As IoT continues to develop and find new avenues for implementation, the security surrounding it is growing to match, and IT workers involved in that field are coming up against some unexpected challenges.

Doug Oathout, VP of IoT Marketing at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE), joined Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at HPE Discover 2016 for a quick discussion of IoT’s place in the market, how IoT data management is being handled and the importance of edge-computing with IoT devices.

Announcements and expansion

“The world is expanding and getting much bigger in IoT as we speak,” Oathout stated, before outlining a few of the impact areas: “What it’s doing is bringing together multiple industries, whether it’s automotive [or] manufacturing. What we’re doing in the manufacturing plants, the cars are getting IT built into them.”

He continued: “So with the Internet of Things, there’s going to be a lot of data and a lot of information to absorb, and you need to process that where it’s being created to make the right decisions. And that’s what we announced toda, is our IoT capabilities to make decisions at the edge.”

Changes through IoT

Addressing the need for quick handling and analysis of the data linked to IoT devices, Oathout gave a few examples of improving use-case scenarios. “The last thing you want is to have to send all of the data all the way back to the mothership and wait three days to tell you to take that manufacturing line down because you’re making ineffective devices. Or in healthcare, you want to be able to make those decisions at the hospital instead of the data center, because you want to make the doctors more effective and more productive in their jobs on a daily basis,” he said.

Considering IoT at large, and the effects its growth has had on the tech business world, Oathout described it as “the next wave.” While “IT has always been running the books, running the data center, running the software that runs your business, and then the operating team’s always run the business, whether it’s manufacturing, logistics [and] distribution,” as he described it, the current changes are bringing these previously discrete groups together in exciting new ways.

Data, data and more data

“The most valuable piece in the Internet of Things is collecting the data,” Oathout declared. “The problem with collecting the data is there’s a lot of it, so you have to be able to acquire it quickly, but you also have to have a data-model set up, which is where data analytics comes in.” Some of the questions at that point, he said, include: “Which information is critical for you to make that decision, in that point in time that day, and then which information do you want to store or share so that you can make product improvements in the future?”

Oathout also shared what HPE sees for the future, saying, “There’s two areas that are going to be most impactful in the short term. There is this efficiency gains and manufacturing and process industry, where if you have the right data, you can make your decisions on how to fix something better. The second is connected cars, and connected cars for two reasons: the intelligence in the car, the entertainment in the car, and all the applications in the car is what everybody sees, but logistically, assisted cars, logistics for delivery, garbage collection, if you can do that more efficiently and avoid the traffic jams, avoid whatever’s going on in the city, you can actually make the public employees more efficient or your distribution company can make their distribution more efficient.”

With security measures including authentication software for connected devices and applications receiving data, among other steps, Oathout felt that as long as effective security was in place, “having real-time analytics and real-time capabilities is the key to making more money or making better decisions. IT actually has the opportunity, here and now,” he added, “to actually improve the processes within the company, improve products for a company, and actually make a huge difference. IT managers out there in the world, this is your time to shine.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of HPE Discover 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE