Gregory Maciag

Industrial Internet

The Industrial Internet (II) is the idea that money can be saved and consumer services improved by widespread data sharing across sectors like energy, utilities, transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing. For example, wind turbines could manage themselves according to wind speed and energy demand.

While the internet we all know and love creates dollar value largely from ads, the II creates a wider variety of tangible benefits, especially in efficiency savings. But there's a catch: “... the lack of industry-wide standards that govern how II-related data is formatted, collected, shared, analyzed and secured. Such standards are required because the full value of the II can only be unlocked when machines and data are connected and architected in such a way as to enable the orchestration of industrial processes across geographic locations and between equipment from different manufacturers.”

It's a familiar pattern. Specialized islands of activity grow to maturity and become efficient in their own terms. But then they start to converge and collaborate. The newly emerging whole is inefficient because of local differences. In order to reach the next level, standards are essential.  Research company Wikibon estimates II could generate $1.3bn in value by 2020. Better get started on those data standards. The benefits are there for the taking.  Data Economy

Insurance Technology Congress - London

I just returned from London where we hosted ITC2014 with our partner Insurance Day.  We had 280 industry participants and it was a two-day program. I will post some topics over the next few weeks from the event.   Download ITCBrochure

Here are a few photos from the event with my team:

Opening ITC

John Bissell

David Smith

Mark Barwick

Roy Laker

Shane McCullough

Audience Interaction

And finally... An Artist's Rendering of the Conversation

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ACORD Staff Focused on Members

ACORD is a global and virtual organization, but we do get together in New York periodically to share ideas and plan for the future. One of the major themes from this meeting was member engagement.

Open Data and Free Labor

A brief post from Joe Ross, prompted by the Philadelphia School District releasing its budget data, says: “Public entities don’t often have the budget needed to attract top talent from the private sector. But exposing data to public manipulation and scrutiny, aside from fulfilling a duty of transparency too often ignored, allows anyone interested in displaying and improving their skills to bring their talents to bear on that data.”

I'm in favor of transparency and I believe crowd-sourcing can be a useful strategy. But is open data  truly a sustainable means of avoiding paying for skills? People who spend their free time analyzing data may be doing their duty as citizens and practicing their hobby. However, they may not always feel rewarded by the activity itself. What happens when the novelty wears off? Or when there's no longer any kudos in contributing to the analysis of open data? We should not take pro bono and goodwill work for granted.  Constant & Endless

Consistency is Key

An interview with Equinix CIO Brian Little flips one of the dominant narratives about the wild world of data. We're always hearing how the explosion in data volumes and locations means we have to give up trying to manage data, and depend on smart algorithms to make sense of it for us.

Now, I'm all for clever analytics. The insurance industry has been creating and deploying analytics for centuries. I'm keen to see the diagnostic and decision support applications that will flow from the domestication of IBM's Watson technology.

But the majority of business data isn't inherently complicated. Most of the variety in business data, and the disconnects in business processes, is created by mistake. It's another mistake to let this situation continue. Here's Little on the wealth of business data today:

“But how do you translate that into meaningful information? That is the real challenge of the CIO. If you want global information so you can make global decisions, you need globally consistent processes. If one region calls a booking one thing, for example, and another region calls it another, and they're at different stages of the process, how do you communicate global booking? You can't, because it's inconsistent. You have to start with data standardization and cleanup, identifying the key metrics that really matter.”

Consistency is key to comprehension. It's also pretty easy to achieve. Use data standards! Then the mass of data can really become a wealth of information.   CIO Data Management

Big Data and Food

What did the Romans snack on while they brought their version of civilization to barbarian Britain? There's a lot of potentially useful data. A research team in Oxford is planning to answer questions about the Roman diet by analyzing the wealth of electronic data created in recent decades. A UK law of 1992 requires excavation of sites before development, which produces tons of data. Other laws aimed at getting metal detectorists and amateur archaeologists to declare their finds have also generated plentiful data.

The hurdle is, of course, data standardization. The team did not have much difficulty in preparing their actual analysis. Getting all the data to agree in the first place is another matter.

I'd urge anyone working on this kind of data project – in any walk of life – to think about the solutions they crafts in terms of ongoing standards which they can donate back to the community. Wouldn't it be great if this Oxford project could not only tell us about Roman eating habits, but also help ensure that other questions about the past are more readily answerable?

