IoT is inevitably the future of Australia, with the growing opportunities for private businesses and government approval of 52 new projects under the Smart Cities and Suburbs Program. These include upgrades to existing technology, such as an app that allows you to see bus seat availability in real time, as well as more large-scale technological advancements, such as smart lighting and sound monitoring that detects if people are in distress and alerts emergency services. However, there are some problems that need to be addressed first.

Nutanix Senior VP Matthew Young points out that “before we get a real sense of what our newly-connected world will look like and the full picture of the business opportunities IoT will create, we need to put the right resources in place to manage it.”

IoT creates a lot of data – “more than we can realistically imagine” says Mr Young – and consequently requires substantial, efficient data processing. Mr Young warns that “We don’t currently have the bandwidth to process all [the data] through our traditional networks to work efficiently. … Delays, or ‘latency and lag time’, are not an option… it’s got to work in real time or not at all.”

A solution to this problem may be the implementation of ‘Edge Computing’. As Mr Young explains, Edge Computing is “where we bring computing closer to the devices… Edge computing for the most part refers to smaller edge data centres that can process the data we need”.

He concludes, “Currently, we don’t have enough of these edge resources in place to match our grand IoT ambitions, and that is something that has to change if we’re to continue much further.”

Source: www.businessinsider.com.au/australias-grand-vision-for-an-internet-of-things-revolution-is-about-to-hit-a-hard-wall-2018-6?nojs=1