In a few short years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has gone from a technology — or set of technologies — that were cutting edge to the situation today where connected household items, or automobiles, are common. However, growth is only really gathering speed now with San Francisco-based Cisco estimating that the "Internet of Everything cisco article" — its take on the IoT — could have has many as 50 billion connected devices by 2020.
According to Helsinki, Finland-based F-Secure, a cybersecurity company citing research from Gartner, over the next two years, the number of IoT devices entering households will climb steeply from nine devices per household currently to 500 by 2022, with IoT connectivity being bundled into products whether people want it or not.
In fact according to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for F-Secure in research on the IoT published last month, in the future, devices without IoT capabilities may be more expensive because they'll lack data that can be harvested by manufacturers. It’s this very data that makes the IoT such an interesting proposition for enterprises. That data, though, comes with risks, along with a number of other notable risks and problems associated with the IoT that enterprises will have to overcome in the coming years.
Last month, the World Economic Forum published its Global Risks Report for 2018, the 13th year it has published it. Each year, researchers with the Global Risks Report work with experts and decision-makers across the world to identify and analyze the most pressing risks that the world face. As the pace of change accelerates, and as risk interconnections deepen, this year’s report highlights the growing strain we are placing on many of the global systems we rely upon. The IoT and the problems related to cyberattacks take a prominent position in the report.
If the IoT has a problem, or is exposed to weaknesses, then the enterprises that are connected to it are equally threatened. In fact, while security is undoubtedly one of the major issues impacting the development, there are a number of other problems that stem directly from this. Here are 7 major IoT problems for enterprises connecting to the IoT.
1. Walled Off Internet
According to the World Economic Forum, the growing number of cross border attacks will start pushing national governments towards breaking up the internet in national, or even regional “walled gardens.” There are other pressures too that will push them to do this, including economic protectionism, regulatory divergence and the loss of government power relative to global online companies.
This will create major problems for the concept — and practice of a global IoT — leading to the erection of barriers to the flow of content and transactions. “Some might welcome a move towards a less hyper-globalized online world, but many would not, resistance would be likely, as would the rapid growth of illegal workarounds. The pace of technological development would slow and its trajectory would change,” the report reads.
2. Cloud attacks
Given that a large amount of the data that will run the Io T will be stored in the cloud it is likely that cloud providers will be one of the principle targets in this kind of war. While there is growing awareness of this problem, cybersecurity is still under-resourced in comparison to the potential scale of the threat. To get some kind of idea of the problem, the World Economic Forum report cites analysis that suggests that the takedown of a single cloud provider could cause $50 billion to $120 billion of economic damage — a loss somewhere between Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Katrina.
The annual economic cost of cybercrime is now estimated at north of $1 trillion, a multiple of 2017’s record-year aggregate cost of approximately $300 billion from natural disasters.
3. AI-Built Security Issues
Although the threat magnitude of ransomware has already grown 35x over the last year with ransomworms and other types of attacks, there is more to come. Rick Pither, who leads Austin, Texas-based SparkCognition’s Global Security website Sales and Embedded OEM business agrees that the problems for cloud vendors are only emerging.
He said that the next big target for ransomware is likely to be cloud service providers and other commercial services with a goal of creating revenue streams. The complex, hyperconnected networks cloud providers have ?developed can produce a single point of failure for hundreds of businesses, government entities, critical infrastructures, and healthcare organizations. If not in the next year, he said soon we will begin to see malware completely created by machines based on automated vulnerability detection and complex data analysis. Polymorphic malware is not new, but it is about to take on a new face by leveraging AI to create sophisticated new code that can learn to evade detection through machine written routines.
4. Botnet Problems
Millions of new connected consumer devices make a wide attack surface for hackers, who will continue to probe the connections between low-power, somewhat dumb devices and critical infrastructure, Shaun Cooley, VP and CTO at San Jose, California based Cisco website said. The biggest security challenge he sees is the creation of Distributed Destruction of Service (DDoS) attacks that employ swarms of poorly-protected consumer devices to attack public infrastructure through massively coordinated misuse of communication channels.
