Barb Edson

Barb Edson is a general manager of the Cloud & Enterprise Marketing team at Microsoft, leading the Internet of Things (IoT) Industry team responsible for product and industry marketing targeting enterprise line of business (LOB) decision makers with Microsoft’s cloud-based business solutions for IoT.

Since joining the group in 2010, Barb has been responsible for product management, business development, marketing communications and enterprise sales across the breadth of Microsoft’s products for intelligent system solutions targeting IoT, including the recently launched Microsoft Azure Intelligent Systems Service. Under her leadership, the team launched a range of new solutions and programs for enterprises and Microsoft’s ecosystem partners to capitalize on new business opportunities provided by IoT.

Before joining Microsoft, Barb spent more than 15 years in a broad range of senior leadership positions in marketing and product strategy for companies such as PeopleSoft Inc. and Great Plains Software.

The Internet of Things’ inflection point

The convergence of six factors is creating a climate for mainstream IoT adoption.

The term “Internet of Things” isn’t new. Some say it was coined in 1999 by Kevin Ashton to describe a world where “things,” which can be devices or sensors, are both smart and connected — meaning they have the ability to collect and share data. The data coming from those devices and/or sensors then becomes a kind of currency, which can be combined and analyzed with other types of data to uncover insights that were, until recently, out of reach.

Although technology experts have quoted Moore’s Law, anticipating for decades the evolution of devices with embedded microchips, the proliferation of connected industry devices, and the rise of machine-to-machine communications, today we are seeing that the Internet of Things is at an inflection point. Read more…