Evans Data’s Developer Insights for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Big Data Projects

With the amount of data being collected by businesses and the rise in compute power on desktops, servers, private/public/hybrid cloud systems, mobile devices, and edge connectors, every developer is looking to leverage new AI, machine learning, deep learning and big data technologies. At just about every developer conference and webinar there are presentations and demonstrations of how to use modern techniques to gain business insights and perform analysis and actions close to the customer interaction, edge connection and all along the computing infrastructure. New developer technologies are helping accelerate the digital transformations globally in every industry segment.

Last week I hosted a track on the use of “IoT in Enterprise” at the IoT Tech Expo North America conference in Silicon Valley. Along with the IoT tracks there were two co-located events covering Blockchain and AI. While I roamed the exhibit hall during breaks in my track sessions, you could see and feel the energy surrounding the coming together of IoT devices, data collection, analytics, and AI technologies for business benefits. Developers and decision makers were having wonderful conversations in the aisles and hallways. In my conversations with speakers and attendees it was clear that we are witnessing an acceleration in the developer and business use of machine learning.

Developers Leaving Rules Based Engines for Machine Learning in AI Projects

Yesterday’s Evans Data press release, “Developers Leaving Rules Based Engines for Machine Learning in AI Projects“, (SANTA CRUZ, CA. Dec 5, 2017), reports that just over 50% of developers engaged in artificial intelligence projects now solely implement machine learning technology in those projects, according Evans Data’s recently released Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Big Data Survey. Those using rules based engines alone accounted for 27% of the AI developers while just a little more than 22% are using a hybrid system that combines both machine learning techniques with rules-based technologies.

The rules-based system is one of the simplest types of AI. Also known as an expert system, a rule-based system encodes expert knowledge, usually in a fairly narrow area, into an automated system that can perform tasks or deliver answers in a manner similar to a human. Machine learning, on the other hand, enables the system to create rules on the fly through training which results in a model that is used to classify data. While the rules-based systems have been used longer, machine learning has been increasingly embraced by AI developers.

“There’s plenty of excellent applications for rules-based engines and they have been used for years,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data Corp, “but today we’re seeing developers eagerly adopting machine learning algorithms into their projects and training them so they can evolve and function on their own. Major vendors and organizations in the industry are helping to spur this development by providing frameworks and tools to facilitate machine learning development.”

Related data showed that concept clustering, artificial neural networks, and reinforcement learning were techniques that were most likely to be used in AI projects. Speech recognition is also becoming a popular way of interacting with AI systems with 45% of AI developers incorporating this technology into their projects.

The new Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Big Data Survey is conducted twice a year with developers actively working in those disciplines and has a margin of error of 4.8%. The full 150 page report includes sections on Demographics, Industry Landscape, AI Concepts and Methods, Barriers and Challenges for AI, Enterprise AI, I and Cloud, IoT and Machine Learning, Parallel Processing, Hardware and Infrastructure Needs, Conversational Systems, Security Needs, and more.

See the complete Table of Contents and Methodology here: Table of Contents

 

DevRelate Blog Posts Related to AI, Machine Learning and Big Data

Here are a few additional DevRelate blog posts that cover AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, tools, frameworks and more. In looking at many developer programs, I see new additions to embrace AI and Big Data technologies in a range of communities and businesses.

 

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David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99

My IoT in Enterprise track at IoT Tech Expo North America

This week I am the Track Chair for the “IoT in Enterprise” track (Thursday, November 30, 2017) at the IoT Tech Expo Conference North America at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Quoting from the track description in the conference program: “The Industrial Internet of Things or Industry 4.0 heralds an era of unlimited potential to change across the enterprise landscape. Will this become the age of ultimate industrial automation? What efficiencies and new opportunities can be realised as a result? How can the complexities be understood and challenges overcome? In this session we take a close look at some of the main sectors of enterprise who are embracing IoT within their workflows, from tracking of freight and fleets using asset management with case studies from the worlds leading Logistics companies to discussing how IoT can impact Agriculture. How Oil, Gas and Energy companies are getting involved in the IoT is also being highlights right from oil fields through to facilities management in the latest smart buildings. This track is suited to attendees who wish to hear from high-level speakers about how the world’s biggest and most forward thinking enterprises are utilising IoT within their businesses.”

