"big data" articles

The smart home today is not really all that smart. It is obedient and does what it is told to do, but has limited capability of making decisions on its own. Decision making requires first, an understanding of the situation, and then a method to make a decision based on the situation. The smart home industry must focus on understanding what is happening in and around the home, and the first step in understanding that context is gathering data. The sensors embedded in...

The smart home is a comprised of a collection of products and services that serve the needs of consumers using either a centralized or a distributed control architecture. In a distributed control architecture individual products perform specific jobs for consumers, but those products also benefit from collaboration with other products. A loose collaboration between autonomous products is sufficient for many jobs; however, some tasks may be better served by if they were coordinated as a...

According to Parks Associates research, nearly half of consumers rank data security and privacy issues as their greatest concern about connecting devices to the Internet. Parks Associates and Alticast recently released the whitepaper, Cybersecurity: Turning Necessity into Business Opportunity , which provides an overview of current content security systems and the pain points in the transition from content security to big data security, with an emphasis on real-time threat detection...

We at Parks Associates work with tremendous amount of data in an attempt to understand the complex and ever-changing landscape of digital living. A sizeable share of our work involves looking ahead to where digital technologies are heading ( see our new whitepaper,  Top 10 Consumer IoT Trends in 2017 ) as we help our clients stay ahead of the curve. However, as we bid farewell to 2016, an eventful year, I stepped back and looked at some of the broader news stories outside the realm...

Safety and security in the home has expanded beyond the long-term mainstays of burglar and fire alarms. There are now varied smart home devices that provide security and safety in the home  as well as convenience and peace of mind for the consumer. Key industry players are leading various sales channels for these devices, with security system providers at the forefront of that effort. Security system providers represent the sales channel for about one-third of all the safety...

This week in the Wall Street Journal , Brad Russell , Research Analyst at Parks Associates, provided some tips on what Yahoo users can do to protect themselves after yesterday’s news of a security breach in 2014. Brad’s recommended actions include: Be watchful for any communication from Yahoo that clarifies whether you are affected and to what degree. Immediately change your Yahoo password and any similar passwords you use for other online accounts....

Parks Associates research shows that 51% of U.S. broadband households find an IoT device that alerts them to smoke and fire to be highly appealing, and 41% find a device that alerts them to a water leak highly appealing. The international research firm will explore how insurance companies can leverage these smart home solutions to avoid costs, mitigate damage, and increase customer value and satisfaction during the complimentary webcast “ Insurance: Impact of IoT in the U.S....

Mining customer data from connected devices is the new Holy Grail, and CE makers that mine customer information possess more revenue potential. Today, millions of televisions and other electronic devices record thousands of data points each day, automatically delivering them to manufacturers for analysis or for sale to third parties. This is the new state of data gathering in the rapidly emerging Internet of Things (IoT), where virtually any connected device can gather and transmit...