Getting Across the Smart Home Threshold
Smart Homes’ Value Comes from Addressing Real Needs that Ease the Tasks of Running a Home, Offer Experiences that Enrich Life and Provide Assurances that Create Peace of Mind
Gregory Bryant
By Gregory Bryant
Smart home is a term that is likely well known by anyone who follows technology as closely as I do, and even people who don’t. But do people really understand what a smart home is today versus what it could be in the future?
In my position as corporate vice president of the Connected Home and Commercial Client Group at Intel, I lead Intel’s smart home strategy. My colleagues and I see innumerable opportunities to innovate and create solutions that can enrich our lives in the homes, neighborhoods and communities we all share. The Internet of Things (IoT), edge analytics platforms, home connectivity and personal computing devices all play a role, and we can create amazing experiences when we collaborate.
At Intel, we’re excited for the transformation ahead and are fundamentally re-architecting the home network and bringing valuable innovation to users to eliminate the burdens many people experience with implementing smart homes today.
I believe now is the time for a truly smart home – driven by disruptive technological innovations and the rapid growth of connected devices, appliances and things. I am seeing this transformation boosted by our ability to gain insight and value from the data created by connected things, and further amplified by breakthrough technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, voice-assisted automation and artificial intelligence. All signs indicate we are moving past the threshold and into the age of the smart home.
tiny-smart-home-control-panelSmart Homes Defined
I want to step back a minute and look at what I mean by a truly smart home. While many of us live in homes with good connectivity, some gadgets and a handful of devices, a smart home goes beyond simply connecting those things to the cloud and setting up some automated tasks. The powerful value of the smart home comes from addressing real human needs that ease the tasks of running a home, offer experiences that enrich daily life and provide assurances that create peace of mind. Sign me up.
In addition, consider this: To be truly smart, a home must seamlessly interconnect diverse devices, services and things so the home becomes perceptive, responsive and autonomous.
For a home to be perceptive, it must sense and understand people, actions and intentions within the walls of home, sweet home. It needs to understand what actions we need it to take and respond accordingly. Furthermore, to be autonomous, it needs to understand our patterns, anticipate our needs and proactively deliver amazing experiences that fit a situation.
Opening Doors to Innovation
I am thrilled to see this convergence of innovation and disruptive technologies, and I know that Intel is uniquely positioned to lead enthusiastic smart home adoption. We have comprehensive roadmaps for the components of the smart home, deep technical expertise and decades of experience creating advanced solutions. In collaboration with an ecosystem of industry leaders, we are investing in the research, planning, strategy and development of smart home technologies. We will ensure the smart home experience is valuable to consumers and that an engineering degree will not be necessary to enjoy the benefits it brings.
woman-with-control-panel-for-smart-homeRest assured that we are not sitting around waiting for the fun to start. Many players are bringing point solutions to the smart home that are amazing on their own, but we are knocking down the door into the age of the smart home where device integration brings value to the consumer.
We have deployable technology today that enables service providers, device manufacturers and software vendors to create secure, interoperable solutions and services that together make homes smart. Intel technology-based home gateways reside between the worldwide wide-area network and home networks to act as the hub or controller and optimize connections. The Intel® Smart Home Development Acceleration Platform allows OEMs and developers to build and deploy new applications while ensuring compatibility across OS updates. And our roadmaps provide the performance needed for the broad range of devices used in the home, from things to the highest compute.
We are continuing to collaborate with our partners to apply these foundational building blocks to go even further to bridge the gaps in the smart home industry, eliminate barriers to adoption and expand the possibilities of technology in the home. These solutions will come quickly, and I think you are going to like what you see.
Keys to the Smart Home
Intel is dedicated to addressing the challenges ahead, and excited to lead the transformation from automation of 20th century tasks to enabling new technology-enhanced smart home experiences. We are thrilled and excited by the connected home landscape before us.
Come join us and welcome to the neighborhood.
Gregory Bryant is corporate vice president and general manager of the Connected Home and Commercial Client Group at Intel Corporation.
