VOICES
The New Frontiers
of Computing
Bask Iyer, CIO and general manager for Edge Computing/
IoT for Dell Technologies and VMware, shares his perspective
on the future of IoT and the Edge.
BY BASK IYER
20
Victor Hugo said: “There is only one thing stronger than all the armies
of the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.”
Sometimes, an idea’s time takes years to come. Consider the
lightbulb: Edison started lighting up parts of Manhattan in 1882, yet
his idea was not embraced by the majority of U.S. homes for more than four
decades. Why did it take so long for lightbulbs to truly shine? Simple, really.
While the idea was brilliant, the technology to make it practical—fine tungsten
filaments, pervasive electric grids, etc.—had yet to be fully realized.
Like the lightbulb, IoT was ahead of its time. Believe it or not, the first IoT
device was a toaster created by John Romkey way back in 1990. Building
automation has been around for at least a decade, and smart-home thermostats
were introduced eight years ago.
So why is enterprise IoT taking so long? As with the lightbulb, a lot of work
had to be done to make the idea truly practical. But I believe the time has come
for IoT. The question becomes, should you launch headlong into Edge and IoT,
or should you take a “wait-and-see” approach?
There will always be risks to innovation, and people will always resist change.
But I have good news: We’ve been hard at work engineering an Edge and IoT
architecture that is open, flexible, compatible, and secure, and paves the way
for you to move ahead with confidence.