IoT is the next digital transformation
As people become more inclined to let technology into their lives and homes, the market for Internet of Things (IoT) devices flourishes. In fact, according to research from Bain, the IoT market is expected to grow to $520 billion by 2021, which will be more than double what it was in 2017.
Jonathan Sullivan, CTO of NS1, believes the first wave of IoT came when people started to realize that you could put a SIM card in just about anything and have it connect back to the Internet. While not particularly useful, those applications did gain a lot of attention. “I think there was initially some hype around it when people realized you could connect your rice cooker or your toaster to the Internet and have it trigger on a schedule or link up to your calendar,” said Sullivan. However, those types of applications of IoT did not prove to be very successful in the market, he explained.
Devices running Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home, for example, don’t often get thought of as IoT, but “definitely kind of fits the bill,” explained Sullivan. There is an entire ecosystem of devices that have emerged around those types of devices, such as smart lightbulbs and home control solutions.
“All of those have kind of converged and merged so that it’s easier to control everything in the smart home,” said Sullivan. “So I think the smart home is its own category, but it’s definitely what I would consider IoT — Things that are not computers that are now enhanced by their ability to connect to the Internet and do something more than they would otherwise be able to do because they’re provided with context or connectivity to other devices or they’re linked together.”
The more insights you can gain on yourself and your surroundings, the more opportunity there is to improve life, explained Greg Baker, global VP and GM of cyber digital transformation at Optiv. For example, a smartwatch that can predict the early signs of a heart attack has the potential to save someone’s life if they are able to get to the hospital faster than they otherwise would have, he explained.
According to Sullivan, another example is Nest, which makes smart thermostats that can be controlled via the Internet or be put on set schedules. In New York City, Nest has a partnership with Con Edison, which is an electricity provider. During the summer, if there is a heat wave, there is a setting that users can opt into that raises the thermostat’s temperature setting so that the air conditioner isn’t going at max. This takes load off of the electric grid and helps prevent blackouts or brownouts, Sullivan explained. It also gives participating consumers a discount on their electric bill, so it benefits the consumer as well as the city.
“I think that those are really going to be the major types of very interesting and compelling innovations as people figure out how to connect more and more things,” said Sullivan.
“I think there’s still a bunch of terrible products that are Internet-connected and have no reason to be Internet-connected, but I also think there’s a lot of really valuable applications, particularly in industrial and agriculture,” said Sullivan. “For example, the ability to put out remote cameras or remote sensors that are solar powered and talk back to a grid. You can do a lot of really interesting analysis of data or anemometers for really granular wind measurements across farms. There’s a lot of really interesting, but I guess what we would consider more boring or mundane applications of the technology, and by connecting smart sensors back to the Internet or to a grid, you can do a lot of really really interesting things that were just not possible 10 years ago.”
Advances in edge computing will also enable more use cases for IoT deployments. “We don’t want to have to send data to the cloud or to a remote data center before you can act on it,” said Paul Miller, senior analyst at Forrester.
