Bob Metcalfe affects life on earth as we know it. He is the inventor of ethernet. In a very educational and enlightening podcast interview, Phil McKinney invites Dr. Metcalfe to muse and ponder about the impact of his life's work.
The high point of the interview, Dr. Metcalfe offers his vision of the future. He asks us to envision a 3X3 matrix in which we see where modes of internet traffic bisect with new application areas where the internet is expected to disrupt.
On the vertical axis he places the modes of traffic; video, mobile, and embedded (see the table below). Video we know about. That's Youtube and Vimeo. Mobile, we know too; smart phones, data collectors, operator rounds, GPS, etc.
Metcalfe's 3X3 Vision of the Future
Energy HealthcareEducationVideo Mobile Embedded You're and engineer...Fill in the squares! (... sorry, rectangles)
Embedded - What he refers to are the 10 Billion micro-controllers that are shipped every year. Very few of those are networked, "and we need to get them networked...by Metcalfe's Law it will make them much more valuable if they are networked"
Mr. Metcalfe goes on to describe what that could do for energy management. We have a glimpse of that concept in action with the SmartGrid. He then gets us to imaging the applications for Healthcare and the implications of networking on-body health monitors and how we could better perform with human health care delivery. Imagine the same for education.
Now imagine a fourth column to include asset performance management. At Meridium Conference last week, Emerson President of Asset Optimization, Craig Llewellyn, offered a very insightful visualization of how embedded technology intersects in the APM application area.
Image may be NSFW.
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Emerson's PlantWeb architecture delivers the power of predictive intelligence.
Imagine now the implications of this flood of information coming from plant equipment. What does this mean for calibration management? How is this a game-changer/enhancer for safety instrumented systems? Just think about all of the disparate streams of data you need to analyze!
Drinking from a firehose? Well if you're relying on the bandwidth between your ears you'll end up like Joel Miller (in the video).
Enterprise reliability analytics will keep you on the horse.
