How IoT Has Changed in the Past Year

To gather insights on the evolution of IoT to this point in 2017, we spoke to 19 executives who are familiar with the current state of the Internet of Things.

We asked them, "How has IoT changed in the past year?" Here's what they told us:

• The conversations are getting real. There’s scale-based architecture. Need to figure out how to move from small scale to multiple deployments in large scale. Some processing will need to be done closer to the devices – the key is determining what percent of the processing needs to be done closer to the devices. The technology must get closer to the devices. Ultimately you need an edge/core type architecture for the greatest benefit.
• More data, more sources, more applications. Organizations are beginning to realize the value data brings customers, seeing how tools perform, workout data, shopping data.
• Devices have become smaller and easier to configure. The user experience is better and the devices are easier to use.
• Over the past 24 months, AWS has made a concerted effort to help customers with IoT while the Big Four consulting firms have all built out their IoT consultancies. More professional service equals more dollars. As such, consultant will recommend you invest in their services and the infrastructure rather than the cloud. AWS has released a lot of capital in analytics and machine learning. Beyond machine learning, analytics presents useful knowledge for companies. More and more business consumers understand the value of data and the value of consumer services rather than building infrastructures.
• More things to connect. More IoT. More opportunities to triangulate data. More ideas to improve business performance.
• The honeymoon period is over. We have the emergence of a smarter edge – cloud processing at scale. Edge analytics and processing. The rise of a smarter more connected edge.
• Security – companies are thinking about where security fits and how IoT can be used to identify security attacks.
• Companies are seeing the value of big data. We’re past the “buzz” stage.
• We’ve moved beyond smoke to real fire by solving business problems with industrial IoT, cars, medical devices. We’ve moved from talk to ROI. We work with GE medical devices for in-field software delivery enabling them to better manage their business while addressing security issues.
• It has become more mainstream but it still has a long way to go. Customers are more engaged with IoT devices but they may not look at it that way since it’s becoming just the way life is with Google Home and Alexa.
• Heightened appreciation of data flows have moved IoT from being a separate initiative to part of business decision making to improve efficiency and yield factors. Integrated into operational application, not a separate entity. Converged data platforms are being used to drive value for different lines of business by operationalizing real-time data.
• More progression. Piloting, demos. Now you can go and deploy figuring out what belongs at the edge versus in the cloud. What’s the cost from the computing perspective using device clouds like Azure and AWS?
• 1) Adoption of the Google Home Kit. Phillips getting into light bulbs that talk to each other. Setting up smart homes has gotten easier. A lot of people doing this don’t even know it’s IoT. 2) The way protocols have evolved with HTTP, XMPP, and web sockets enable developers to make IoT devices. 3) If This Then That enables you to connect Alexa to Facebook or your lightbulbs. The way the end user will understand IoT is through these apps.
• More opportunities and applications.
• Today’s smart home is little more than a connected home with lots of smart devices. Over the last few years, most device developers and manufacturers were learning how to successfully webconnect their devices, i.e., making their devices and appliances accessible to smart phones and tablets over a web interface. The next step of the evolution involves making the devices communicate with each other, giving them intelligence, and making the entire system easy to use. Security applications should be able to talk to lighting, energy management and health applications. Data needs to be shared, not just between the sensor devices, but also between the various controllers and actuators. In addition, sensing edge nodes need to talk to the various applications. For example, a light motion detector should be able to provide data on movement in the home to the security system, ensuring that all “improper” motion is detected and reported. The same motion detector can adjust climate controls and turn lights on and off as a person moves through the home, keeping the home comfortable and conserving energy. The smart home is evolving into a consolidated service, in contrast to today’s siloed connected devices with separate controls and apps. The industry will come together and offer unified smart services, with a single, easy-to-use dashboard that covers all the services—security, health, ecommerce, climate control and energy management.
• IoT is being taken more seriously than a year ago – especially in insurance, warranty, travel, and transport. Better defined use cases. More research and development dollars are being invested.
• The ecosystem has evolved to work together in a more efficient manner. The confluence of sensors, cloud, and third-party data sources such as social media, have created new possibilities for IoT applications. Almost every device / sensor is sending a data signal that can be turned into intelligence. Data streaming technologies are getting better at extracting data out of these systems. Data storage is now cheaper. Hadoop and other big data repositories provide very economical storage. Cloud is now mainstream – making analytics and insights more accessible. The commercialization of data now happens through the cloud. Business Intelligence (BI) platforms have advanced to better serve at the end of this value chain; making data more usable, credible and trusted for business decision making.

How has IoT changed in the past year from your perspective?

And here’s who we talked to:

• Scott Hanson, Founder, and CTO, Ambiq Micro
• Adam Wray, CEO and Peter Coppola, SVP, Product Marketing, Basho
• Farnaz Erfan, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Birst
• Shahin Pirooz, CTO, Data Endure
• Anders Wallgren, CTO, Electric Cloud
• Eric Free, S.V.P. Strategic Growth, Flexera
• Brad Bush, Partner, Fortium Partners
• Marisa Sires Wang, Vice President of Product, Gigya
• Tony Paine, Kepware Platform President at PTC, Kepware
• Eric Mizell, Vice President Global Engineering, Kinetica
• Crystal Valentine, PhD, V.P. Technology Strategy and Jack Norris, S.V.P., Database Strategy and Applications, MapR
• Pratibha Salwan, S.V.P. Digital Services Americas, NIIT Technologies
• Guy Yehaiv, CEO, Profitect
• Cees Links, general manager Wireless Connectivity, Qorvo
• Paul Turner, CMO, Scality
• Harsh Upreti, Product Marketing Manager, API, SmartBear
• Rajeev Kozhikkuttuthodi, Vice President of Product Management, TIBCO