A close up of four verticals and how cloud, big data, and IoT are leading to massive productivity gains.
By Gary Maidment
Healthcare
Cloud tech: A survey by HIMMS Analytics in 2014 showed that 83 percent of healthcare providers were using cloud, mainly for SaaS. Future areas of expansion include hosting archived data, backup disaster recovery, and hosting operational apps and data. Expect a cloudy future in healthcare.
Big data and IoT: Huge datasets will be used for great things, for example, fully understanding patients to predict illnesses, predicting epidemics, finding cures, and establishing links. IoT is especially useful for constant monitoring. Current examples include fetal, ECG, and blood-glucose monitors, and smart beds that can detect if they’re occupied, when a patient gets up, and adjust pressure and support. IoT is also likely to be applied to inventory management and workflows.
Be excited about: smart drug dispensers in the home, remote robot surgery, nanobots in the blood that act like white-blood cells, mind-controlled prosthetic limbs, big data and AI-enabled research into rare diseases, sensor-enabled preventive medicine, increased collaboration breaking down silos.
Agriculture
Cloud tech: Cloud computing will centralize operations and use virtual desktops to share information across the supply chain. Farmers will be able to track orders, manage inventory, and track crop cycles remotely and on mobile devices. Drones used to collect data will need the support of a smart cloud system.
Big data and IoT: A keen IoT adopter, this vertical is heading towards precision agriculture. GPS and sensors deployed in fields and equipment can provide a steady stream of big data for analytics to unscramble. Farms can use less water, optimize feed mix for cattle, and maximize yield. For example, a cloud-connected mobile device can tell a tractor’s planting machine how to vary seed density in real time. Farmers can know when to plant and harvest, and predict expected yield.
Be excited about: indoor vertical farms that use 95 percent less water, genome editing that can change a crop or animal’s genetic code down to the letter, lab grown meat that’s healthier and tastier than animal meat.
Education
Cloud tech: Cloud can and will benefit education in many ways: replacing costly and outdated textbooks with digital books that can be updated in real time; slashing costs by replacing traditional management systems with SaaS; and increasing options for learners to study remotely.
Big data and IoT: The increasing use of sensors and data collection through channels like mobile devices, learning software, and digital games will provide actionable insights for students in real time. An example of a correlation that could be tracked is: Do students perform better at math after exercising? Teaching will become personalized, and teachers will be able to collaborate and share to improve teaching outcomes.
Be excited about: students interacting remotely, a shift towards competency-based programs based on skills rather than years of study, eLearning tailored to individuals’ preferred pace and style of learning.
Banking
Cloud tech: Overheads will drop as banks don’t have to invest in pricey hardware. Expect quicker responses as banks can scale up or down, faster service rollout, closer interaction on the cloud between buyers and sellers, and fully mobile banking.
Big data and IoT: Unlimited computing power and massive data sets will forge closer relationships between banks and consumers, making services more individualized and seamless. Banks will evolve to become a platform run on data, IoT, analytics, and algorithms, positioning them as ideal information brokers for other services like credit and insurance.
Be excited about: banks predicting the type of financial packages you need based on your purchases; building your own suite of products from multiple vendors; robot advisors to stop you making unsound decisions in real-time; more open APIs; proximity beacons pushing offers to you in real-time from banks partners, for example, restaurants and shops.
