"The Ex-Internet Continues to Grow at an Exponential Pace"

March 8, 2006

Bob Marshall has built a great enterprise around the idea of sensors connected to the Internet.

In Marshall's case, those sensors number nearly 8,000 weather data collection sensors located throughout the USA. The sensors are primarily located at schools, feeding large-scale computer systems that turn the raw data into highly detailed and localized weather information.

Growth of the Ex-Internet

Inspired by a Forrester Research study which correctly predicted enormous growth in the: “ex-Internet”, meaning sensors and other objects beyond the servers and computers we typically think of as the Internet, Bob Marshall founded AWS Convergence Technologies in 1992. Today AWS is the owner and operator of WeatherBug software. AWS has 200 employees.

One billion people around the world use the Internet today; however the rate of new users signing on to the Internet is slowing. But the number of sensors connected to the Internet continues to grow at an exponential pace.

Marshall believes that you can improve the quality of people's lives through those sensors, and in so doing you have a business and revenue opportunity. As he puts it: "Weather is just a big deal". 

Marshall observes that weather:

• Is the #1 topic of conversation.
  
• Is the #1 reason people watch the TV news, with $1 billion in associated advertising.
  
• Impacts $3 trillion of the the U.S. economy.
  
• Impacts people's familes and national security.
  
  

National Weather Service and AWS

The National Weather Service (NWS) network has 1,500 weather stations, mostly at the airports. By contrast, Marshall has created his own proprietary network of 8,000 weather stations, almost 700 in the Washington / Baltimore area alone, mostly located at schools. These are professional grade systems, making 27 different measurements in real-time. All of these weather stations of Marshall's are connected to the Internet, feeding data to his servers at the rate of 3 billion connections / day, or 20,000 connections / second. The data is streamed back to desktop and mobile applications. The other significant difference between AWS and the NWS is freshness of weather data; AWS' weather sensors are all real-time; NWS data is published only hourly. 

Marshall went into some detail about the business opportunities and challenges facing AWS, and noted that The Weather Channel is their biggest competitor. Many futuristic applications involving bringing personalized data to your cell phone and car are in the works.