Today I'm introducing a new series that focuses on the collective power of connections in the Internet of Everything (IoE) - and some of the new companies that are creating value from those connections. The industry is ripe with emerging IoE-focused startups that deserve to be recognized for their work in building the Internet of Everything, brick by web-enabled-brick. These various startups are making an impact in education, healthcare, home automation and more. They are led by thinkers and doers who are helping to create the future. Periodically over the next several months, we'll take a look at some of these startups and learn more about how IoE is enabling their success - and how they, in turn, are enabling the Internet of Everything.

Recently, we had a chance to talk with John Funge, co-founder and CEO of BrightContext, a cloud-based data-stream processing platform that is helping to turn Big Data into actionable insights. Here's how BrightContext is pioneering the growth of the Internet of Everything:

What is BrightContext? And how does your business meet new demands in our increasingly connected world?

BrightContext is an ultra-scalable, cloud-based data-stream processing platform that makes it easy to deliver real-time stream analytics from any data source. BrightContext is used for stream analytics, live visualization, monitoring, and generating alerts from high-volume data sources such as web click and activity data, mobile activity data, social media, audience sentiment data, point-of-sale data, and transactional data.

BrightContext is taking on one of the major problems of the century -how to process a deluge of data in real time, immediately derive insights, and take action. BrightContext provides companies with a platform for monitoring and analyzing streams of Big Data in motion. It enables customers to mine that information instantly to make it actionable. This, in turn, makes it easier to use input streams to create and distribute sub-streams for others to use.

At Cisco, we refer to the Internet of Everything as connecting people, processes, data and things. How does BrightContext help make these types of connections possible?

BrightContext is an effective connector. By enabling real-time analytic processing and instantaneous push of results, BrightContext offers organizations an analytics "nervous system" that connects people and processes in real time to increase responsiveness. As a platform, BrightContext makes it easy to scale across a large organization to connect numerous data streams and create a common integration point for all that data. This often results in new insights from new combinations of data and simplifies data-management architecture.

In what ways does BrightContext enable the Internet of Everything?

From power meters to cars, devices that have never been connected to the Internet in the past will be in the future. These "things" will generate substantial new streams of data, which present big opportunities. However, they will impose an unprecedented load and complexity on analytic systems. The variety of input sources and the regular emergence of new data sources will demand new levels of agility in processing. The raw volume of data will create scaling challenges.

BrightContext provides an analytic foundation perfectly suited for this new world. As such, it is a key enabler of the Internet of Everything. By letting customers easily plug in new streaming data sources, and perform analytic processing at a very large scale, BrightContext is allowing enterprise customers to derive value from smart devices and create compelling customer experiences.

What's next for BrightContext? How will this technology evolve in the next five-to-ten years?

We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century shift in the magnitude of data analytic processing, and have barely begun to see where this is going. It is incredibly exciting to see what is going on right now with innovations in data centers, the physical world, and the ways in which devices are being data-enabled.  In five-to-ten years, developments such as Internet-connected watches, remote biometric monitoring, and smart homes will be commonplace. Sit back and think about the world as being increasingly data-centric, with constant streams of data being generated as people and things move about. The opportunity to make sense out of this and leverage all of that data is incredible. For BrightContext, this means continuing to deepen the capabilities of our platform to deliver an unprecedented combination of ease, agility, and scalability in capturing value from streaming data.

Do you know of any interesting IoE-focused startup? Let us know via comment below.