Tom Siebel has a history of placing winning bets. He was an early employee at Oracle, which is still the most widely used enterprise database in the world. He later founded Siebel Systems, a business software company that inspired followers such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. He sold that company to Oracle in 2006 for $5.8 billion.
His latest bet is that the much-hyped Internet of Things is finally going to take off. But he’s not interested in the plethora of “smart” gadgets aimed at consumers. Siebel wants to connect manufacturing equipment, medical devices, and all the other commercial equipment used by the world’s largest companies. Maybe the way the Internet of Things really grows isn’t so much by letting you control your thermostat with your smartphone; it’s by connecting the physical infrastructure of businesses to help them turn a profit.
This week, Siebel’s latest company, C3 Energy, changed its name to C3.ai and branched out from its focus on energy utilities to commercial enterprises such as manufacturing, mining, transportation and health care.
Read full article at: http://www.wired.com/2016/02/tech-tycoon-bets-business-internet-things-future/
