Location awareness -- the tip of the iceberg  |  February 29, 2008  

Last week I was talking with Vinnie Mirchandani about the impact of all the sensor information coming into the enterprise in the near future. What the effect will be on ERP systems...

This week I saw an article in information week about the same subject. As sensor use enters into the enterprise, they'll provide much more context of the enterprise. Efforts like unified communications provide more information about the context of the individual. This will enable a next generation of the enterprise.

We're going to see the need for smarter systems, just to enable the decision making process. When we're talking about terabytes of data per hour flowing into large enterprises, people just don't work with that volume of information.

Geographic information can provide a key role in assisting with the contextual intersection between the employee and the enterprise, limiting the flow of information to only those who can do something about it. Since more phones will have GPS capabilities, the balance between personal privacy and corporate information overload is a battle that is about to commence.

For the public, there is already a great deal of discussion about correlating information across all the other sensors in the environment enabling a real life recorder capability. In the UK they talk about having >4 Million CCTV cameras. Many of these now have additional sensors like infrared or built in contextual knowledge looking for illegal behavior. When you add in sensors, the target for London will be millions of sensors per person by 2050.

Charlie Bess
EDS' Next Big Thing Blog