Recently I had the pleasure of sitting down with Bruce Sinclair, founder and publisher of IoT-Inc and an expert on the business implications of the Internet of Things. As we both closely cover the Internet of Things space, we both identified the ‘much ado’ about blockchain technologies. As such, Bruce asked me to come on the show to break down what on earth blockchain is, and what the implications are for IoT companies.
Over the last few years, I have been intensely researching the intersections between IoT and a number of other technologies emerging into enterprise and consumer commercialization. Chief among them is blockchain, which despite all the buzz, is really best thought of as an advancement in record-keeping. Sound boring? Well, the technology itself is fairly mundane– now we can distribute records and render immutable processing those records– but what’s exciting are the implications for individuals, companies, and societies at large. Having conducted research on more than 30 use case categories across 23 different industries, I was struck by both the wide “horizontal” potential for applications, and the profound implications of decentralizing control.
Transaction processing; Identity and access management; Smart assets & IoT; Supply chain; Energy; Automation Compliance… these are just the tip of the iceberg.
In the podcast: Blockchain & IoT: The Advent of Truthful Data, Bruce and I discuss the following.
- The definition and characteristics of blockchain
- Security enhancements from using blockchain.
- How integrating financial and operational transactions in a truthful way increases efficiency.
- The challenges and inefficiencies of blockchain – you may be surprised.
- Typical size of today’s blockchain pilot programs.
- Shared truth and why it’s so important.
- When will blockchain be here, in a commercial way?
In the coming weeks, I’ll be kicking off new research studying the intersections and use cases where IoT and distributed ledger technologies intersect for trusted machine interactions. If you’re interested in sharing insights and participating in that research, please reach out to me at [email protected].
Check out the full podcast here, or here on iTunes.