Gartner Data and Analytics Summit 2017, Day 1: The IoT Is Coming

Grapevine, TEXAS — Infusing all aspects of your organization with data and analytics was the theme on day one of Gartner’s 2017 Data and Analytics Summit, as keynote speakers kicked off the event Monday by stressing how data and analytics is transforming business strategy, particularly with the impending Internet of Things (IoT) revolution.

"Expectations are sky-high. These are not internal expectations we're all placing upon ourselves; your organization is expecting you to deliver an expanded vision of data and analytics to drive the traditional business strategy," Kurt Schlegel, research vice president at Gartner, told the audience during the keynote. "Our organizations are looking to us to build the data and analytics platforms that connect our customers, our partners, our employees, and our things within a new digital business platform."

"The idea of turning scarcity into abundance…runs throughout human history, [and] it's particularly relevant in our world, the digital world. This is our opportunity, our time in history. The 3,000 people in this room have an opportunity to build a new vision for our companies. Leverage abundant sources of data and go beyond simply organizing and measuring that data into actually applying it empirically to the operational processes and key decisions we make every day, both professionally and personally," said Debra Logan, vice president and Gartner Fellow at Gartner.

Logan went on to stress the importance of the CDO, or chief data officer, position. "The beauty of abundance is that there’s something in it for everyone. For those of you who are ready to take the next step on their career path in leadership, you can consider becoming the CDO, and many of you have done this already. Hundreds of companies have implement the office of the chief data officer. You have the opportunity, if not the obligation, to modernize your technology and handle the abundance and variety of data," she said. "Data and analytics is now the center of digital business, and here's your opportunity to maximize your contribution to that business. Regardless of where you are in this journey, recognize that we're all on the same exponential curve to make insightful and data-driven decision-making abundant."

The Internet of Things will undoubtedly be a major force behind the adoption of data and analytics throughout organizations. Gartner foresees a shift in IoT models from ownership to services, predicting that by 2020, IoT adoption will drive a 25 percent reallocation of end user spending for capital assets from a procuring-and-maintaining model to a service model.

"Rapid adoption of IoT-enabled complex machines and their subcomponent systems will lead to tipping points wherein the benefits of scaling effects will shift form owner-operators to manufacturers," Michael Patrick Moran, research director at Gartner, explained in his session "Mastering the 'Things' in the Internet of Things."

Moran outlined five recommendations for organizations to prepare for the IoT revolution: (1) prioritizing the mastery of the end-to-end data architecture of the IoT;  (2) monitoring IoT-related developments that apply to complex equipment and related subcomponents critical to the organization; (3) identifying potential internal and external tipping points that will either facilitate or force the transfer of capital assets from the organization to the manufacturer; (4) developing operational and economic models that compare and contrast different ownership and operational models to determine which ones are best for the organization; and (5) monitoring tipping points relative to comparative analysis to make deliberate decisions concerning the transition from one model to another.

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