Cisco customers have asked me how the Internet of Everything and the Internet of Things are going to affect their everyday life.  My answer:  it can be mind-boggling how interconnected sensors and devices are going to impact our daily lives.

Specifically, in the industrial space, I get to work daily with our manufacturing and mining customers who want to understand best practices and deployments, and figure out how to implement various solutions to add value to their business.  Some of this may be tracking adjacent or similar markets with the nuanced changes to apply to their particular situation.

For example, one customer I have been working with is in the process of integrating 4-5 completely different systems into one tool to do correlation events.  In the past, one person had to have the intelligence to look at each of these disparate systems and then start to tie all of this together.  The issue is with the fact is the single person who has this intelligence is the only one who knows what to do.  This may have been job security for that individual, but the situation creates bottlenecks.

Most companies are currently collecting huge amounts of data, but this data is either dumped or stored and no action occurs.  Just take a look at the incredible amount of information that is used in Formula 1 racing.  Not only is this information helping F1 become more effective and transforming racing, but the same data and analytics is now being used in other industries.  The second half of this video is around a hospital using what McLaren uses in F1 for monitoring.

The cost to all this data gathering is growing and the benefits are not being realized.  When intelligence is added to the data the benefit starts to flow and grow and every customer will drive to increased operational effectiveness and maximize innovation.   Read more on a recent blog  by Chet Namboodri at Manufacturing New Business with the Internet of Everything

To get you thinking on some of the concrete examples where IoT is already transforming manufacturing, I suggest you register for this MFG.net webcast on IoT.  Hear from industry experts and your peers, including Harley Davidson, Rockwell Automation and Cisco on best practices and real-life examples.  We hope you can join us.

Let me know some of the possibilities for IoT that you envision for your company.  Join the conversation on Twitter, @CiscoMFG.