New ways of doing business

Wave of smarter data collection sparks change

TORONTO — A new wave of intelligent sensors, cameras and tracking devices is expected to sweep across Canada over the next few years, quickly transforming how business is done—much as smartphones took communications to a new level of performance.

The forecast prepared by IDC Canada and funded by Telus Corp. shows companies are prepared to dramatically increase spending to collect and analyze data on complex issues like city traffic flows, pipeline safety and health care.

Tony Olvet, IDC Canada’s group vice-president for research, says Canada is just beginning a period of rapid industrial-scale innovation that will have far-reaching implications, not only for many industries but also for cities and hospitals.

“We’ve been able to communicate over phone lines for over a century but the capabilities that are in a smartphone far surpass voice communication… If you take that as a parallel into industrial or commercial machinery, that’s what we’re looking at today.”

“The ability to analyze, predict and make changes in real-time to a process … those are the things we see as new and valuable to businesses.”

IDC estimates that $21 billion will be spent on such projects in 2018, up from $5.6 billion last year.

Olvet based his remarks on IDC’s interviews with representatives of about 209 Canadian organizations that it considered a representative sample of large and midsized companies.

About 13 per cent of the respondents to the IDC study were working on what’s been called the Internet of Things, or IoT, which refers to intelligent, controllable devices that are usually connected by wireless communications.

An additional 30 per cent of the respondents were planning to adopt that type of technology within two years.

For example, Humber River Hospital in western Toronto is designing digital technology into its building from the outset to improve energy usage and medical treatment.