IoT botnets can direct enormous swarms of connected sensors like thermostats or sprinkler controllers to cause damaging and unpredictable spikes in infrastructure use, leading to things like power surges, destructive water hammer attacks, or reduced availability of critical infrastructure on a city or state-wide level. Solutions for these attacks do exist, from smarter control software that can tell the difference between emergency and erroneous sensor data, and standards that put bounds on what data devices are allowed to send, or how often they're allowed to send it. But the challenge of securing consumer-grade sensors and devices remains, especially as they connect, in droves, to our shared infrastructure.
5. Limited AI
AJ Abdallat is CEO of Beyond Limits website, an organization that was born from the labs of the Caltech deep space program. He points out that most of the current AI offerings on the market have substantial limits. After all, the machine learning and big data based AI that currently pervade are powerful tools for identifying associations in large quantities of data, but don’t have much on humans in terms of working out the complex phenomena of cause and effect, or to identify modifiable factors that can engender desired outcomes.
As big data and machine learning powered AI’s gains processing power, they can incorporate into their algorithms more and more information, more and more variables that may affect data associations. But with little human intervention, inevitably some variables may display strong correlation by pure chance, with little actual predictive effect.
The practical applications of AI to the IoT include, Smart IoT that connects and optimizing devices, data and the IoT; AI-Enabled Cybersecurity that offers data security encryption and enhanced situational awareness to provide document, data, and network locking using smart distributed data secured by an AI key.
6. Lack of Confidence
Amsterdam, Netherlands-based Gemalto is a cybersecurity firm that has researched the impact of security on the development of the IoT. If found that that 90 percent of consumers lack confidence in the security of Internet of Things devices. This comes as more than two-thirds of consumers and almost 80% of organizations support governments getting involved in setting IoT security. In fact its recent State of IoT Security research report, released at the end of October showed the following data.
96 percent of businesses and 90 percent of consumers believe there should be IoT security regulations
54 percent of consumers own an average of four IoT devices, but only 14 percent believe that they are knowledgeable on IoT device security
65 percent of consumers are concerned about a hacker controlling their IoT device, while 60 percent are concerned about data being leaked
"It's clear that both consumers and businesses have serious concerns around IoT security and little confidence that IoT service providers and device manufacturers will be able to protect IoT devices and more importantly the integrity of the data created, stored and transmitted by these devices," said Jason Hart, CTO of Data Protection at Gemalto said in a statement about the report. "Until there is confidence in IoT amongst businesses and consumers, it won't see mainstream adoption,” said Hart.
7. Understanding IoT
In 2018, the real issue is how to increase the ability for people to understand the changes and their implications more clearly, and to take concrete actions to take advantage of the potential upside. "The pace of change has exceeded the rate of human capability to absorb — the cup is already full," said Jeff Kavanaugh, VP and Senior Partner in High Tech & Manufacturing for Infosys website.
Internet of Things is moving into it’s adolescence as connected devices become smarter and more immersive, and expectations to convert IoT data to insights and financial value increase. Also, algorithms and data visualization templates have evolved so that new use cases can take advantage of earlier ones. The exponential adoption of IoT will drive down sensor and acquisition costs, enabling more and more viable business cases that have previously been too expensive.
In November, in a dive into what is driving enterprise interest in the Internet of Things (IoT) we found that, for the moment at least, enterprises are still wrestling with the problems the IoT poses rather than harvesting the benefits that it offers. There is nothing unusual in this given that the IoT is still a relatively new phenomena and there are considerable — and justified — security fears dominating enterprise strategies around the IoT.
But will security dominate IoT this year. And what about the Industrial IoT — will it move further away from the IoT as some have suggested or will they become closer? At the beginning of 2016 we saw that the really big tech vendors likes Microsoft were dedicating significant resources to building IoT incubators that would focus on enterprise, industry and smart cities. However, now, with security solutions getting "smarter" and enterprises actively looking to harvest consumer data harvested from the IoT, the connection between IoT and Industrial IoT is getting narrower and closer to Cisco’s idea of the Internet of Everything (IoE).
