IoT has created a lot of buzz
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
The Internet of Things (IoT) has created a lot of buzz in the last few years. This has pushed many verticals and sectors to innovate themselves and take part in the IoT ecosystem. Despite the inclination towards innovating in IoT, the sector is unable to beat the market expectations and remains on Gartner’s peak of ‘Inflated Expectations’ curve.
The 3 main challenges current IoT products and services are facing are:
1) Standardisation
2) Adoption, and
3) Technology Maturity.
Standardisation
Multiple vendors are coming up with their own proprietary frameworks and solutions. This is leading to problems with Integration, Interoperability and Security.
There are various communities, consortia and partners coming together for standardisation but coming to a single standardised solution is yet a work in progress.
Open Connectivity Foundation along with various partners in tech solutions providing are creating a Universal Plug and Play (uPnP) specifications and standards for IoT.
The Industrial Internet Consortium has provided specifications on use cases for asset efficiency, condition monitoring, connected cars, etc.
The Internet Protocol Smart Objects (IPSO) Alliance is working on interoperability of the smart objects through layered architecture of IP. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has also published various papers on standardisation and security for IoT solution. The International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) has created a standard SG20 for IoT required for smart cities. IT has also provided recommendation in ITU-TY2060.
Fig. 1 IoT Standardisation Communities and their contributions
Adoption
The adoption depends upon factors like investment in the sector, need in the market and maturity of the sector. All 3 factors are related as well as dependent on each other.
The sectors which seem to be established in IoT are Industrial, Software and Smart Cities. The sectors where majority of the funding is done are IoT Hardware and Utilities. There are disruptive sectors where funding is good are Healthcare, Auto and Enterprise, and the sectors where IoT is still picking up like Homes, Retail, Robotics, Agriculture.
IoT solutions and companies have spread majorly across North America, European Nations and Asia.
Fig. 2 IOT Sectors and their Adoption & Maturity
Technology Maturity
IoT is going to bring about 26 billion connected devices by 2020. To handle this amount of traffic and process the data would require highly scalable infrastructure and architecture. This includes the Hardware, Software and Connectivity Scalability.
The Hardware Scalability can be achieved by optimisation and research in hardware and software modules. Also hardware can be developed, which can generate energy through renewable sources to keep themselves running. Platform as a Service (PAAS) has matured enough to provide on demand compute and storage. And with the advent of 5G in 2020 it will resolve the connectivity and delivery bottlenecks. Various cloud players have also started creating comprehensive IoT platforms, which can be used with different devices providing the device discovery layer, data analytics and machine learning capabilities packaged as a service.
There has been a bit of progress in protocol for information flow in IoT solutions. Protocols like
MQTT, COAP, AMQP and XMPP are being widely used for IoT related applications. But still on the technology maturity a lot of work needs to be done since creating applications which sits on pile of data and delivers performance is yet to be completed tested.
Fig. 3 Top Cloud IoT Platforms
The 3 main reasons for adopting IoT are:
1) Increasing Productivity
2) Reducing Operational Cost, and
3) Exploring New Opportunities.
Keeping those in mind various IoT solutions have been in the market but not all solutions could create an impact on the consumer adoption. A survey when taken in 2014 and 2016 for smart homes products showed an average 10% declined in the number of complaints due to usage. Another survey showed the biggest concerns the consumers having about connected cars is the hidden cost of having the devices and the information of their location is getting compromised. Consumers of healthcare showed that they find the technology is addressing their concerns about data privacy and support when using these devices.
The rise of IoT devices and solutions has led to nearly 50% reduction in price of the hardware devices. It also dramatically reduced the price of the bandwidth to nearly 40x. This has led to WiFi zones in various places and almost free.
However, the roadmap for IoT will be focussed on providing the existing IoT solutions an enhanced experience to its customers and resolving their concerns on security and adaptability.
Adnyesh Dalpati is an experienced Solutions Architect with a demonstrated history of working in the Financial, Telecom and Cloud Technologies domain. He is skilled in Internet of Things (IoT), Microsoft Technologies, Relational Databases, Microservices Architecture, Agile Methodologies, PL/SQL, and Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).