The Rise of People-to-Process Real-Time Communication

A new market is on the rise

From people-to-people communication

About twentyfive years ago the Swedish telecom firm Ericsson had the tagline “It’s all about Communication between people, the rest is technology”. The Finish firm Nokia had “Connecting People”. Both are great and innovative statements, but the meaning of it would be quite different today!

Since then a lot of things have changed in communication with technologies such as internet telephony, app-dialing, introduction of various G-standards (3G, 4G and 5G), wifi etc. Common for the period up until now is that the focus has been on people-to-people communication.

Person A wants to call person B, a group of people would like to join in on a phone/web conference for discussions, person B would like to leave voice messages and so on. The business arguments have been around personal efficiency and having the right tools for individuals to get more things done in a more effective way.

Unified Communication platforms has been designed to improve the way we communicate, and introduction of Cloud PBX’s pushed by operators has reached the market. The thinking with Unified Communication was built around an idea of a central point were all communication streams would pass through. Let’s call it a monolithic approach!

To people-to-process communication

Time has changed and some firms now forecast more than 60 Billion IOT devices in 2025 (Source: Business Insider, Iot Analytics, Gartner, Intel) and business investments in IOT is expected to grow from 200BUSD to 800 BUSD between 2015-2020 (Source:PWC).

These are huge numbers in a market that are still in the early phase of market deployment. The various opportunities with AI, introduction of 5G (NB-IOT) will further fuel connected devices in a pace we have not seen before. Always connected will get a new meaning, with not only people being connected.

Although machines will communicate this will enable and trigger the needs for human communications in many areas that we have not thought of before. Alongside “People-to-People” communication we will have “People-to-Process” communication.

Companies will in the future look at how they can introduce communication in their various company processes in order to increase efficiency and customer experience. This is not Unified Communication, but rather targeted to that specific company and the relevant process.

New business cases will emerge

Think about healthcare as an example. In a house with elderly living people, why not just trigger a real time communication through a loudspeaker directly, in case the elderly person has been away from your bed more than 30 minutes during the night? And if needed activate a camera?

In a car, why not be contacted via a camera in the car with a service technician when there is an alarm triggered?

Or, in the future when a police officer has bodycams scanning persons passing by with Artificial Intelligence, set up a real-time phone connection between the police officer and alarm center when a suspects face is scanned in the nearby.

Devices such as elevators, smart doorbells, telecare units, cameras, smart assistance, alarm systems will be connected to the net and used for process communication. And don’t forget WebRTC which are rapidly growing to enable better real-time communication in PC’s, phones and tablets.

A new market is in the making so make sure to follow us to stay updated!