The 2014 edition of the Gartner Symposium/IT Expo, which focuses on emerging technological trends with an eye toward predicting which will come out on top, took place in Orlando, Florida, from October 5-9. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the event was the continued rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), which will have a number of consequences on both the business and tech worlds. Gartner says that in 2014 companies will spend over $40 billion designing and implementing IoT solutions.
More importantly, IoT development is no longer limited to large enterprises, as smaller businesses are entering the market as well. One of the direct results of the growth of IoT is the exponential increase in the amount of data that is generated, which is in turn placing a premium on analytics and giving companies that can take full advantage of that data a larger edge over their competition. Gartner predicts that health care and retail are two areas that will benefit especially from this trend.
The research firm showed some specific projections to back up this assertion: by 2017, the cost of diabetic care will go down by 10 percent thanks to the use of smartphones in health care, and by 2020 life expectancy in the developed world will have increased by half a year based solely on the adoption of wireless health monitoring solutions.
In retail, companies are already using analytics to focus their marketing efforts thanks to the data they gather from mobile purchases. By 2020, Gartner expects a 5 percent increase in sales for retailers that use targeted messaging.
A data management services provider can help companies take full advantage of business intelligence analytics by equipping them with the tools to gather all the information they will need in a format that is easy to study and draw conclusions from.