In our February 13, 2012, “Mobile Is The New Face Of Engagement” report, we talked about the important link between smart products and mobile apps. A key to that link is creating a smart product application programming interface (API) that allows third parties to easily write apps that tap into the data feeds from the connected offerings, extending the value of that product with an “app ecosystem.”

As a precursor to an upcoming report that will lay out the smart connected product landscape and the unique combination of IT and product development skills required to build them, Forrester interviewed Cédric Hutchings, the general manager of Withings, a leader in the connected medical device segment.

The highlights of the discussion with Cédric included:

• Company vision. The company seeks to improve the value of everyday devices through connectivity and apps.
• Role of API. An API enables different services that could not be built in-house; it makes it easy for third parties to get data flow and integrate it into app. As a result, Withings has an ecosystem of more than 40 third-party apps that integrate with its Wi-Fi-connected bathroom scale.
• Cloud value proposition. A personal wellness data dashboard allows consumers to manage health across a range of devices and inputs/apps from Withings and other companies.
• Smart product skill requirements. These requirements include a mix of user experience, embedded software/product development talent, traditional IT web, database and middleware competencies, and partner management liaison capabilities.

We have just published Forrester's current forecast for the global market for information technology goods and services purchased by businesses and governments (see January 6, 2011, "Global Tech Market Outlook For 2012 And 2013"), and it shows growth of 5.4% in 2012 in US dollars and 5.3% in local currency terms. Those growth rates are a bit lower than our prior forecast in September 2011 (see September 16, 2011, “Global Tech Market Outlook For 2011 And 2012 — Economic And Financial Turmoil Dims 2012 Prospects"), where we projected 2012 growth of 5.5% in US dollars and 6.5% in local currency terms. I would note that these numbers include business and government purchases of computer and communications equipment, software, and IT consulting and outsourcing services equal to $2.1 trillion in 2012, but do not include telecommunications services.

Like many connected with IBM as an employee, a customer, or an analyst, I watched IBM's Watson beat two smart humans in three games of Jeopardy.  However, I was able to do so under more privileged conditions than sitting on my couch.  Along with my colleague John Rymer, I attended an IBM event in San Francisco, in which two of the IBM scientists who had developed Watson provided background on Watson prior to, during commercial breaks in, and after the broadcast of the third and final Jeopardy game.  We learned a lot about the time, effort, and approaches that went into making Watson competitive in Jeopardy (including, in answer to John's question, that its code base was a combination of Java and C++).  This background information made clear how impressive Watson is as a milestone in the development of artificial intelligence.  But it also made clear how much work still needs to be done to take the Watson technology and deploy it against the IBM-identified business problems in healthcare, customer service and call centers, or security.

The IBM scientists showed a scattergram of the percentage of Jeopardy questions that winning human contestants got right vs. the percentage of questions that they answered, which showed that these winners generally got 80% or more of the answers right for 60% to 70% of the questions.  They then showed line charts of how Watson did against the same variables over time, with Watson well below this zone at the beginning, but then month by month moving higher and higher, until by the time of the contest it was winning over two-thirds of the test contests against past Jeopardy winners.  But what I noted was how long the training process took before Watson became competitive -- not to mention the amount of computing and human resources IBM put behind the project.

Thirteen months ago, I introduced the concept of “Smart Computing,” which I predicted would drive the next big wave of technology innovation and growth in the 2008 to 2016 period (see December 4, 2009, "Smart Computing Drives The New Era of IT Growth"). Smart Computing involves the addition of new awareness technologies like RFID, sensors, and image recognition and new real-time analysis technologies, along with adoption of foundation technologies like service-oriented architectures, unified communications, virtualization, and cloud computing. Since then, I have been tracking the tech market for evidence that this is in fact happening.  

One key indicator I am watching is how many vendors have started to incorporate “Smart Computing” terms and language into their marketing, sales, and brand material.  This matters, because tech vendors will be the ones that translate the concepts embedded in Smart Computing into actual sales of solutions and products to clients, thereby generating the revenue growth that will cause the tech market to grow twice as fast as the economy as we expect.  In fact, that kind of tech market growth has been occurring, at least in the US (December 14, 2010, “US Tech Industry Outlook For 2011 -- 2011 Likely To Replay 2010's 8% Overall Domestic Growth Rate”).  But we want to see whether that strong growth is due to adoption of Smart Computing solutions, or other factors.