| |July 20188CIOReviewechnology has always been encompassed in new ways for hu-mans to interact. Ste-ve Jobs popularized the mouse in 1980s. Apple's latest iPhones have a feature called 3D Touch that responds dif-ferently depending on finger pres-sures. It is also working on touchless gesture control and curved screens for their future iPhones. This feature would let iPhone users perform their tasks by moving their finger close to the screen without actually tapping it. The new gesture technology would take into account the proximity of a finger to the screen. To stay ahead it needs compelling new features and designs that may help the company differentiate its product in an increas-ingly crowded market.Proximity means knowing where your customers and assets are and a real time interacting with them in ways that are meaningful both to the User and Self. A proximity sensor de-tects the presence of nearby objects without any physical contact. The maximum distance that this sensor can detect is defined as its range.Internet of Things is a heavy-weight champ on the technology hype scale. New enabling technolo-gies ­ including Bluetooth 5, proxim-ity awareness, and others have sped the path to IoT value creation. Latest rollout of Bluetooth 5 quadruples its range, doubles its speed and boosts data broadcasting capacity. These enhancement and capacity improve-ments open up vast new IoT oppor-tunities for companies to build a more accessible and interoperable IoT.The power of proximity-awareness technologyOne of the most powerful tools for helping an organization gain profit-ability from IoT is proximity technol-ogy. Smart proximity technology will play an important and critical role in extracting value from IoT, alternative-ly IoE ­ the Internet of Everything. It's IoE because the value-creation chain includes more than just things. It involves people, data streams, lo-cations, equipment, communication systems, and more, all connected to the Internet. Proximity-technology brings these scattered pieces of IoT together into a cohesive system that organizations can analyze and act on to solve problems, optimize time, and improve productivity. This is increas-ingly important as connected "things" gain autonomy and begin taking more actions on their own.Proximity solutions enable or-ganizations to gain greater order, efficiency, automation, and predict-ability from IoT. They solve for situ-ations where people and things are spread, for eliminating guesswork and costly inadequacies. They enable organizations to see where things are, what's happening with them, and how to make them more effective and productive.Proximity makes IoT workA large amount of data from IoT is being generated but only a fraction of it is being put to use. This is because the focus is mainly on detecting break-downs or other anomalies, rather than envisioning new, value-building uses. By deploying smart proximity- tech-nology, companies can realize greater value from IoT by using it to predict and optimize a wide range of activi-ties. Once implemented and put to place the "old mindset of repair and replace transforms into a new mindset of predict and prevent"Enriching corporate data with proximity awareness pushes several things forward. Knowing where your people, inorganic assets, customers and goods are and when their joint movements become actionable al-lows automated responses to spe-cific conditions of convergence and divergence. As the world becomes increasingly networked with nearly everything linked to everything or anything, production and supplier networks are expected to grow enor-TIN MY OPINIONBy Ajay Kumar Jha, GM IT, Reliance Communication Infrastructure LtdPROXIMITY:RENDEZVOUS WITH TECHNOLOGY
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