Mark Barrenechea, OpenText CEO and CTO shared that while we might not feel the immediate effects of the IoT, its potential impact is huge. Advances in IoT-connected biotechnology will take healthcare to the next level, with around-the-clock monitoring, targeted treatment, and even automated doses of medication. In smart cities, when everything is connected to the IoT grid, autonomous vehicles will eliminate car crashes caused by human error to save one million lives annually. “In the Intelligent Enterprise, the IoT will connect the global supply chain from end-to-end, enabling pervasive visibility, proactive replenishment, and predictive maintenance. With the IoT, data-driven decision making will become standard in all industries and in our daily lives,” he says. So what will happen with the IoT and the Industrial IoT, and what will enterprises be doing to optimize their investments?
1. Security
“The pace of change has exceeded the rate of human capability to absorb — the cup is already full. In 2018, the real issue is how to increase the ability for people to understand the changes and their implications more clearly, and to take concrete actions to take advantage of the potential upside,” says Erick Dean, Product Director of IoT, at San Francisco-based Splunk. As a result, he has security at the top of his list for IoT trends in 2018, but it’s not all that’s going to happen.
In 2018, security for IoT will be under heavy scrutiny. Cybersecurity risk will increase exponentially as people, processes and businesses continue to connect every part of people’s daily lives, as well as national economies. "We are looking into a future where attacks can be orchestrated not just from public networks, but from private devices such as a smartphones or a smart home,” he says. His other predictions for 2018 go as follows.
2. Major Adopters
Industrial asset management, fleet management in transportation, inventory management and government security will be the hottest areas for IoT growth in 2018. With increasing connectivity between people, data and things, the public sector will begin embracing smart cities, where sensors and automation enhance the reliability of services, especially in the areas of safety and environment. IoT sensor data enables use cases including improved air quality, optimized traffic patterns, reduced safety incidents, traffic fire incident prediction, and improved citizen identity.
3. Digital Transformation
Digital transformation initiatives — especially those centered around customer experience — will drive IoT expansion velocity. Building a technology infrastructure is relatively easy. The challenge is operationalizing data-driven decision-making that impacts the health of the business.
4. Machine Learning
Machine learning and AI represent a tremendous opportunity to IoT. Being able to predict when machinery will need to be repaired, self-optimizing production, and demand response are only a few application examples. With existing network infrastructure likely to be used for "connected things" the investment spend on analytics will be higher as companies find new ways to make sense of the vast amounts of smart device-generated data.
5. IoT Growing Up
Jeff Kavanaugh, VP and Senior Partner in India-based Infosys, told us that while problems persist, the IoT is starting to mature and that enterprises will start trying to monetize the data that is harvested from the IoT. Those that are using the IoT will also start to realize that IoT is difficult "to do."
According to Kavanaugh, connected devices will become smarter and more immersive, and expectations will increase to convert IoT data to insights and financial value. Algorithms and data visualization templates have now evolved so that new use cases can take advantage of earlier ones. The exponential adoption of IoT will drive down sensor and acquisition costs, enabling more and more viable business cases that have previously been too expensive.
6. Executive Expectations
He added that just as enterprise resource planning maturity raised expectations about foundational data consistency, robotic process automation will raise executive expectations about performance levels for repetitive processes. Companies will get better at scaling automation, moving from interesting proofs of concept to systemic enterprise processes that generate efficiency at scale.
Fast-moving technologies will influence colleges and universities to adopt greater computer programming and data analysis courses. However, universities must complement these with a focus on critical thinking and empathetic skills to meet the growing need of enduring skills in the digital world.
7. Revenue Model Challenges
Los Angeles-based Inspire is a company that simplifies consumer adoption of clean energy and smart home technologies. Patrick Maloney, CEO and of the company points out that despite the euphoria around the IoT, there are no guarantees that companies that make a business out of it are going to make money. There has been no shortage of innovation and new product offerings for the smart home this past year, driven largely by advancements in AI, automation, and voice-enabled technology. This is unlikely to change any time soon. However, he said, going to market is hard, retail shelves are crowded, and products aren’t highly differentiated making it difficult to maintain long-term growth. The revenue models for most smart home products and devices are transactional, one-time purchases.
