The Internet of Things (IoT) - What is it?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network that is comprised of physical objects that are capable of gathering and sharing electronic information. IoT includes a wide variety of “smart” devices, from industrial machines which transmit data about production processes to sensors that track information about the human body. It is a concept that not only has the potential to impact how we live but also how we work.

Now that’s all well and good us spitting out a definition of IoT but that doesn’t help us in fully understanding what it is and where it is going to take us in the future.

The fundamentals of IoT are easy enough: connect a device over the Internet, which allows it to talk to us, any application, or even to each other. IoT is already all around us today, with over 2 billion devices being connected in 2014, to the prediction from Gartner that by 2020 there will be over 8 billion connected devices – that’s an estimated 100 billion+ connections.

A good example of IoT is the smart fridge: What if your fridge could tell you that you were out of milk, sending you a text message if its internal camera saw there was none left, or that the bottle was past its expiry date?

IoT will become “anything that can be connected, will be connected”. This will include everything from cell phones, coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable devices and just about anything you could think of.  However, IoT is much more than just smart homes and connected appliances; it can scale up to include “smart cities” where traffic signals monitor utility use or smart bins that signal when they need to be emptied. It can also include industries with connected sensors for everything from tracking parts to monitoring crops. The opportunities are endless.

How does this impact you?

What if your alarm clock wakes you up at 6am and then notifies your coffee maker to start brewing coffee for you? What if your office equipment knew when it was running low on supplies and automatically reordered more?

Interactions between entities are creating new types of smart applications and services; starting with popular connected devices that are already on the market such as smart thermostats, activity trackers, parking sensors, and many more. On a much broader scale IoT can be applied to things like transportation networks or “smart cities” which can help us reduce waste and improve efficiency for things such as energy use; this helping us understand and improve how we work and live.

So, will this affect the way you work? It completely depends on your industry. Manufacturing is the furthest ahead in terms of IoT, as it’s useful for organising tools, machines and people, as well as tracking where they are. It is a definite probability that more and more connected devices will creep into most business, the same way that computers and the web have.

Where to now?

Conversations about IoT are taking place all over the world as we seek to understand how this will impact our lives. A decade from now, or maybe even less, everything could be connected or perhaps only bits and pieces with specific benefits, one thing is for sure the Internet of Things will stretch the boundaries of today’s systems.

Are you prepared for the changes in the way we will learn, work, live, and innovate?

(Infographic image source: http://postscapes.com/what-exactly-is-the-internet-of-things-infographic)