Those of us in positions of influence within organizations should also, I believe, be campaigning for a strong link between data archaeologists and data architects. You didn't know you had data archaeologists? You do: they're probably called the Big Data team. They're the people trying to mine useful nuggets from external data deposits. As these folks develop their strategies, data management folks elsewhere should be jumping in.   Big Data & Food

Data Shield

Here's an interesting idea – “a firewall for data standards”. This is a specialized normalization engine for applications in the CRM space, so it doesn't have universal application. But I like the way the vendor has expressed the idea behind the product.

A regular firewall separates your corporate or personal systems from the big, bad world, while letting certain kinds of traffic in and out. It makes sense to enforce data standardization at this point in the communications path. Also, using the “firewall” name suggests how data standards are a matter of corporate health, and a good practice that needs to be built into the way the organization runs.

Launch Point

Data is Reality

IBM's Steve Adler (ibmdatamag.com) writes a fascinating blog about data. He sees the future clearly – what's great about the new services technology is bringing us, and what we need to do to make sure everything goes well in the brave new world. He's a good phrase maker too - “Data is Reality” is the headline for one post and another is called “The Internet of Trees”.

Steve points out that as we become more dependent on data, we potentially make ourselves vulnerable. He is concerned about the possibility of malicious forging of data being used to influence behavior, and believes open data standards are the way to ensure data is not misused.

He develops his thinking from a simple experiment. While driving on the Long Island Expressway, his navigation system told him to get off at the next exit to avoid congestion up the road. There was a line of cars at the next exit, so he stayed on. Same at the next exit. He figured that all the cars were reacting to the same data about the congestion – causing a different pattern of congestion at the exits. He acted against the advice of his navigation system, stayed on the Expressway – and encountered a clear road...

 “Now imagine how a person’s behavior might be affected if someone else is able to alter traffic information, change object tags, and route that person to a destination he or she had no intention of visiting. Imagine how dependent people might become on augmented reality information and what they might be influenced to believe and do if that information were changed to provide disinformation […] Without the widespread use of open data standards that provide proof of data we can trust, our reality can be augmented with lies that lead to dangerous outcomes, reduced freedom, and pervasive paranoia. We must safeguard the future and the past with data we can trust and standards that demonstrate that trust beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

Cut the Babble

I recommend Don Dingee's thoughts on the evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT). Don points out that IoT applications are already pretty easy to deploy in limited situations, like a hotel room. When you want to move to a broader playing field, it gets tougher. This is because you hit the data standards issue. That is, there aren't any.

He uses examples from the military, air travel, and automotive to illustrate where the lack of standards is holding back development. He also recognizes that the way forward for standards is for specific industries to develop business data standards. He mentions automotive, medical, and the smart grid as leading candidate communities. Today, “devices are just babbling away unless one knows the data format”.  (To be fair, there are a few standards consortium that do cooperate and develop standards around appliances. They attend the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.)     Left to my own devices

ACORD 20/20 Vision: A Leadership Forum on the Future

Just to let you know that we are beginning to create a new community for members on the ACORD website called 20/20 and you may have seen it under the COMMUNITY tab.  It is under development but we will personally invite senior executives of member firms to participate.  We plan to engage our solution provider leaders as well as their clients in order to better serve the industry.  While it is an open conversation, it will stress future plans.  Spero Zacharias, Senior Vice President of Chubb chairs our 20/20 program at the request of our Board of Directors. I will keep you posted on our progress from time to time and help you to be sure that your leaders are on-line and connected. 

 

Standards: A Better Future

Information is one of the major products of the federal government and one of the few references to a government agency in the Constitution is the obligation to run a regular census – in other words, to collect data.

This is one of the novel starting points in a piece about the explosion of government data, and the need for data standards. Written by Dan Mintz, a former CIO at the Department of Transportation, the article argues that while social media and all the Web 2.0 developments get the attention, data standards are a much more important area of focus in the long term. He adds: “Further, it has the advantage that once being established data standardization is ‘sticky’. Unlike policies that often can be swept aside by a single signature, data standards tend to stay around forever.”    Powertec

This is an excellent point that isn't made nearly often enough. Adopting standards means changing the organization for better, for all time. Standards make a better future. Standardization is a legacy every implementer can take real pride in, knowing they have saved the organization time and money – and even secured its continuation.