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Opportunities for Pro AV & IoT Part 2
The internet of things ( IoT ) and its relevance to pro AV was a major focus of InfoComm 2016 , which ran from June 4-10 , 2016 in Las Vegas , NV . We spoke with Gary Hall , CTS-D , CTS-I , chief technology officer for federal defense at Cisco Systems and president-elect of InfoComm International about IoT , the opportunities and challenges it presents the pro AV industry , and InfoComm ’ s related initiatives ahead of the show .
Part 1 appeared in the June 2016 issue .
PS : A couple of recurring challenges facing the total adoption of IoT for AV systems are security and privacy on one side , but then also storage . Are those challenges that can be overcome currently , as far as the types of systems that would be employed in AV applications ?
GH : You hit on two very important themes . Any issues can be overcome ; it ’ s about how much value you ’ re going to get by putting forth the effort to overcome them . When you ’ re looking at security , you ’ re always balancing risk and reward . You ’ re looking at , “ How much can I afford from a risk perspective to get the value I ’ m trying to drive from the capability ?” That balance is extremely important and will be different for every organization .
If you ’ re looking at the U . S . intelligence community that I came out of , their risk tolerance is extremely low , but they still need to benefit from these technologies . In other applications , the tolerance might be much higher and they can use public cloud infrastructure and things like that and not be too worried about the data being compromised because it ’ s not as sensitive .
With that caveat , the pro AV community doesn ’ t have to be the “ experts ” of cyber security . But like with analytics , if you ’ re not going to do that yourself , you need to have partners that can be part of that continuum and help ensure the AV and IoT systems that are connected to the customer ’ s networks are safe and secure .
Privacy is another matter . I see security as relating to the protection of the organization or entity , and privacy being the protection of the individuals accessing that environment and that technology . Very similar . The same
protections apply on both sides .
There are a lot of different ideas around privacy , especially going into the consumer space . People are trading their privacy in many cases for benefits . When you post information to websites like Facebook and Google , you ’ re agreeing to limit some of your privacy in exchange for the benefits you get using those applications . That ’ s not going to change . It ’ s important that the systems we use are secure not only for the organizations , but also the individuals .
On the storage side , I think we can do a much better job with storage by integrating IoT devices and analytics . I think edge analytics are going to be the key to managing the storage problem .
By 2020 , we ’ re going to have 50 billion connected devices out there in the world . In the 10 years after that , we ’ re going to have 500 billion . Consider that back in 1984 , when Cisco was founded , there were 1,000 connected devices .
We ’ re generating massive amounts of data . And what ’ s more , it ’ s not just “ big data ” – large volumes of data – but large data , which means the file sizes themselves are huge . So not only do we have a lot of files , but we have big files , because video and audio produce large files .
We ’ re putting more and more systems online that are generating this data all the time , so to manage that , it requires analytics at the edge . That means you extend the reach of the network out to the tactical edge with edge routing and devices that have a little bit of computing capacity and storage capacity to run analytics programs , cache data at the edge , and then those programs can determine the usability of that data as it ’ s being generated .
The machines can look at the data and recognize what ’ s valuable real-time data and deliver some insights or automate processes based on that data , but it ’ s temporal . It can be used at the edge but not retained , because it doesn ’ t have value past that use ; however , it will also determine which data is valuable – so rules-based data , for example – and allow that data to be sent back to the cloud or the data centre for further regressive analytics and additional transformation to be compared against other data sets , etc ., to create more value .
That helps you manage the throughput of the data – how much is being pushed across the network at any given time .
I know that ’ s complex theoretically , but really , what it ’ s doing is the analytic software at the edge is helping create real-time insights and automation and determining what to keep and what to throw away , which helps with data retention as well .
PS : Congratulations on the incoming presidency . IoT is a major focus of this year ’ s edition of InfoComm International , but beyond the convention , does InfoComm have any initiatives on the horizon relating to IoT ?
GH : This year , the InfoComm board is revising its strategic plan , which we do every three years , and I would expect to see a continued focus on IoT .
In addition to the InfoComm show in North America , we have InfoComm either named or sponsored conferences and symposiums and trade shows around the world . One of those is IoT Insights . We had it in Santa Clara , CA [ in early May ] and have another scheduled for New York later this year . There will also be IoT-related training and information sessions at our global shows .
You ’ ve seen the white papers , you ’ ve seen some articles on the topic , and there will be continued focus there as well . Since it ’ s a rapidly changing and emerging technology area , you ’ ll also see more of our industry leaders focused on these topics and hopefully some organic communities of interest and things like that emerge that will help to educate and inform and bring our industry together around how IoT can be applied to the benefit of pro AV and the customers that we serve .
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