The Internet of Things (IoT) has been heralded as one of the largest, and mostly untapped, frontiers in our increasingly digital age. The other frontier is the potential implications of Big Data. What exactly is this IoT? In layman’s terms it is a network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors and connectivity to enable it to achieve greater value and service by exchanging data with the manufacturer, operator and/or other connected devices (Techopedia, 2015).
The potential the IoT has to revolutionize the manner in which we not only collect data, but also generate data, is at this point still relatively unquantifiable. Cisco created an eye opening presentation on the possible main revenue drivers of the IoT’s but by their own admission the figures presented remain an estimate. The figures below represent what Cisco valued the IoT at in 2013.
(Cisco, 2013)
By 2022, Cisco predict that the IoT’s will create a whopping extra $13 trillion in the global economy. Cisco also attempts to quantify the results of the increasing pervasiveness of the IoT’s, as more and more traditionally untraceable products and services are coming online.
(Cisco, 2013)
There is however a more immediate issue to address before even beginning to dream of the riches IoT is bound to bring to early adopters and tech savvy entrepreneurs. It has to do with the manner in which companies are manufacturing internet connected products and the channel/software employed when attempting to send and receive data.
George Santayana’s infamous quote ‘Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it’ has never rung truer when looking at the IoT’s future. As it stands, the IoT is currently running the risk of creating “networks of networks”, an issue that plagued the early days of the Internet by not allowing networks to communicate with one another, therefore practically negating the advantages of the Internet . These new connected products all require their own respective app to be controlled, requiring the user to jump from one app to the next and therefore no synergies can be made to bring down costs(Evans, 2015). This results in companies not benefiting fully from Metcalfe’s Law (Madureira et Al, 2013)
In order for the IoT to become a truly viable and revolutionary tool, we must first rid ourselves of these “islands of technology” (Evans, 2015) that are preventing us from efficiently collecting the potential wealth of information just out of our reach.
References
Cisco, (2013). The Internet of Everything (IoE) Value Index. [online] Cisco, pp.4 & 9. Available at: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/innov/IoE-Value-Index_External.pdf [Accessed 20 Apr. 2015].
Evans, D. (2015). We Need To Get The Internet Of Things Right. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/19/we-need-to-get-the-internet-of-things-right/ [Accessed 20 Apr. 2015].
Madureira, A., den Hartog, F., Bouwman, H. and Baken, N. (2013). Empirical validation of Metcalfe’s law: How Internet usage patterns have changed over time. Information Economics and Policy, 25(4), pp.246-256.
Techopedia.com, (2015). What is the Internet of Things (IoT)? – Definition from Techopedia. [online] Available at: http://www.techopedia.com/definition/28247/internet-of-things-iot [Accessed 20 Apr. 2015].