Unless you are Amazon or Google, creating predictable and capital-efficient revenue streams is not likely. Companies that will succeed in the smart home space are those that can make the transition to a recurring revenue business model, and also create more value and efficiency for the consumer. “Smart homes shouldn’t just be smart for the sake of being smart, but instead improve consumers’ everyday lives. By focusing on smart home services, not just the hardware, we’ll see companies achieve both,” he says.
8. Blockchain
Mike Bell, EVP IoT & Devices at London, UK-based Canonical points to the rise of blockchain in IoT as one of the major emerging trends for 2017 and says that this and machine learning will become established elements of the IoT landscape over the course of the next 12 months. “Two of the most interesting IoT developments to emerge in 2017, with the most potential for innovation, were blockchain and machine learning. They likely won't go straight to market in the new year — we'll likely see more proofs of concept (PoC) instead — but, we have seen some fascinating PoCs already,” he said.
Machine learning has also yielded some interesting case studies to date. While it won't move entirely to edge there are some compelling examples so far, like retail shop security cameras with streaming video, where machine learning can be utilized to identify patterns of potential theft, perform facial without digging into customers' personal data, to head off security and privacy concerns.
9. Analytics Literacy
Alluvium is a New York City start-up that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to turn massive streams of complex industrial data into simple insights enabling factories to reach operational stability. Its founder and CEO, Dean Conway, says that on the industrial IoT, organizations will move from making investments in digital infrastructure to making investments in digital literacy.
Conway predicts that the curve of investment in the industrial IoT will begin to bend toward analytics capabilities. This will likely manifest as a blend of hiring for new roles, such as data scientists and data engineers; a move to multi-cloud to investigate capabilities across incumbent cloud providers, such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google; and, experimentation in investment with cutting edge analytics tools.
10. Mergers And Acquisitions
There will also be increased merger and acquisition activity for advanced IoT capabilities among large OEMs. This dovetails with the large appetite from industrial OEMs to bring advanced digital and analytics capabilities in-house as a means of accelerating their competitive advantage. Because software engineering and data science are not core competencies of OEMs, it will continue to be more efficient for these organizations to bring these capabilities into their stacks. As digital transparency continues to increase at every level of production the competition among OEMs at the software and services layer will emerge as the deciding differentiator in 2018.
11. Convergence And Employment
Joseph Bradley agrees that blockchain and deeper mining of data will be major trends in 2018, but also believes that the IoT will start driving changes in the jobs market.
As is Global Vice President for Digital and IoT Advanced Services at San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco he points out that the integration of social, business and political will force companies to enter what was previously known as a “no fly zone.” 3As competition for technology talent intensifies, silence won’t be an option for businesses. Millennials and generation Z — both of which will dominate the U.S. workforce by 2020 — will reshape the employment landscape due to their convictions and the expectation that employers demonstrate similar convictions,” he says.
To maintain a workforce and drive success, companies must to listen to their employee base and apply corporate principles to social and political activities. In 2018 and beyond, “taking a stand” will become the norm as companies hire upcoming generations who thrive on a values-driven corporate culture.
12. Next Generation Manufacturing
Chris Steck also works for Cisco as Head of Standardization, IoT & Industries. He says the IoT boom will facilitate the emergence of next generation manufacturing. Manufacturing is buzzing about Industry 4.0, according to Steck, the term for a collection of new capabilities for smart factories, that is driving what is literally the next industrial revolution. “IoT technologies are connecting new devices, sensors, machines, and other assets together, while Lean Six Sigma and continuous improvement methodologies are harvesting value from new IoT data. Early adopters are already seeing big reductions in equipment downtime (from 15 to 95%), process waste and energy consumption in factories.
