Every four years, the world comes together for the Olympics. This global event is an athletic spectacle bringing together humanity for a few weeks to celebrate humanity’s athletic achievements. For me, the Olympics are exciting because I get to watch sports normally not shown on TV and immerse myself in the emotion and pageantry of each event.
Each of these four-year events is also an opportunity to reflect on how far technology has advanced. When the world watched in London in 2012, the Internet of Things (IoT) was nascent and had barely registered a blip on our radars. Fast forward to today and not only are there wearables, but also a growing trend of cloud computing technologies and solutions. These trends will not only change how we watch the Olympics this year and in the future but also how athletes train in the future.
Let’s explore some ideas around how you can win the gold for your organization with cloud this year:
Winning Move #1: Wearable Technologies
Today’s athletes have access to wearable technologies that automatically track everything from calorie intake to distance covered on a jog. From training to race day, wearable technologies provide athletes the trends necessary to understand how to improve upon a previous workout. The software attached to wearable technologies can even suggest workout regimens including jogging routes to further enhance a workout.
Depending on the customer interests of your organization, wearable technologies can provide the strategic boost you’ve been seeking. If your employees or customers live a data-driven workday or lifestyle, integrating wearables into your offerings with support from the cloud can be a boon for business, particularly for leaders and individuals wanting to know where they are at any moment.
Winning Move #2: Robust Application Development
Behind every medal-winning workout is an application driving analytics and tracking. Since every Olympic race is determined by just a few inches, athletes need to be able to measure where they are at any moment and improve, even if it’s just a few milliseconds. Mobile applications like Runkeeper are supported by cloud technologies like IBM Cloudant which tracks distance, time, and calories right down to a tee. Other athletes leverage Runkeeper’s IBM powered data to garner underfoot feedback and ambient noise to understand where they are at any time.
For your organization, robust application development is also key. As consumers push your technology offerings towards digital transformation, it’s important to be able to respond quickly. IBM Cloud offers innovations including Bluemix, UrbanCode Deploy, and PureApplications to drive the continuous innovation and agility your developers can work with to ensure customer satisfaction and competition in the market.
Winning Move #3: Go Cognitive
Athletes live busy lives, having to balance between the food they eat, managing workouts, and developing the mindset for winning. While the web is a treasure trove of information, sometimes there just isn’t the time of day to discover the next meal or workout regimen. Cognitive computing can help, by intelligently providing the resources and information necessary to succeed and save time.
For healthcare organizations, the situation is fairly similar. As more baby boomers reach their golden years, many will require healthcare. With not enough healthcare practitioners to take care of each patient at all times, managed care organizations will look to cognitive solutions like Watson Cloud, which has live and proven experience in driving positive healthcare results.
What’s Your Next Move?
As you consider your cloud strategy for the remainder of 2016, what do you see? Making the right business decision comes down to a few key moves, so reach out to us and let us know how we can empower your organization in the right direction.
Learn more about our IBM practice here and get in touch today.
