Internet of Things – My thoughts on IoT

This week I read an article on Wired about the data flow in the Internet of Things. It is essentially about how things are connected and where the data flows through, and provides a good description of the basics of Internet of Things. But connecting machines, devices and other things, and transferring data from one site to the other is just the necessary stuff. Don’t get me wrong – it is pretty complex, perhaps even the most complex part of it. The heterogeneous physical interfaces, protocols, connectivity options and use cases result in maximum diversity on this site.

However, with a good range of IoT software systems we can solve any problem. By the way, it is wise to choose an independent IoT system regarding devices and technology. This will assure your investment for the future. Sad but true – the amount of work for integration still does not fit all business cases. Therefore, there is still more work to do to get used to selecting the modern standards described in the article or even covering stuff like the OneM2M architecture, although sending and retrieving data is still just the basics.

Maturity of Internet of Things solutions

Looking at different IoT cases, I know that most of them want to connect their machines for plain remote diagnosis and maintenance. This is okay, because IoT is over the tip of the hype curve. (Speaking about what is innovative on IoT, I think the now-low prices for the things you need to connect everything is the leading argument. This enables the business cases for not-that-new ideas.) With respect to the Rogers innovation adoption curve, the innovation arrived at the point of the early majority. All kinds of innovation leaders in their markets think about it. Just a few of the early adopters are thinking about or are already running more mature Internet of Things solutions. These could be types of paid service-platforms, condition-based maintenance, data-driven services or even fully integrated business processes. Creating such systems for small and medium-sized businesses is not affordable. The companies of the early majority are thinking about it, but it is far too much for them to do. I think it is the job of the IoT players to build services to make IoT-based solutions easy – it must be as simple as setting up your new iPhone.