To open up the day I will welcome everyone to the conference and the track and give some opening remarks that will include excerpts from Evans Data IoT Vertical Research Service.

I will also moderate two panels during the day as well as introducing the presenters and their sessions.

 

Topics Covered in the IoT in Enterprise Track

  • Using Hololens to drive process optimization for Enterprise – Patrick Bass, CEO, thyssenkrupp North America
  • Accelerating IoT Adoption – Mighael Botha, CTO, Software AG
  • Case Study, Connected Car – Dr. Lakshmi Thanayankizil Ph.D., Wireless Connectivity Specialist , General Motors
  • Optimizing energy usage in Enterprise using IoT technology – Greg Wolfson, Solutions Development Lead – Connected Energy, Shell New Energies
  • Start-Up as a Service: Transforming IoT Innovation in Enterprise – Mark Modzelewski, GM, Treeline
  • Innovative Safety Solution: What happens when you combine existing technology to create a comprehensive safety planning solution? – Ashly Coggins, Construction Manager, FLUOR

Panel Discussions during the IoT in Enterprise Track

  • Keynote Panel: IoT Technologies in Enterprise
  • Panel: Smart logistics for freight and fleet management
  • Panel: Smart buildings and lighting

 

A Collection of Evans Data IoT Related Press Releases

 

David I - Developer Relations Conference

David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidi99/

 

DRC 2017 recap: “Our Journey to a Growing Developer Program”, Susie Wee – Cisco

Susie Wee, VP and CTO of DevNet Innovations at Cisco Systems, gave a presentation at our recent 13th Annual Evans Data Developer Relations Conference. The following is a recap of her session, “Our Journey to a Growing Developer Program”. [David I note: the graphics used in this blog post were not part of the presentation slide deck]

Susie started her session by asking the audience a few questions to understand who was attending and what they wanted to get out of her talk. A great way to start any presentation in order to make any “course corrections” to help the audience.

Cisco DevNet APIs

Susie mentioned that the Cisco DevNet developer network started about 3 years ago. Before that time Cisco had a series of APIs and SDKs for developers but no real developer program and community. What Cisco had was more of a partner community to resell Cisco products. Certifications were offered for the partners. You could ask a couple of questions about the early outreach to developers: why does Cisco have a developer program and isn’t Cisco a networking hardware company?

She explained that Cisco DevNet is a developer community and an innovation ecosystem. Technologies that are available to developers include: Internet of Things, Software Defined Networking, Cloud computing, Collaboration technologies (many developers will recognize Cisco Jabber), Security solutions, Data Center offerings, DevOps solutions, Services and Open Source.

As part of Susie’s talk and also the main focus on the upcoming DevNet Create Conference (May 23-24, 2017 in San Francisco, CA), one of the main themes follows the sentence template of “Where Applications Meet xxx”. Developers who build applications should be able to easily fill in the “xxx” with some of the following: Infrastructure, Things (IoT), Places, People, Design, Architecture, Microservices, Deployment, Security, Analytics, etc. Between the apps that are developed there are interfaces to connect those apps to, well, everything! That is part of what Cisco provides beyond their traditional networking solutions.

Cisco DevNet Create

Susie explained how Cisco DevNet focuses on helping developers:

 

She mentioned that DevNet has more than 415,000 members, who work in more than 24,000 companies, provides 252 learning labs, provides 80 active APIs and more than 170 yearly developer outreach events.

Key to the success of Cisco DevNet are a laser focus on solving three key challenges: how to operate as a developer program, provide a clear value proposition for developers, and continue to grow a fiercely loyal developer community.

One of the stories that Susie mentioned was how DevNet attached itself onto the popular Cisco Live conferences that are help throughout the world. They put together all of their developer learning materials and created a DevNet zone on the side of the main conference. Attendees walked past the area and started telling their friends that there are cool learning labs over in this corner of the conference area. The buzz started to spread among attendees that there was a lab where you could develop software to integrate with Cisco technologies. John Chambers and his Cisco management team stopped by and saw what was happening in the DevNet theater and hands on lab. Now, at Cisco Live, the DevNet zone is the busiest section – Cool!

