Gartner’s Angela McIntyre frames this discussion on wearables, big data, and the IoT with the prediction that by 2020, on a daily basis, wearable technology will generate 388 terabytes of data coming from 1.2 billion devices. Those on the panel – the ones actually responsible for running big IoT projects at Baker Hughes, Halliburton, Boeing, and EPRI – offer their experiences and advice. The goal is to generate data, manage it, analyze it (ideally at the source), and then drive business value by changing your work processes as a result of what you learn.

Saving millions of dollars in operations and vastly improving worker safety can be as simple as a sensor on a piece of equipment or on a person (ex. a machine operator). Brian Laughlin of Boeing sums it up rather elegantly: IoT offers us context, and big data offers us the ability to filter through the noise and pinpoint what needs immediate attention. These aren’t disparate things but rather different sides to a 6-sided coin.

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