The Internet of Things is already well and truly here with heady expectations abound as to what we can expect in the coming decade. It being a relatively new concept albeit being built on tried and trusted foundations, that of the world of embedded.
There is still plenty to learn about what it is, how much it is worth, and how drastically it will change the world in which we live in today and for the next decade at least. It’s a general term used to describe the growing network of objects that can communicate with each other and complete tasks without any human involvement having to take place.
IoT, which is intricately linked to the concept of M2M (machine to machine) is gradually coming to market and in the coming decade or so, tens billions of devices around the home, cars and even the trees on our streets will communicate with each other.
It is made up of three major components that are the things themselves, the networks connecting them together, and the analytics that make use of the data flowing from one device to another.
Insights drawn from the data collected, fuel the behemoth that is big data, which is something that brings a whole new facet to the IoT.
Contrary to what some might think, the Internet of Things is actually a different concept to the Internet of Everything, a term loosely associated with Cisco and Qualcomm, although there are some similarities.
The IoT is a term used to describe the physical-first objects around the world today that are then connected together before being exposed to digital applications. The IoE, meanwhile, is focused more on the data sets presented at the end of this and the way that they are merged together and analysed in order to present insights.
ABI Research summed it up well by explaining that the IoE has three subsystems: IoT, the Internet of Humans (human input to machines in any form) and the Internet of Digital (generating data and communicating it on for further use). The IoE might be considered the end goal, but it wouldn’t be possible without the IoT kicking things off.
The reason that so much enthusiasm is surrounding the Internet of Things is the sheer size of it. In November 2014 Gartner pointed out that there will already be 4.9 billion connected “things” in use by the end of 2015, which is already a 30% increase on 2014.