DevNet – 5 Lessons Learned

Susie shared the 5 lessons that they’ve learned during DevNet’s journey:

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5) Operate like a startup and build up your developer credibility

4) Play to your strengths and build a technically talented “extended” team

3) Make your developer members heroes inside their companies and also in their communities

2) Help your team be wildly successful and ensure that your community has a heart

1) Innovate, Innovate, Innovate.

Innovate or Be Left Behind

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Developers have to solve big problems. A developer program’s mission is to help developers build innovative solutions for their companies and their customers. Your developer program has to continue to provide innovative features, content and tools that will help your developer members create innovative applications. Our industry moves forward, fast. Developers move forward, fast. If your developer program does not innovate to keep up with developer needs, your company and your developer program will be left in the dust.

Thank you, Susie Wee and Cisco, for being a part of our 13th Annual Evans Data Developer Relations Conference.

Additional Information

Cisco DevNet  – https://developer.cisco.com/

DevNet Create Conference (May 23-24, 2017 in San Francisco, CA)

Susie Wee’s session live stream replay is available on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ciscodevnet/videos/1962907540605184/

Session Title: DevNet: Fostering innovation where applications meet infrastructure

Session Description: How did a networking company start behaving like a software company and build a thriving developer community? How is DevNet achieving scale by engaging a broader internal and external community? The mission of Cisco DevNet is to provide developers with the tools, resources and code they need to create innovative, network-enabled solutions. But it’s more than just the technologies – DevNet is fostering innovation to help developers create seriously cool stuff. Join Susie Wee as she shares the successes, challenges and lessons learned in building a successful joint developer and innovation program, as well as what’s next for the DevNet community.

SusieWee

Susie Wee – VP and CTO of DevNet Innovations at Cisco Systems

 

Bio:

Susie is the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of DevNet Innovations at Cisco Systems. She is the founder of DevNet, Cisco’s developer program for infrastructure and application developers, which catalyzes innovation by the developer ecosystem. DevNet covers the breadth of Cisco’s portfolio including networking, cloud, data center, security, collaboration and IoT. The innovations from DevNet improve end user experience, the operational experience and developer experience with the network. Under her leadership, the DevNet community has grown to over 400,000 developers in less than three years.

Prior to her current role, Susie was the Vice President and Chief Technology and Experience Officer of Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group where she was responsible for driving innovation and experience design in Cisco’s collaboration products and software services, including unified communications, telepresence, web and video conferencing, and cloud collaboration. Before joining Cisco, Susie was the founding Vice President of Experience Software Business and CTO at Hewlett Packard, and Lab Director at HP Labs. Susie was the co-editor of the JPSEC standard for the security of JPEG-2000 images. She was formerly an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Circuits, Systems and Video Technology and IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. While at HP Labs, Susie was a consulting assistant professor at Stanford University where she co-taught a graduate-level course on digital video processing.

Susie received Technology Review’s Top 100 Young Innovators award, ComputerWorld’s Top 40 Innovators under 40 award, the Red Dot Design Concept award for augmented collaboration, the INCITs Technical Excellence award, the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame award, and was on the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. She is an IEEE Fellow for her contributions in multimedia technology and has over 50 international publications and 57 granted patents. Susie received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

DevNet Create 2017 – more than just another developer conference

When is a developer conference more than just another vendor and developer conference? When the leading technologies including cloud, Internet of Things, devices, platforms, frameworks and architectures are combined with the ingenuity of developers in one location for a couple of days, the result is a creative explosion, a coming together of minds and machines. There are many developer conferences through the calendar year. There are numerous weekend hackathons, maker fairs, meetups and developer gatherings. Blooming this Spring in San Francisco on May 23 and 24, is DevNet Create: The IoT and cloud developer conference where applications meet infrastructure. I can only say one thing: Developer Relations Professionals and Developers – Be There or Be Trapezoidal!

