact that everything can be connected, via the cloud, to everything else; this has huge implications for the way we use and benefit from the devices and services we have access to. Now that it’s possible to wear a wrist device that helps people connect to devices in their home, car, and—via the cloud—anything else they consider an integral part of their lives, the smart home is getting moved forward into the holistic concept of the Internet of Everything.
What Does All This Information Really Mean?
What becomes important is making practical sense of this for users. There is a need to orchestrate these connections so the possibilities make sense. Historically, we never thought of the home as being a vast data generator—a big data home—but it is. There will be significant scope for domestic smart data apps that can correlate multiple events, individual events, and their sequence and timing to determine whether the home is being burgled or a bird has flown in. The technology must then decide what actions to take as a result. Big data without action is a lost opportunity, which is why the concept of Fast Data is so compelling. It must to be applied.
The opportunity is vast: Every possible use case someone can think of represents a business possibility for both applications developers with a good understanding of analytics, and the service provider community ready to build end-user services.
