Drones in the enterprise: The future of data collection

           Living in this day in age with our ever-changing world of technology, it is difficult to keep up with all that is happening. For example, in this article, written by Tam Harbert, it talks about the many benefits that drones have and how they are expediting the workday in jobs such as inspecting bridges, monitoring pipelines, or surveying crops.¹ However, with drones doing much of the work the IT department needs to decide from the mass amount of data collected what information needs to be passed on to users.

            One of the main points the article touches on is how this changes most business operations. For instance, with the crops, the employees that were used to inspect the crops are no longer necessary instead the farm needs to hire licensed drone pilots and second professionals to monitor the flights in order to stay within the regulations set forth by the FAA.² The use of these drones change operations for the better as well in productivity; using drones speeds up the process of assessing crops and locating damages. Second, since the method of collecting the data is different, the way of recording data will also be different. IT departments need to figure out how to program the drones to work with their pre-existing operations or be prepared to change everything.  A final point of the article explains is the complexity and vastness of data that drones can collect. This data comes in like a tidal wave and it is up to the IT database to process all of it deciding which data is relevant and needs to be stored versus the irrelevant data that should not be saved and once gone can never be processed.

            Some things that this article has overlooked are the problems with drones. The top priority being security, with drones flying around especially ones most likely with cameras used to collect their data, this becomes a privacy issue. Another issue is that drones cannot touch the bridge or crop it is inspecting, for instance, everything might look in order from the outside but internally the structure is weak or the crop is rotting. The biggest problem unmentioned in this article is the probability of hacking. Even though companies face this potential everyday, having drones heightens the possibility. There was a story way back in 2012 of a professor in Texas who learned how to intercept drones in flight, alter the flight path, and land it.³ If one man could figure this out four years ago, with new information and resources available imagine what could happen today.

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1.  http://www.computerworld.com/article/2909747/drones-in-the-enterprise-the-future-of-data-collection.html

2.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-22/adm-to-use-drones-to-expedite-crop-insurance-claims

3.  http://www.npr.org/2012/07/08/156459939/hacking-drones-and-the-dangers-it-presents