Good article today in the Wall Street Journal, written by Tony Fadell, the CEO of Nest, where he shares his view of the future of the Internet, looking at connected devices - i.e. the Internet of Things.
He observes that, "Today, the Internet is like a library. It contains a vast amount of information accessible if we know where to look. In most cases, getting the right answer requires your asking the right questions."
But then goes on to suggest that "the Internet of the future will go from doing things when we ask to doing things before we ask.... Today, most technology is reactive. We ask a question and get an answer in return. It’s useful, but it’s also limiting. What if we don’t ask the right question? What if we don’t know we need to ask a question in the first place?"
These are some of the key use cases that we are addressing with SAP HANA smart data streaming and ESP - the use cases where there is value in an immediate response to incoming information, rather than simply collecting all the data from smart devices and waiting for someone to analyze it. These are the use cases where event stream processing can add the most value - and the ones that I'm most excited about.