There are more than 50 billion connected devices in circulation today, generating an excess of eight zetabytes of data between them. And that number is only likely to expand. However, only one percent of Internet of Things (IoT) data is currently analyzed and utilized. But all this is changing. Soon, IoT deployments will include a holistic mobile and cloud platform, consisting of planning and analysis with digital twins, operational autonomy and augmented human and machine interactions using cognitive AI services, predictive analytics, and supporting applications. This may be for the medium term but the early stages of this change will be seen over the course of 2018.
The Internet of Things will connect existing systems and then augment those by connecting more things, thanks to wireless sensor networks and other technologies. Things on the 'edge' form mesh networks and can make their own automated decisions. But where and how, in the scale of hype to reality, can the Internet of Things profit suppliers and users today? What are the pragmatic steps needed to enable the Internet of Things and widespread deployment of wireless sensor networks that are feasible and based on an ROI and not the hope someone else will pay for this? Who is buying IoT in the short term?
A look into some of the main IoT trends for 2017, based on research, observations and different sources.
In March 2017, market research firm Ovum released a list of essential IoT trends for 2017, in collaboration with Internet of Things World. That seemed like a good opportunity to cover some major key IoT trends and predictions too.
We tackle the 5 essential Internet of Things (IoT) trends worth watching in the overall Internet of Things market according to the the organizers of Internet of Things World 2017 and Ovum, add some context and comments and, while we were at it, add over a dozen IoT trends.
The growth of scalable IoT projects and rise of cross-industry IoT deployments
First things first: the 5 IoT trends as reported by the two mentioned parties. Ovum stresses that 2016 was an important year for the Internet of Things but that 2017 is even more important and disruptive, both for the IoT technology players and the many industries where IoT projects are being deployed.
In fact, here is already one IoT trend we can add: based on data regarding the increasing maturity, scalability and deployment of effective IoT projects, beyond the proof of concept stage, this move towards scalable IoT projects is an IoT trend for 2017 for sure. That was our IoT trend number 1.
M&A activity in the IoT market will increase as providers continue to differentiate their offerings
Today, the majority of ‘significant and disruptive’ IoT trends as Ovum puts it are still mainly happening in industrial settings such as manufacturing (Industry 4.0), transportation and utilities, certainly from an IoT spending perspective. Other IoT projects relate to automotive, retail, consumer IoT, ad hoc IoT-enabled smart city projects and so forth. Moreover, cross-industry IoT use cases and deployments are on the rise and will rise even more in 2017 which is IoT trend number 2. Update: according to June 2017 data by IDC on IoT investments, cross-industry IoT cases will reach $86 billion by the end of 2017. That is more than the second largest industry from an IoT investment perspective (transportation, good for $85 billion).
Taking all this into account and without further ado a look at those five key IoT trends for 2017, as reported by Ovum and Internet of Things World 2017.
IoT connectivity: LPWA technologies become mainstream
The first key IoT trend for 2017, according to Ovum (that’s IoT trend number 3 in our list so far) is the fact that LPWA(N) goes mainstream and is poised to support far more Internet of Things use cases.
The announcement doesn’t mention Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) technologies in the unlicensed spectrum such as LoRa and Sigfox, to name just two. Ovum and Internet of Things World 2017 rather point out Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) and LTE-M (Long Term Evolution for Machines). In other words: Ovum emphasizes the cellular LPWA evolutions or the two standards which have been standardized within the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project).
Among the main IoT use cases for LPWA which Ovum mentions: smart city applications, smart metering and the connected home.
Non-cellular LPWAN technologies such as LoRa and Sigfox are also used in many smart city projects and virtually all applications where a low-cost, low-bandwidth and long battery life technology is needed, precisely what LPWA, whether it’s cellular or not, is all about.
IoT connectivity: non-cellular LPWAN will prove to be underestimated
Although unlicensed LPWAN technologies today account for a relatively small portion of all IoT cases and investments, we’re pretty sure that, certainly in the increasing number of countries where nationwide coverage exists and in the many large cities and regions where they are planned, they will more than add to the fact that LPWA goes – more – mainstream, with an increasing number of IoT use cases and deployments as a result.
