A common statement among historians of the 1849 gold rush was that the people who were most likely to make the most money from their endeavors were the ones who made tools for the miners and not the actual miners themselves.

As industries like transportation, manufacturing, technology, energy and healthcare pursue success with the industrial internet of things (IIoT), this colloquial wisdom stands true. IIoT equips these sectors with the information to operate their businesses more effectively.

It’s no wonder why a majority of the companies who successfully use this technology have reported increases in revenue.

To understand why this is, we must look to the challenges industries are working to overcome and how IIoT helps them cross this digital chasm in business.

Imagine if you’re part of the power grid in the center of Phoenix, Arizona, with high temperatures averaging above 100 degrees for months at a time. For your region, controlling temperature to make it livable for every day is a critical foundation of the city.

In fact, the ability to route power to a specific area experiencing a meteorological event so efficiently is the source of millions upon millions of dollars in energy and utility spend across the country. By cooling off homes in a specific region before a heat wave hits, regions are saving millions of dollars on energy and receiving money back from the government for doing so.

This story goes on across many other industries, including transportation and healthcare. The industries who have data closest to the problem or provide people enough data to make decisions faster are key.

By 2025, 75% of data in these industries is expected to move out of company environments and in our environments — an area known as the edge. Overall, this massive shift in data is a pretty big jump from the 10% of industrial data at the edge today.

IIoT is growing at a rate far greater than most fields. So why is it that industries across tech, transportation, energy, manufacturing, and healthcare are receiving such a big value with the introduction of IIoT?

In order to see the value it brings to these industries, we have to dive into what’s happening in these industries today and the opportunities they might achieve tomorrow.

For many of these industries, their systems, production mechanisms and technology were created up to 30 years ago. From aging facilities and oil rigs in Southern California pumping energy out of the ground to the modern-day automobile engine, not much has changed in the mechanics that contribute to these highly reliable systems.

With IIoT, companies are able to attach sensors or make decisions at the edge, which reduces the time it would take to get information back to the office or a car shop.

Business processes like predictive maintenance in manufacturing and transportation will help replace industrial parts before they fail. This is the case even in the energy sector and healthcare, where having continuous operations and avoiding system downtime may mean the difference between life and death.

As business leaders, managers and experts across the industries look to where they should bring about their next innovation, IIoT becomes even more crucial. It will be critical for any industry that operates in the field, even defense and aerospace, to leverage this technology.

If you’re a manager in transportation, high tech, manufacturing, factory automation, energy or healthcare, look no further for the technology disrupting industry today.

My hope is that, much like the forty-niners, these industries get the tools they deserve to bring us into a new age we’ve never seen before.