A single Internet of Things-connected device is nice, but two or three put together are better. That is, the data each device collects yields smarter insights when analyzed together. But crunching many converged data streams at once can strain ordinary data centers’ compute power.

May research from Cisco Systems Inc. breaks down the struggle in numbers: 73 percent of surveyed businesses are implementing IoT strategies, and 60 percent say that execution is generally more difficult than expected. One company we spoke with — commercial drone software analytics provider Airware Inc. — says that storing and computing all data in the cloud makes IoT analytics easier.

“The magic is really in marrying the different data sources,” said Yvonne Wassenaar (pictured), Airware chief executive officer, noting that this is true for IoT analytics generally and particularly for Airware’s business. Cloud infrastructure facilitates pooling IoT data streams in a number of ways, she added.

Airware primarily serves insurance, agriculture, mining and construction industries. Customers fly drones over large quarries or mining sites, for instance, to gather intelligence. Airware’s software aggregates and analyzes the data from the sites and other relevant sources. 

“You have a lot of big equipment that has a tremendous number of sensors,” Wassenaar said. It amounts to a mass of data the company would have difficulty analyzing if not for cloud technologies, she told John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Accenture Labs 30th Anniversary Celebration in Mountain View, California.

This week, theCUBE spotlights Yvonne Wassenaar in our Women in Tech feature.

All-seeing cloud analytics

Just a few years back, an Airware customer desired a drone that could collect visual images. When the market came up short, he duct-taped a cell phone underneath a drone to record video. Today, drones with built-in recording capabilities are readily available from DJI Innovations Science and Technology Co. Ltd. among others, Wassenaar explained.

The rapid upgrading of drones over a few years brings to mind the cell phone’s trajectory. “The iPhone came out; it didn’t do that much compared to today, but the advancement has been amazing,” Wassenaar said.

Data-gathering drones would not offer much value without a viable way to eventually make sense of the data. In fact, it would be hard for Airware to exist at all without cloud infrastructure that makes large-scale data storage and compute feasible, according to Wassenaar.

Cloud analytics are enabling new drone use cases — for instance, insurance and rooftop inspections — all the time, Wassenaar pointed out. Veritably, Airware is working to build out its platform for use across all industries. “You don’t have to climb a two-story steep on a ladder. You can fly a drone up — less time, more safe. And you get the historical information,” she said.

But how does Airware move multiple data streams through airwaves in real time? “I’m not going to give away all our secrets there,” Wassenaar said. It does owe much to cloud’s economical storage and off-premise convenience, she revealed.

Cloud allows Airware to take advantage of data centers built on someone else’s dime. And the cost of storage is lower, which makes it an ideal place for analyzing multiple data streams in aggregate. “You want to be able to look across data sets, and that’s most easily done aggregating in the cloud,” Wassenaar said.

Lose legacy or else

Airware is a cloud-native company, and Wassenaar advises others to move to the cloud wherever possible to take advantage of its agility.

“All your net new stuff should be in the cloud. The stuff that’s really critical that’s [on-premises] that you can convert, you should do it, and the rest you’ve got to get rid of,” she said. “You can’t be held back by legacy, because it will only prevent you from innovating, and somebody else will.”

There are very large companies or those with heavy compliance requirements that must maintain some data in their own data centers, Wassenaar conceded. For these, new on-premise models that look and feel like cloud are emerging. Utility-based delivery and cloud-bursting capacity might be part of the package, she said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Accenture Labs 30th Anniversary Celebration.

Photo: SiliconANGLE