And that brings us to ‘our’ IoT trend number 4. If we look at the many projects where unlicensed spectrum LPWAN is being deployed (e.g. a LoRaWAN testbed in London), the advent of decent new actors in the field (e.g. TrackNet, which raised $7 million), the large companies which are investing in LPWAN players and ecosystems (take a look at the list of the investors in the latest Sigfox investment round) and the technological evolutions whereby multiple connectivity solutions get supported, among other reasons, we believe that the non-cellular LPWA market is underestimated and its growth is yet another IoT trend for 2017 as investments outside the Industrial Internet of Things will grow and companies will roll out low-risk pilots.
If you want an example of the – according to us, underestimated – role of non-cellular LPWA, take a look at what the Airport of Schiphol in The Netherlands is doing.
What is true though is that the non-cellular market evolved first and mainly outside of the US, according to us a reason why it’s underestimated (for now).
IoT security becomes a top IoT priority
This seems like an obvious prediction or, rather IoT trend (number 5), not just given the many security incidents in 2016. If IoT security would not become a core focus for enterprises and providers as Ovum and Internet of Things World put it, we would have a serious issue.
As mentioned previously, and as Ovum also states, security needs to be and will be part of every SERIOUS IoT deployment discussion. This is not just the case for consumer-oriented IoT but also for Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things. As we tackled previously, security concerns remain a key showstopper in IIoT, where attacks are on the rise, as well.
64% of security professionals recognize the need to take precautions against IIoT attacks as they increase
Moreover, just security isn’t enough. While security concerns the protection of data and the related technologies, we also need to look at the protection of personal data, what privacy is all about. Blockchain (see below) is poised to play an increasing role here.
IoT regulation becomes a key priority
One of the reasons to do so is the regulatory context. Think about the GDPR and the ePrivacy Regulation, for instance.
In fact, Ovum states that IoT security is coming onto the radar for regulators, which for us is yet another IoT trend as such (that’s number 6 if we counted well). As we mentioned and as we suppose Ovum means, this is also the case outside the scope of EU regulations.
Time for IoT trend number 7. According to the announcement of Ovum, Big Data and machine learning will unlock new IoT opportunities.
With this key IoT trend, Ovum in fact summarizes several evolutions. One is the clear shift of the delivery of IoT data analytics to the point of data capture/aggregation or the edge. Indeed: the fog or fog computing. Once more, we believe that this too is an IoT trend for 2017 as such: the fast rise of fog computing (IoT trend number 8).
A second evolution in the context of Big Data, analytics and machine learning is the rise of new tools for streaming data analytics, Ovum states (IoT trend number 9). Both evolutions fit in a context of the enablement of leveraging IoT data to feed all sorts of artificial intelligenceapplications, including the feeding of machine-leaning engines.
The growth of as-a-service business models
IoT trend number 10 (five in the list of Ovum and Internet of Things World 2017): the disruptive impact of the IoT will drive the growth of new as-a-service business models.
Most definitely yes. In fact, if you look at a large majority of Industrial Internet of Things cases (look at the case of ABB Robotics, for example, there are plenty more) one of the key digital transformation effects on a business model level is the move towards information-based business models and as-a-service models, making quite some large players develop entirely new services and shifting business models.
We definitely also agree that these ‘innovative business models will continue to evolve in many IoT verticals’ as Ovum predicts, including as-a-service and event-based charging models.
The adoption of as-a-service IoT solutions
We’re adding IoT trend 11 for 2017 here: the growth of as-a-service-models IN the Internet of Things solutions and deployment ‘stack’.
Just as the Internet of Things continues to drive evolutions towards as-a-service model, companies with Internet of Things projects will increasingly use platforms and solutions to enable them in an as-a-service approach. Just one example: Internet of Things security as a service is poised to grow fast.
By 2021, overall market revenues for IoT managed security services are poised to surpass $11 Billion
IoT service providers will increasingly focus on a diversification regarding technologies
The reason: customer needs become more diverse. This is definitely another IoT trend (number 12).
