OREANDA-NEWS. October 01, 2015. Every day thousands of tiny pieces of data are created by the Internet of Things (IoT), a quickly-growing network of intelligent, connected devices. This new breed of smart products can include everything from the toothbrush you use, to your coffeemaker, and even your car. Salesforce IoT Cloud harnesses this massive stream of customer data and translates and connects it to your company. With Salesforce IoT Cloud, powered by Thunder, a massively scalable real-time processing engine, businesses will be ahead of the trend, and have the tools they need to take these data points and immediately create actionable plans for that data.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article on the emergence and importance of the Internet of Things, authors Michael Porter and James Heppelmann examined the evolution of products to intelligent, connected devices, and the radical impact they will have on reshaping companies and competition.

The article argues that the nature of smart, connected products is set to make a big impact: “What is under way is perhaps the most substantial change in the manufacturing firm since the Second Industrial Revolution, more than a century ago.”

The old ways of generating data are over, the article claims:

“Before products became smart and connected, data was generated primarily by internal operations and through transactions across the value chain...Firms supplemented that data with information gathered from surveys, research, and other external sources. By combining the data, companies knew something about customers, demand, and costs—but much less about the functioning of products.”

What makes smart, connected devices so game-changes is four-part:

1. Products can monitor and report on their own condition and environment.

2. Users can control product operations remotely and customize unlike never before.

3. The combination of parts one and two means that there are more opportunities for optimization to improve product performance, utilization and uptime.

4. The combination of parts one, two, and three allows for these products to be autonomous — learning, adapting, servicing and operating for themselves.

To put it simply: devices in the Internet of Things generate a vast amount of incredibly valuable data that can be a competitive differentiator for companies. But in order to take full advantage of big data analytics, businesses need business functions to own management, governance, analysis and security of that data. To do so, a cloud-based technology stack is key. With Salesforce IoT Cloud, companies will have access to powerful tools that constanly capture all the tiny pieces of daily data, filter it, and assemble it into easily understandable and actionable outcomes. Salesforce IoT Cloud uses the power of the Internet of Things to further connect your company to its customers in a deeper, more insightful, and personalized way.

You can learn more about Salesforce IoT Cloud by watching the demo or read more about it here.