Analytics for the Internet of Things (IoT)

The data volume

A company can easily have thousands to millions of IoT devices with several sensors on each unit, each sensor reporting values on a regular basis. The inflow of data can grow quite large very quickly. Since IoT devices send data on an ongoing basis, the volume of data in total can increase much faster than many companies are used to.

To demonstrate how this can happen, imagine a company that manufactures small monitoring devices. It produces 12,000 devices a year, starting in 2010 when the product was launched. Each one is tested at the end of assembly and the values reported by the sensors on the device are kept for analysis for five years. The data growth looks like the following image:

A chart showing data storage needs ...