Microsoft Azure and the Internet of Things
Have you read the latest whitepaper from Microsoft related to the internet of things? Titled Creating the Internet of Your Things, this writeup starts up with “the Internet of Things has kept plenty of technology journalists busy during the past year, but few have answered the most important questions of how to make it relevant to your business today. Instead, it often seems overwhelming, complicated, and expensive.”
Like every other promotional whitepaper from a company like Microsoft, you get to read about the company’s point of view on IoT, and here is where we agree with Microsoft 100%: “The real value lies in the data that is transmitted from those devices, and the compelling business insights this data can enable. These connected “things” are producing large amounts of information. By tapping into those data streams and connecting them to the cloud and back-end systems, organizations can optimize business processes, make more informed decisions, identify new revenue opportunities, and understand and predict customer and partner behaviors in ways they couldn’t imagine before.”
As we continue to lean towards implementing the InteliAthlete platform on the Microsoft Azure platform, the points highlighted in the whitepaper are definitely what we’re after: “With Microsoft Azure Internet of Things (IoT) services, you can monitor assets to improve efficiencies, drive operational performance to enable innovation, and use advance data analytics to transform your business with new business models and revenue streams. Small changes can have a big impact to your bottom line. When you take advantage of the Microsoft cloud platform, you can use Azure services to help you move faster, do more, save money, and capture the benefits of the Internet of Things for your business.”
The thing that surprises us the most is Microsoft leaving out any reference to Machine Learning. To us, the machine learning feature of Microsoft Azure is what will allow the InteliAthlete platform to create a baseline for each athlete as more and more data accumulates and the athlete completes the exact same physical activity: swing, pitch, kick, etc. Using this baseline, we can then determine what he/she is doing wrong and offer customized recommendations to improve their game.