As the first quarter of 2015 comes to a close, it's time to look at how the Internet of things will impact how we work in the enterprise.
For one thing, the new millennial workforce is steadily invading every industry around the world. This is the largest generation ever to be 100 percent digital and mobile. IBM recently published a study: "The Real Story Behind Millennials in the Workplace" that dispels many myths about this new workforce. Millennials are coming with high expectations and are eager to make transformational changes.
Meanwhile, companies like Cisco, GE, IBM, Intel and more are racing to implement IoT in everything they and their customers do -- from collaboration on projects to more efficient supply chain management to gaining intelligence from big data.
As the enterprise becomes "senorized" -- with senors on everything from forklifts to medical devices, "Organizations need to manage how best to filter the huge amounts of data coming from the IoT, social media and wearable devices and then deliver exactly the right information to the right person at the right time," Gartner analyst David Cearley said in a statement.
The need for IT workers who understand how everything is connected and where the vulnerabilities lie is exploding. Privacy and security in bricks and mortars AND in the mobile universe will be of utmost importance. "If you're monitoring somebody's pacemaker or monitoring your movement of trains from one city to a next and collecting data in real time and some bad actors hack into the network and play havoc with traffic, that can be a life and death situation," says Judith Hurwitz, president and CEO of research firm Hurwitz & Associates.
Internet of Things, big data, social media, analytics, the cloud and mobile, combined with the millennial workforce, is powerful, indeed. Job opportunities are plentiful for those who can help bring it all together.
Beverly Macy is the CEO of Gravity Summit LLC, a strategic advisory firm located in Beverly Hills. She also teaches at UCLA Anderson School of Management and is the author of The Power of Real-Time Social Media Marketing.