I had written my first article about my thoughts on the internet of things about three months ago. I gained some more insights and experiences since then, also, for the beginning of 2016 I feel the time has come for an update.
In my last post I wrote about the maturity of IoT solutions. I think the market is still in the same position. There are many innovators, doing their first steps by digitalizing things and connect them with the Internet (by the end of 2016, do we still talk about the Internet of Things? Or just the Internet?). But the main issue is still the variety of technologies, the problems of physical implementations in retrofit, different types of use cases. Okay, I would make an exception for the Smart Home industry. These points are huge barriers for the implementers in terms of time, budget and quality (ROI).But all the machine manufactures, the producers of all the physical things which doesn’t need a power supply? The big tech companies (e.g. Amazon and Microsoft) are developing tools and services for the market, but they don’t address a major problem: the mass-market digitalization and connection of things.
Internet of Things in 2016
2016 will be pivotal year for the IoT market. First of all, the people won’t blow out the big numbers anymore (Gartner predicts zillion of $$$). They have to talk about solutions which are available, trustful and future proof. The market either will accept the solutions addressing their pain points or the innovators will postpone the whole topic for at least a fiscal year. If we don’t tackle implementers hurdles, we will get in trouble. People will say that we are to early in the market, but this is not true. The truth is, that there aren’t there right solutions for the market.
The next round
If we get rid of the integration problems, we can attack the next pile of technology problems. This will be the one with the optimization of ROI. Turing data into information into money. I wonder if it will be an automatic or just an automated process. Of course we will put all our high developed technologies of Machine Learning, Artifical Intelligence, Fuzzy Logic, etc. But will it be possible to put data into a black box and get useful information from it? Without consulting the people? Without selecting, carefully training and adjusting the algorithms in the black box? We will see in 2017.