Post 2020, the 5th Wave of Computing Caused by the Convergence of AI, Big Data, 5G and IoT will Enable Effective Monetization of Data
In today’s data-driven economy, data is a strategic asset to any business, and organizations around the world are occupied with anomalous amounts of data. The author expects that the volume of data created would reach 175 Zettabytes (ZB) by 2025. Driven by this explosive growth in data and technological advancements in Big Data and computing, many businesses have now realized the value that data would unlock and are currently exploring ways to monetize their available data. The global data monetization market is in its nascent stages as organizations are still figuring out how best to mine, manage and monetize the data they create. Strong growth is forecast across a number of industry verticals, as better monetization combined with greater data has an impact.
Data monetization (DM) is the process of generating revenue from the available data by transforming it into a meaningful coherent whole. The process of DM can be carried out in 2 ways: directly and indirectly. In direct monetization, data is sold in its raw form or in chunks, without any processing, while indirect monetization involves the processing of data to extract insights or create value-added services that can be used to support business decisions.
As mentioned earlier, monetization of data across different business verticals is still at its early stages and there are significant regulatory and reputational barriers to overcome. Organizations will need to build a deep understanding of privacy and regulatory compliance requirements for utilizing the data and need to choose the right path towards DM.
Like any other business, the global energy and utility industry is in the midst of a transformation driven by 3D’s – Decentralization, Digitalization, and Decarbonization. These 3 trends are disrupting the way in which electricity is generated, transmitted and consumed by end-users. As the energy and utility industry continues to rapidly transform, massive amounts of data are continuously generated, and the area of DM is increasingly becoming a critical topic for the industry.
Other factors include regulatory compliance, data privacy, consumer protection, and security protocols.
This study provides insights into DM across the energy and utility industry and its adoption across 3 main segments (power generation, demand-side management and infrastructure and asset management) in the industry. The study includes the following:
- In the first part, it explores the concept of DM in general and the different business models and their adoption across different business
- verticals with use case examples.
- In the second part, it offers insights into the current state of the global utilities and energy industry, the key consumers who would be interested
- in the data from this market, and the 3 main segments within the industry.
- The last part includes insights into each of the segments, and use cases related to the monetization of data across each segment.
Key Issues Addressed
Currently, the key question for utilities and energy companies is, how to turn that data into money – how to monetize the data? To monetize data, it is imperative that utilities and energy companies address the following issues:
- Understand the type of data they own and the potential value of their data
- Pick the right business model based on their in-house capabilities. Will they just sell the raw data? Will they sell the insights or create value-added services from the data? Will they partner with a third party for analytics?
