Watson avatar. (Image courtesy of IBM.)
Companies and consumers have benefited from the deductive reasoning enabled by the analytics of big data collected over the IoT. However, remote locations without access to high-bandwidth connections will find these tasks quite difficult indeed. These far off operations tend to look at their data without observing any trends.
As a result, the game was afoot for the IBM Watson IoT and Cisco teams to bring analytics to more remote locations likes oil rigs, factories, mines, shipping yards and the Reichenbach Falls.
After eliminating the impossible task of bringing high-bandwidth connections to these locations, what remained was the probable technique of bringing analytics to the remote locations themselves. To put it quite simply, the team is looking to perform analytic computations at the point or edge of data collection.
“For an oil rig in a remote location, or a factory where critical decisions have to be taken immediately, uploading all data to the cloud is not always the best option,” said Harriet Green, general manager at IBM. “By coming together, IBM and Cisco are taking these powerful IoT technologies the last mile, extending Watson IoT from the cloud to the edge of computer networks, helping to make these strong analytics capabilities available virtually everywhere, always.”
The goal is to have Cisco’s analytics and Watson’s cognitive computing technology know your methods. The system will be able to predict maintenance and upgrade cycles and monitor the process in real-time to improve productivity.
However, these data detectives are nothing without connections to remote systems. To keep them in touch with client, the team found their Lestrade in Bell Canada. The communication company operates on the 4G LTE network, allowing for fast data collection.
“Many of our largest customers operate remote systems, requiring continuous availability and access to data to monitor critical performance factors and avoid downtime,” said Stephen Howe, Bell’s Chief Technology Officer. “Deploying the unmatched analytics capabilities of IBM Watson Internet of Things and Cisco networking intelligence with streaming edge analytics will help to further accelerate Bell’s leadership in Canadian IoT.”
For a study in IoT, read: IBM Watson IoT Platform to Help Engineers with Product Development.