Internet of things: Solutions, Technologies and Beyond

Facebook Tweet LinkedIn Pin Email

Contents hide

1 The Internet of Things (IoT)

2 Outlook for IoT market in 2021

4.1 Internet of things Security

4.2 IoT Analytics

4.3 Internet of things Device management

4.4 Related posts:

The Internet of Things (IoT)

Food producers are now capitalizing on loads of data from Internet of things sensors to manage the safety, quality, and distribution of food products across the globe. Healthcare is leveraging on IoT enabled trackand trace capabilities for critical equipment required during emergencies to ensure urgent patientcare. Governments and communities are continuously looking incorporate IoT so as to improve its engagements with citizens in a bid to improve their quality of life and safety. Deployment of IoT in the energy, construction, UAV sectors is at an all-time high. Verizon estimates that in 2017,73% of executives are either deploying or researching about IoT. Therefore, it is no longer a question of if, but rather of to what extent will IoT transform industrialization and peoples’lives, in general, going forward.

Outlook for IoT market in 2021

Looking back

IoT has grown tremendously this year, 2017. A lot of deployment and monetization of IoT in terms of both software and hardware were realized this year. Manufacturing, utilities, and transportation led the way as far IoT investments are concerned. Investment on IoT by the insurance, cross-industry, consumer sectors are also rising fast. Some of the factors that elicited this growth include

Improved network connectivity
Reducing cost of internet
Growing demand for machine to machine data

Looking ahead

Gartner estimates that by the end of this year 2017, 8.4 billion things will be connected to the internet. This marks a 31% increase from last year. This number is expected to grow up to 20.4 billion by 2020. This means 12 billion new things will be connected to the internet over the next two years. Assuming that the absorption rate remains constant in both 2018 and 2019, we are set to witness an increased rate of close to 75% as far things connected to the internet is concerned. The anticipated 31% growth in 2017 will translate to $2 trillion in investment. You can imagine how much more 75% growth translates to. Modestly speaking, this translates to a lot of market for IoT.

We have witnessed a lot of consolidation in the IoT market space with larger firms acquiring smaller startups. The goal of this process is to create a seamlessly aligned ecosystem able to guarantee seamless deployment of IoT platform. This has started taking shape already and is expected to get even better in 2018. With deployments becoming more streamlined, enterprises are expected to increase their uptake of IoT which again will translate to more market.

Solutions

The scope and application of IoT have grown profoundly. The IoT solutions World Congress 2017 that took place in Barcelona is evidence to this fact. This growth has been marked by numerous solutions from smart frying pans to advanced cyber security and device management. Despite the fast and expansive growth, there are some sectors to watch since they have exhibited a lot of potential for growth even in this year’s congress. They include,

Smart city
Healthcare
Security
Smart building
Industrial
Automotive

Of course, this does not leave out other sectors. IoT solutions touching on every facet of our lives are expected to grow both in scope and in number. It is only that the above listed have shown a lot of potential.

Technologies

Internet of things Security

Prevalence of IoT introduces security risks and challenges to IoT devices, operating systems, IoT platforms, their communications and the connected systems. In order to protect them from attacksand physical tampering security technology will be required. These technologies should encrypt the communications and address the chances of impersonating the devices. So far, IoT security has been complicated by the fact that IoT devices use simple processors and operating systems and hence have not been able to support sophisticated security approaches. New threats are also expected to emerge going forward to 2018 and such will require new security technologies.

IoT Analytics

More enterprises are expected to the information they acquire through IoT in many ways for instance understanding customer behavior, improving their product and even identifying business trends. There is a growing demand for new analytic approaches hence the growing need for new analytic tools and algorithms. With the increase in data volumes, there is an emerging need to diverge from traditional analytics. This is expected to take center stage in 2021.

Internet of things Device management

Given the rate at which “things” are being deployed, hence creating the need for reliable management and monitoring systems. Management and monitoring involve diagnostics, crash analysis, physical and security management and software updates. Going forward into 2021, tools capable of managing and monitoring up to a million devices will be in demand.

This year 2020 has been without a doubt a very successful period for IoT. However, 2021 is expected to be way better and bigger for IoT. With increased deployments of IoT will emerge the demand for the accompanying technologies. New challenges will also emerge. All of these are expected to spur more activities around IoT over the year.