Enterprise spending on the Internet of Things is seeing phenomenal growth that is only going to get greater. Hozefa Saylawala, Middle East Sales Director, at Zebra Technologies, tells us how businesses can best use data created by connected devices to truly become an Intelligent Enterprise.
According to Zebra Technologies’ inaugural Intelligent Enterprise Index, 42% of companies spend more than $1 million towards the Internet of Things (IoT) annually, with an average of $3.1 million per year, and 75% expect that number to increase in the next one to two years.
In fact, 42% of companies expect their IoT investment to increase by 11 to 20%. The global survey analysed companies that are on the journey to becoming an Intelligent Enterprise – how they are connecting the physical and digital worlds to improve visibility, efficiencies and workflows.
To help companies on this journey, Zebra recently introduced Savanna, a fundamental building-block platform that accelerates asset intelligence in the enterprise, as well as the digital transformation of enterprise operations.
Gartner predicts that by 2020, Internet of Things (IoT) technology will be in 95% of electronics for new product designs. With this anticipated prevalence of IoT technology, sensors, devices and environments will be smarter and better connected than ever before. This will allow for greater streams of data to be analysed and acted upon by enterprises resulting in digital environments becoming relatively predictable in behaviour, compounding insights that drive greater efficiency and more profitable actions.
Vast amounts of data are being collected by various devices throughout enterprise operations, in nearly every imaginable business and workflow situation. Orchestrating the use of this sensed data requires new analytics and the operational intelligence to know how and when to act. The new Zebra Savanna Platform is the orchestration layers between the ‘sense, analyse and act’.
Savanna accelerates the digital transformations of business operations and enterprise workflows by unlocking vast amounts of data from smart, connected devices and environments and providing customers with predictive and actionable insights into their business – helping them make their next best action.
Gartner also states that edge computing will be a top technology trend in 2018. Edge computing describes a computing topology in which information processing, and content collection and delivery, are placed closer to the sources of this information.
Zebra’s Savanna helps enable applications that make use of edge data from smart devices and the IoT to create insights – ensuring the right data is available to the right people at the right time, empowering them to make the best decisions at critical business moments. For example, Savanna helps ensure the right medication gets to the right patient at the right time; the right packages are loaded onto the right truck at the right time; confirms delivery of an important part to the assembly line, and helps inventory levels stay replenished during the holiday rush.
In transportation and logistics, large numbers of trucks currently leave warehouses or distribution centres only partially loaded. Dock doors at these facilities implementing a hardware unit that captures trailer load and image data can enhance truck utilisation efficiency, so trucks ship less ‘air’. Even a small percentage increase in less ‘air’ shipped results in fewer trucks on the road, fewer emissions, lower fuel costs, and less wear and tear on vehicles. Zebra’s SmartPack Trailer, powered by Savanna, captures operational data such as load density, trailer fullness, images of loads in progress and the number of packages scanned and loaded per hour, giving unprecedented actionable insights to personnel and dock managers.
In manufacturing, capturing data on an assembly line of a vehicle identification number (VIN) helps determine the right tool for employees to use. This can help enable the assembly of multiple models in a single line, allowing for greater efficiency, productivity and cost savings.
Savanna has deployment freedom and can exist onsite or in a private or public cloud. Furthermore, it consists of IoT end-point connectivity, configuration management, data transport, data storage, analytics and machine learning components, dealing in both historical and real-time data.
Zebra is currently working with its global partners to develop and nurture data-driven solutions that can then be expanded for use in a variety of enterprises and verticals in new and exciting ways. Soon Savanna will allow for an open ecosystem of other partners to quickly, easily and cost-effectively create secure applications that integrate into other platforms and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
Many have remarked that data is the new ‘oil’. Indeed, there are several new enterprise edge opportunities in the global marketplace that need to use data to uncover efficiencies and new revenue possibilities. For more information, please click here.
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