Information Technology Data on Demand, Article Review Example

The article “Data on Demand” by Martin Courtney outlines how the new smart technologies are chosen by the European gas and electricity companies in order to resolve the issue of efficiency and cope with a vast amount of analytical data. The main argument of the author is that with the constant need for further data collection and its constant multiplication, new algorithms were required for its efficiency and filtering and consequent analysis. The “secret sauce” algorithms are designed in order to select useful information from a specific business from an overall pool of data. These algorithms would prove even more functional for the new initiative of the European companies the smart meters which expand data footprint and will soon collect petabytes of data a year globally. The main rationale for the smart meters is conditioned by the necessity of economizing and improving efficiency of gas and energy consumption according to the new even more demanding European environmental laws. 600,000 of smart meters able to read gas and electricity consumption according to the time of the day, season and weather conditions are planned to be installed in Sweden between 2013 and 2018. The author argues that such changes would require the deployment of machine-to-machine networks to connect various industrial devices.  Another example of technology on demand is the contract between the water measurement technology company the Arad Group and IBM aimed at incorporation of analytics algorithms into Arad’s data management software in order to processes a greater and more diversified amount of data from smart meters and sensors. The accuracy of the results of these algorithms will provide the company with an opportunity to distinguish between a fraud of water usage and excessive usage. Although the author is optimistic regarding the advancement of technology and its correspondence to the demand, he concludes that the adoption of these technologies will occur on a slow rate. This is conditioned by complexity of integrating existing systems, necessity of capital investment, training personnel how to use new technologies. The author foresees that the demand for efficiency and accuracy will overcome these problems.

Reference

Courtney, M. (2014, February). Data on demand. Engineering & Technology, 64-66.