Remember, it's really the Industrial Internet of Things You Care About

I'm probably not the only one that sometimes comes over a bit faint when I contemplate the masssive scale of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).  After all, we can all get a bit wrapped around the axle at times - us analysts here at ARC Advisory included. 

Truth is though that I am excited that interest in IIoT is starting to ramp up (see chart below).  Google clearly reckon that interest in the Industrial Internet of Things (or similar terms) is growing.  But when you see estimates that there will be 50 billiions devices connected in the Internet of Things by 2020 it can be a bit hard to figure out where to start.

So it's worth remembering, even if there are 50 billion devices on the internet, you won't be interested in all of them.  You may only care about 5,000, or 500, or even just 50 - and that's fine.  In fact it's better.

We've been doing business intelligence and analytics projects for decades.  But still, many analytics projects fail because the scope isn't well defined,  or it's not clear what the objectives are, or people are too ambitous in the scope.  In practice, analytics projects are far more successful when they are developed iteratively and incrementally.  That is, start small, build something that adds value quickly, and then widen the scope in chunks from there.  And that's exactly how it should be with Industrial Internet of Things analytics projects.  Unfortunately, many early IIoT projects will founder because the scope is too weak - or too broad - or the goals aren't clear.

So, forget about the Industrial Internet of Things, because you don't care about Every Thing.  All that that really matters is the Industrial Internet of Things You Care About...