Growth of IOT

There have been many years of IOT hype, so much so that many people doubted whether IOT would mature. The answer is that IOT is real.

IOT has crossed over from being more a hobby to mainstream business use. In 2014, only 13% of businesses were using IOT. Now it is 25%.

Technological Advancement

Probably the biggest reason for increased adoption is that technological advancement has made IOT much easier to implement. This opens businesses eyes to more uses of IOT. Already, more and more small and medium sized businesses are kicking off IOT projects. They can do this because off-the-shelf template solutions exist such that they can implement IOT reasonably cheaply.

Linking Existing Devices

There are over 5 Billion smartphones out there and about 2 Billion PCs. If a small fraction get linked to IOT, this will further drive IOT growth.

Applications for IOT

Last week we talked about smart cities, smart homes, connected cars and e-health. Some of these applications can broadly be referred to as Industry 4.0... the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Industry 4.0 describes "the trend towards automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies and processes which include cyber-physical systems (CPS), the internet of things (IoT), industrial internet of things (IIOT), cloud computing, cognitive computing and artificial intelligence". Such technologies maintain direct connections to the products in the field be they smart meters and more.

IOT Technology Layers

1. Connected Devices - cars equipment etc.

2. Connectivity - to cellular networks etc. 5G is going to enable this considerably

3. Business applications - Dashboards, apps

4. Enablement platforms - Enabling devices and facilitating analytics - It is in this area we see the biggest opportunity to advance your career.

5. Cloud Computing - this is a hot growth area anyway and IOT is just goinf to make it hotter.

Next week, we will complete our IOT trilogy. As always, if you want to chat about your career please email me.