As we see more complex and scalable IoT deployments this is an inevitable evolution. It happens on all levels. Although strictly not a service provider, Cisco for instance already supports several technologies for client projects. The same happens with service providers on other levels. According to Ovum, service providers will also focus more on developer outreach.
The growth and increasing diversity of an IoT channel
We’ve covered all the Ovum trends so let’s look at some more.
IoT trend number 13: an IoT channel will continue to emerge and grow as IT service firms, vendors and distributors seek to diversify revenues and offerings, adding IoT to their portfolios in the scope of their existing strengths in particular areas (e.g. verticals, security, etc.).
This will also happen outside or IT and telecom and among businesses that are not typically part of the IT channel. Examples include marketing firms, offering IoT solutions for which they’ll also need IoT technologies and facility management and smart building companies, convincing their existing channel partners to include IoT solutions in their offerings for existing and new end customers.
Ten more IoT trends and predictions for 2017
We have 13 IoT trends but let’s summarize some more and of course there are even more than those we mention next…
Although 5G is not ready for prime-time, we’ll see industry consortium efforts grow to push the 5G agenda and market. This will happen within the Fog Consortium Group’s efforts and in new industry initiatives.
The attention for blockchain and IoT convergence will grow, yet blockchain flaws will need to be fixed as public key is a no-brainer for quantum computers.
As growth, securtity, analytics and connectivity will require more AI and IBM is boosting its Watson IoT spend and initiatives the battle for AI IoT dominance will increase, mainly for specific verticals.
M&A activity in the IoT market will increase as providers continue to differentiate their offerings.
Consumer IoT adoption will grow but regulatory uncertainties in specific regions will surface new security and privacy challenges, among others regarding voice assistants.
Healthcare payers will step up their efforts to deploy new ways to connect IoT data with healthcare plans.
Disappointment regarding early smart city IoT deployments will grow while new smart city IoT deployments will increasingly fit in the holistic smart city picture and will be driven by real challenges.
Retailers will invest less in testing a variety of IoT use cases and focus more on the supply chain and use cases that offer immediate benefits.
The adoption of wearables will grow faster than expected outside of the consumer wearables context and in verticals such as healthcare and manufacturing.
IT and OT integration in the Industrial Internet is on the rise but hindred by security concerns, slowing down integration.
The number of connected devices will grow and there will be more security breaches.
Address your IoT software testing needs – improve quality, security, safety, and compliance across the development lifecycle.
"Electricity changed nearly everything about the way we live and work—and that scale of transformation is possible with the Internet of Things."
— Ian Goldin, Director of Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford
To start off, IoT is a modern technological phenomenon where compatible devices can communicate with each other using the Internet and coordinate their actions by collection and exchanging data amongst themselves. A more basic definition describes IoT as the concept of connecting almost every device with an on and off switch to the Internet, which pretty much includes everything from cell phones, coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable devices, etc. According to Gartner, by the year 2020, there will be more than 26 billion operational IoT devices worldwide.
Human civilization has peaked in terms of inter-personal communication, but we are still far behind in terms of person-to-machine and machine-to-machine communications. Although the concept of person-to-machine communication and machine-to-machine communications has been around for quite some time, it is still in its nascent stages. With that being said, the recent technological developments in machine learning and AI (Artificial Intelligence), has finally enabled us to reach the precipice of applied technology where the norm for person-to-machine and machine-to-machine communication transcends conventional IVR prompts.
The potential scope of IoT and its applications is a topic for another time. In this post, we shall discuss a few distinct pointers that highlight how the recent developments of IoT technology stand to influence IT in general, for Unified Communication technologies.
1. Process Automation
Business process automation involving Unified Communication and its associated IT requirements depends upon two distinct sets of needs. Obviously, the primary need is to develop and deploy optimized operational strategies that prove to be beneficial across all business aspects. These “optimized operational strategies” should be primarily focused on providing operational support to each and every business stakeholder, especially the employees/end-users. It should also help management executives to monitor and maintain the established strategic objectives of the business. Although achieving this level of operational harmony is no easy task.