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DevNet Create: Where Applications meet People, Places, Things, the Cloud, and Business

From the conference page: “Join the brightest of the IoT, cloud and enterprise developers to bring clarity to the blurred lines between infrastructure and applications. Enterprise app developers are driving the future of business through cloud, IoT and new developer platforms and tools trends. These apps aren’t just for business—they affect everything—people, places, and things. They are built on a programmable infrastructure connected through APIs and DevOps practices, making the relationship between infrastructure and apps symbiotic.”

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Two Tracks, lots of Hands-On to Create: IoT and User Experience, Cloud and DevOps

The call for papers closes this Thursday March 30, 2017. Submit talks at https://www.papercall.io/devnetcreate2017

Blog post announcing “Introducing DevNet Create Conference in May 2017” at http://blogs.cisco.com/cloud/introducing-devnet-create-conference-in-may-2017

Conference home pagehttps://www.devnetcreate.io/2017/

Where: Bespoke at Westfield San Francisco Centre

When: May 23 and 24, 2017

 

Where Apps Meet …

I love the apps focused themes that are included for each of the two tracks. They are all based on a statement that starts with “Where Apps Meet…”

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Read Susie Wee’s (Cisco VP & CTO of DevNet Innovations. Experience/Technology/Teamwork/Developers) blog post: “Where apps meet …

IoT and User Experience track:

  • Where Apps meet Things
  • Where Apps meet Places
  • Where Apps meet People
  • Where Apps meet Design & Architecture

 

Cloud and DevOps track:

  • Where Apps meet Microservices
  • Where Apps meet Deployment / SLAs / Scale / Expectations
  • Where Apps meet Security
  • Where Apps meet Analytics (Intelligence)

 

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David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidi99/

 

Happy New Year 2017 and it’s CES 2017 this Week – Autonomous Cars, IoT, Gadget Apocalypse?

Happy New Year 2017! I hope everyone survived the holidays. I am back in the office and starting off an exciting new year. It’s CES 2017 later this week. I can’t wait to actually hear about the actual announcements (instead of the speculations) of new consumer technologies that will appear this year. At the same time, its exciting to hear that CES will showcase news about AI, Machine Learning, Smart Cars, Autonomous Vehicles, IoT, VR, Personal Robots, 8K displays, Voice Assistants, Home Automation, Drones, and more.

CES 2017 – What to Expect

The top tech news sites have multiple articles with pre-announcements and previews of what to expect this week in Las Vegas. Last year at CES 2016, Faraday Future gave a glimpse at their concept electric car. This year, they will live stream the unveiling of the actual car on Tuesday, January 3 at 6pm PST. They even have a countdown timer on their home page at https://www.ff.com/en/

FaradayFuture-FFZero1 CES 2017

Here are links to a few of the CES 2017 previews and news articles that I’ve been reading.

Home Automation in my Christmas Stocking

My Christmas stocking was filled with home automation IoT devices including an Amazon Echo Dot, Switchmate Smart Light Switch and a Wemo Switch. I’ve set up the Echo Dot to control my Nest Thermostat – “Alexa, set Family Room temperature to 72 degrees”. I am working to get the other devices installed and connected to the Echo Dot and also explore SDKs for building additional integrations. The good news for developers and developer programs, there are lots of Voice Control APIs available to connect different devices together in your home and office.

For connected devices and developer evangelism, Evans Data has its Internet of Things vertical research service and annual Tactical Developer Marketing research report series (Developer Marketing Patterns and Developer Relations Programs).

The Gadget Apocalypse?

Back in early December, Farhad Manjoo wrote an article in the New York Times Personal Tech section, “The Gadget Apocalypse is Upon Us“. In his article he mentions the problems at GoPro and Pebble being acquired by FitBit. He also talks about the fall of other companies, the start/stop of Kickstarter projects and that with SmartPhones and software there may not be a need for as many gadgets and wearables.

