Johan Krebbers, Shell: On why poor quality data won’t cut it in delaying your IoT initiatives

The links between the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) are irresistible. As a Wired article put it, IoT ‘will produce a treasure trove of big data’ and that ‘the only way to keep up with [it] and gain the hidden insight it holds is with machine learning.’ For Johan Kerber’s, IT CTO at Shell, it’s non-negotiable. “IoT on its own is useless,” he explains. “It only becomes useful when we pick up the data, and apply machine learning to it, digitize it, and help the decision maker.” Founded in 1907 Shell, like many of the more innovative companies who have been in business for more than a century – think General Electric as another example – have been doing IoT for many years. It wasn’t called the IoT back then, of course; among Shell’s earliest innovations was providing underwater robots back in the 1970s.