Seventy-eight percent of UK vendors expect the Internet of Things to have a significant impact on their ability to gather customer insights data across the supply chain. Many go so far as to say that it will also change the way they think and operate as an organisation.

ARI Fleet Management manages 1.2 million things with wheels across North America and Europe, from telephone company trucks to corporate vehicles to railroad maintenance trucks.

When it comes to security, IoT technology can cut both ways. It can, for instance, protect against terrorist attacks and shootings.

It's a big and transformative phenomenon worldwide, so of course it has a buzzy lexicon all its own. You can call it whatever you want - Digital Operations Technology, Industry 4.0, Industry of the Future, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Smart Manufacturing - but you can't ignore it. MESA International offers a concise definition for this wave of change: "Smart manufacturing is the intelligent, real-time orchestration and optimization of business, physical, and digital processes within factories and across the entire value chain."

Big data has the potential to be both friend and foe. The Boston Consulting Group conservatively estimates that trusted uses of big data and advanced analytics could unlock more than $1tr in value annually. However, recent BCG consumer research has uncovered a previously hidden obstacle to successfully unleashing this enormous opportunity: data misuse.