VentureBeat has a recent article that mentions Manjoo’s article and points to the CES 2017 show’s vendors announcing and demoing 20,000 consumer products. VentureBeat: CES 2017: 20,000 consumer electronics products will be launched despite “gadget apocalypse”. As always, there are some CES products that never see the light of day or take a few years to appear as products (note by mention of Faraday Future above). I did like how VentureBeat talked with Shawn Dubravac, chief economist of the Consumer Technology Association, to provide some perspective about the CES show and product announcements: “… Dubravac flat-out disagrees… But beyond that, even if software has become more critical, we still have seen major companies like Google and Amazon and Snap pushing into the hardware space. Content and software remain tightly linked to the success of any hardware. It may be true, as Manjoo argues, that it’s hard to be a company whose sole focus is hardware, but that’s always been true, Dubravac points out.”

If your company has CES 2017 announcements, let me know.

I will be watching for CES 2017 announcements, both as a tech fanatic and also as a developer. If you see any news or hear of new developer capabilities in CES 2017 announcements let me know.

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David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99

 

 

IoT developer focus: Consumer, Industrial, or Both?

In a previous DevRelate blog post, “Internet of Things and your Developer Relations Program“, I gave an overview and list of Internet of Things (IoT) companies that have developer relations programs. This blog post takes a look at companies involved in IoT for Consumer and Industrial applications (and sometimes for both).

Evans Data provides an Internet of Things vertical research service that focuses on developers working on projects for connected devices in IoT. Projects can be targeted for use in transportation, entertainment, home automation, smart cities, retail, manufacturing, and a wide array of industry segments. One of the key take-aways from the IoT research shows that 55% of developers primarily connect devices through the cloud. The combination of IoT research and developer demographics and firmographics allows us to also know what industries the developers work in and where they work. Looking at the industries we can derive whether the developers are working on IoT projects for internal and/or external use. We can also derive whether developers are working on IoT projects for consumer, industrial or both.

IoT for Consumer and Industrial

 

Does your Developer Relations Program support IoT for the Consumer, Industrial or both segments?

In my home, I use a Nest thermostat and my PC/Smartphone to monitor and control the temperature. A large warehouse would most likely use an industrial grade digital temperature control system. For monitoring of the warehouse temperature and humidity they would probably use a PC and/or Smartphone for monitoring and alerts. Nest does have a support article that discusses how Nest thermostats can be used by offices and small businesses.

I also have several personal medical monitoring devices including a pulse oximeter, weight scale, blood pressure cuff, blood sugar monitor and temperature sensor. Depending on healthcare industry specifications and regulations these IoT devices work well in my home but may not be applicable for use in a modern healthcare office or hospital. Some of my devices come with APIs and lower level BluetoothLE interfaces. Some of the devices provide and app to upload the data to a cloud storage system and an API for me to build apps to get at the data. Several developer programs, including Apple and Google, also provide frameworks to get to health related data.

Since I don’t have a wind farm in my backyard, I probably wouldn’t have a need for industrial IoT solution like GE’s digital wind farm technology. I do have a smart meter on my home’s power meter. My energy provider, PG&E, provides ways to access customer-authorized data via a REST based API. As a developer I could build desktop and mobile apps for monitoring and alerts for both my home and a wind farm.

Most individual developer programs provide sample source code for specific device apps. It is harder to find a “hero app” that brings together multiple devices, multiple services, cloud and data storage into a solution. Does your developer relations program provide APIs to integrate devices, services and data for IoT and IIoT based systems? Are the services, APIs and architectures similar or different for IoT and IIoT applications? Are the features for developer programs the same? Depending on the criticality, government regulations and other factors, there may be higher levels of security access, authentication, encryption, etc. involved for your developer programs and the product offerings.

Internet of ThingsIndustrial Internet of Things

Recent IoT and IIoT News and Blog Posts

 

Consumer and Industrial IoT Developer Programs

Here is a list of Consumer IoT and Industrial IoT hardware and software providers and consulting firms.

Consumer IoT

Industrial IoT

If You have a Developer Focused IoT and/or IIoT program, Let Me Know

I would love to explore your IoT and IIoT focused developer program. Send me an email with your developer program URL so that I can join and take a look.

David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99