One area of the IoT that's getting traction is the world of consumer retail. The buzz phrase is Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) – which, as far as I can tell, are sensors. Retailers are looking at the sensor data captured in baseball and thinking how it can be applied to the shopping experience. Baseball has always been a great producer and consumer of data, so it's a natural leader in this area. They track items like a player's eye movements or a team's coordinated response to a fly ball. The idea is to use similar ideas in stores so as to better understand consumer behavior.
But in a familiar pattern, the early promise is already being obstructed by the old enemy, the lack of data standards. According to Josh Knauer, “1) Most sensor and MEMS data is proprietary; 2) The data lives in database silos and doesn’t come in one format; 3) Siloed data in proprietary formats can’t just be exported into a spreadsheet and compared easily”. And this means retailers are not making the progress they want.
Knauer's company, Rhiza, is in the business of helping device managers package and monetize their data. They're in a good position to advocate standards. It would be good to hear from the major retailers too, who must want to avoid proprietary lock-in.
Comments