On the other hand, IT also needs to cater to its very own needs and requirements, rapidly adapting to the ever-changing business requirements and demands. The size, scope, and priority of these needs vary from business to business. In scenarios where UC is also involved, new IT demands and requirements crop up, which are crucial to support the structure for real-time communication prospects of a distributed business.
This is where good old “human intelligence” and strategic planning comes in. Although, due to the extensive scale of connectivity and the complex networking involved with IoT and its application, there are a lot of touchpoints that need to be considered and monitored. For IT personnel, this is no easy task, but on the other hand, it also makes their jobs a whole lot easier. This is because of the fact that it brings along several advantageous opportunities to automate the numerous functions and processes involved in industrial UC communication models.
The huge number of devices with IoT sensors and intelligent routing enables industries to create a robust connected network, which helps such businesses and industries make the best and the most strategically crucial decisions based on real-time data from individual endpoints and engagement channels. Based on this information, the IoT part of unified communication models can then be additionally configured to execute the resulting strategic operational decisions. This is where the true process automation aspect of unified communication lies.
Another application of IoT-backed UC and process automation involves using its easy-to-use and real-time connectivity aspect to help employees make the change towards a UC communication model much easier. Such employees can be brought onboard a UC communication model through personalized self-guided training material and walkthroughs. This way, IT personnel do not have to spend time individually on each employee, further improving the adoption timeline as well.
2. Improved IT Resource and Network Management
IT resource and network management is a different industrial discipline on its own, but with the recent developments of technology, IT in general is shrinking while industrial IT needs are becoming more and more complex. The implementation of IoT-enabled Unified Communication models also creates a greater IT network performance requirements, which can only be handled by IT departments enables with enhanced capabilities.
So how does the greater IT network performance requirements help improve IT resource and network management? Well, as more and more IoT-enabled smart devices are integrated into an industry’s operational network, they create new real-time data sources. The new IoT-enabled data sources will greatly help IT departments to automate more sub-processes like bandwidth allocation, while also enabling them to identify network discrepancies and implement mitigation strategies on a much quicker timeline.
With IoT-based UC models, IT departments enjoy a greater scale and scope of troubleshooting. Other aspects of IT operations which include tasks like resource upgrades, patches, network access management, and such can be done in real-time without any implementational delay. These are but a few examples of how IoT-enabled Unified Communication models help make necessary IT tasks more simpler, effective, and agile. The graph above, sourced from Yokogawa, further helps to describe the various touchpoints influenced by IoT and unified communications.
3. New Professional Roles for IT
We can all agree on the fact that with more IoT-enabled devices and dynamic UC models, IT departments worldwide can work with a leadership capacity and help businesses leverage this recent technology for a greater competitive edge. However, this scenario is still far away from being actually implemented as there are concerns regarding its success. Still, this approach may prove to be disadvantageous if your competitors actually start to implement and transform their operations to gain a significant competitive advantage with strategic IoT-enabled UC communication models.
In a way, IoT and its UC applications tend to work towards the Big Data trend, which requires IT resources and personnel with enhanced capabilities. Without such resources and personnel, industries and businesses might become overwhelmed with all the raw data involved in IoT-enabled systems. All this raw data involved creates a need for IT professionals with analytics expertise to make sense of the immense amount of data and to manage it properly.
With more and more industries and businesses going forward with metrics-based-decision making, new and more diversified roles for IT will soon become a necessity rather than just a luxury for industries and businesses of all sorts and sizes. The image above, sourced from Accenture Technology, illustrates a few opportunities IT professionals can diversify into with the help of IoT-enabled UC models.
At first glance, IoT and UC may seem to be an odd technological pairing. But implementing these two modern and distinct technologies to work in tandem can offer businesses and industries with an unprecedented level of business intelligence and collaboration. Both these technologies when working in sync and can not only influence conventional IT practices and tasks but can also help to simplify processes at the data collection stage as well as the decision execution stage. Although this technological amalgamation requires IT with enhanced capabilities and resources, it can help businesses attain the next level of business synergy and automation.
