Dissection of the Internet of Things (IoT) Industry

Dissection of the Internet of Things (IoT)
Industry
In the past few years, IoT has become one of the most disruptive technologies of the
21 st century. None of us ever thought that the application area of IoT can be so huge.
The technology can connect numerous objects including cars, kitchen appliances,
baby motoring, and the list endlessly goes on. These objects can be connected by
embedding sensors in the devices.
The sensors communicate with the connected devices through the internet to
monitor or exchange information. It creates a harmonious communication between
people and things.
With the help of IoT technology, the physical things can share or collect information
by cloud, low-cost computing, mobile technologies, analytics, or big data with the
minimum involvement of humans.
All the objects, which are connected to internet for transmitting the data from the
physical world to the digital world are considered as ‘smart objects’.
The main purpose of IoT is to use smart objects to enhance the lives of people and
digitalise the world. In IoT technology, the physical world and the digital world meet
to collaborate and build a better future ahead.

Evolution of IoT
Technically, IoT technology was launched in the year 1999 but it was not used widely
in that period. The practitioners and researchers from academia and industry were
brought together in March 2008 in the first IoT conference for sharing the knowledge.
In that year, IoT was considered as one of the six disruptive civil technologies by the
US National Intelligence Council.
The Cisco Business Solutions Group (CIBSG) stated in its white paper in 2011 that it
can be said that IoT was truly born between 2008 and 2009 as in this period, the
number of people using the internet were less than the number of things connected
with it. The ratio of things to people calculated by CIBSG increased from
approximately 0.8 in 2003 to 1.84 in 2010.
Thereafter, Cisco released a number of educational materials on IoT. It also started
taking initiatives for marketing and attracting clients to adopt the technology. Later
on, Ericsson and IBM joined this race with Cisco.
Gartner included IoT in the Hype cycle for emerging technologies, which were on the
rise in 2011. A report released by IDC in 2013 forecasted the IoT market to grow at a
CAGR of 7.9% and reach $ 8.9 trillion by 2020.

Infrastructure Required for IoT
Hardware: The hardware requirement consists of controllers or sensors
to collect data from the devices. These sensors are embedded in the
objects to perform the required task.
Entire IoT system needs Software: The software required in the
technology are hosted on the cloud. This software is responsible for
collecting the data from the sensors and controllers. It also makes a
decision based on the data collected by sensors.
Complete IoT system needs Connectivity: In IoT, the connection can
be built between hardware and the cloud through routers or gateways.
This step can be an intermediate step after connecting hardware in
some systems. It creates a way to transfer the data to the cloud or to
receive instructions from the cloud.
Communication Network: A communication network develops a user
interface. This is required by the user to work with the system. A
real-time monitoring web-based app should be created with a dashboard
to enable the user to take actions. These actions should be taken
according to the data analysed by the IoT system.
Technologies Supporting IoT
The rapid development of the IoT industry was possible because of the progress in
Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Cloud Computing.
AI is accumulating the bulk of data processed by the smart objects. It evaluates the
data and makes it usable. Previously, the organisations were unaware about saving
and processing this data. This is the reason that AI is predicted to be the leading
factor to set up the growth of IoT technology.
The bulk of data can be stored economically on cloud. Cloud computing is managing
the flow of this data by implementing its various models and platforms. It is
enhancing the efficiency of data by analysing it accurately.

As the IoT devices are increasing every day, it is making the AI models complicated
and heavier with a large volume of data. Big Data technology make these models
easier to be managed and makes sense of the data generated in the system.
Future of IoT
Statista predicted that by 2025, the number of installed connected devices globally
would be 75.4 billion.
The figure shows that the IoT technology is still expected to reach its highest
potential. It is expected to be more innovative in various domains. The trends, which
can change the IoT industry drastically are 5G integration, multi-level privacy and
security, single interface, and shift from products to services ecosystem.
The potential of IoT is to leverage a bulk of actionable data that would automate
diverse processes in all the industries.