DZone Research: IoT Changes

To understand the current and future state of IoT, we spoke to more than a dozen IT executives active in the space. Here's what they told us when we asked, "What are the biggest changes you are seeing with regard to IoT?"

Voice-Interface Platforms

• Adoption of the platforms like Alexa, Google Home, and Apple Home Kit. Customers are aligning with platforms. There are still many platforms you need to integrate with. There's a lot of work to figure out and which platforms to support, hence the need for standards and guidelines.
• Voice interfaces have become key. People are rushing to get solutions out. There are a lot of devices out there talking to a narrow spectrum. Amazon and Alexa provide a way for multiple devices to connect and talk. It takes a while to get standards in place on how things can and will work together. We need standards to develop proprietary software, devices, and applications so they can work with others. The Internet itself is a good analog. Everyone uses the same standard to do it — a common standard of web browser helped. Recognition of what’s working and where you can get traction. The rate of delivery will vary by vertical.

Other

• Security has never been more important, and companies are realizing just how vulnerable their products really are. The massive Mirai botnet DDOS was kicked off through the hacking of thousands of DVRs, webcams, and baby monitors. Everyday IoT devices are the target. As a result, security needs to be paramount from the very beginning of development. And consumers need to understand the smart devices they’re buying and increasingly relying on may look good but could be highly insecure.

• 1) They have become more than just collecting data and moving to a different place. They are an environment in which to do the first round of classification. Process and maintain information in the locale.
  2) We see more interaction between an IoT device and the cloud. As IoT devices become more self-sufficient, they must collect data and send aged data to the cloud. This drives the growth of cloud and IoT. We're also beginning to see multi-cloud.
• 5G infrastructure is a significant change.
• Pivoting the focus from communication protocols to what are we doing and how do we drive value from the data — predictive maintenance, improve workflow with real-time telemetry. With streaming information, we learn how to act on imperfect now versus perfect tomorrow. Retraining how we consume information to make decisions. Deal with network irregularities.
• From a pure maturity model beyond pure connectivity, what I’m seeing versus a year ago are different POCs to proof quick and fast, experimenting. Now, we're moving to production. We benefit from the best-of-breed. Moving from the cloud first to a hybrid model where you own the data and deploy across the hybrid infrastructure as needed. You need a multi-cloud solution to have the flexibility to meet needs. Realize that there's a lot going on and you need to build to be open, flexible, modular, use existing technologies and partnerships. There needs to be an open, inclusive way of working together.
• More and more firms develop and employ IoT. Smart lighting, appliances, automobiles, drones, etc. — this trend is increasing and will lead to more development and adoption in the coming years.
• From a technical standpoint more mature tooling like Balena, Docker containers to handle deployment and updates for IoT devices. More of the normal now like CI in software development. On the user side, the big shift people realize the value of real-time data and look for more ROI.
• Companies are becoming more sophisticated about IoT and more specific about how they might want to implement it. For example, where a customer may have previously asked “should my factory use IoT and how”, now we’re more likely to hear, “I need data about how this plastic injection molding machine is performing in order to increase its cycles and uptime.”
• 1) The IoT is becoming more and more involved in our daily lives with every passing year. It’s becoming a standard for traditional industries outside of tech to employ the IoT. However, this comes with its challenges and we saw 2018 starting with an IoT hype cycle that ended with cynicism as companies are taking longer to perfect their IoT strategies and products.
  2) We also saw some surprises in 2018 with companies looking to solve larger consumer problems. Take transportation, for example; traffic in major cities is worse than ever, and ride-sharing companies are only contributing to this problem. However, we saw connected scooter companies like Bird and Lime pop up this year to help alleviate car-congested streets. 
• IoT has increasingly evolved from a separate field of IT development to a technology approach, which is incorporated into a line of business applications. Some analysts have opined IoT-themed tradeshows, for example, may no longer be relevant because IoT is now simply a part of how companies do business in most industries. 

Here’s who we spoke to:

• Mike Donovan, V.P. of Product, Aquicore
• Adam Fingerman, CEO, ArcTouch
• Dave Schuman, Mobility Leader, Cloudera
• OJ Ngo, CTO and Co-founder, DH2i
• Nikita Ivanov, Founder and CTO, GridGain Systems
• Suzy Visvanathan, Director of Product Management, MapR
• Uri Sarid, CTO, MuleSoft
• David McCall, President, and Clarke Stevens, Chair, Data Model Tools Task Group and Vice Chair, Data Modeling Work Group, Open Connectivity Foundation
• Zach Supalla, Founder and CEO, Particle
• Stephen Blum, CTO, PubNub
• David Bericat, Global Technical Lead, Industrial IoT and Edge Computing, Red Hat
• Vaughn Shinall, Head of Product Outreach, Temboo
• Ray Wu, CEO, Wynd