If you have not yet heard about the Internet of Things, I promise you will hear about it frequently starting in a year or two.
To define it in very simple terms, the IoT enables a world of consumers and businesses enjoy rich new services, more efficient representation of old services, and a new lifestyle.
I would not consider the IoT a technology by itself. It is more of a concept than a technology. IoT is an ecosystem of technologies and connected devices, which can be leveraged to develop endless solutions, create intelligence, and improve lifestyles of individuals and profitability of businesses.
The idea is anything but new; for years now telemetry signals have been used to monitor and control pipelines, manage the fleet, monitor your houses as you are away, track businesses’ assets and more. M2M solutions have been around for over a decade now. So, what is the fuss all about?
Over 8 billion people are now connected worldwide. Even more devices are connected. In addition, cloud storage and cloud computing are now very mature. Math is simple; now you may gather data through sensors, connect those sensors to the network, put data on a cloud, process it, and find some meaningful information, or create a solution that makes people’s life easier, or creates value for businesses.
The ecosystem has never been so ready for an endless number of innovative ideas of all scales to enrich individuals, businesses, and social services lives in many different aspects. Certain risks, and at the top of them security and privacy are still a matter of concern, yet not big enough to obstacle the (sound) implementation of the IoT solutions.
Now more than ever, the world is waiting for innovative and creative ideas to exploit the unique opportunity of this very enabling and solid infrastructure.