The Anatomy of the Internet of Things

How does Internet of Things look like today? Matt Turck from Tech Crunch wrote an article about that with the title: “Making sense of the Internet of Things.” In that article a few interesting overviews I want to share with you today. Building blocks Trough several key factors the Internet of Things is now becoming more and more reality. Turck describes three key factors, hardware technology, wireless connectivity and infrastructure. 1. Hardware technology Technology nowadays is becoming more and more cheap. Through this way technology has become more accessible than ever before. The evolution of technology will be going faster as technology is not only available for large companies anymore. 2. Wireless connectivity The evolution in wireless connection is going a rapid speed so it will become more attractive to connect things through this wireless connections. The evolution of the wireless connection has to go on in this kind of speed because according to Cisco only 99% of the physical objects are still unconnected. “99 percent of things in the physical world are still unconnected, ready to be woken up.” 3. Infrastructure “The Internet of Things is able to leverage an entire infrastructure that has emerged in related areas.” And this infrastructure is one of the core elements for a successful Internet of Things era. A lot of people are talking about smart objects. Objects are not smart. The only do things they have been programmed for. If This, Than That. By connecting ‘things’ and objects to the cloud, ‘things’ become smart. Verticals “Unlike the Big Data space, where the action is gradually moving from core infrastructure to vertical applications, the Internet of Things space is seeing a lot of early action directly at the vertical application level.” Verticals can be described as products and services which are able to work on their own without the intervention of a overall platform. Notable is that these verticals have adopted a integrated strategy where key elements of the product can be controlled. In this way we will see also a lot of successful Internet of Things based start-ups I guess. Horizontals Where we see nowadays a lot of vertical applications is the chance for big companies to deliver a major horizontal platform where all these verticals can be plugged on. In this way the generated data can be collected and analyzed. Looking for patrons and business opportunities. “One open question is whether a platform developed for a vertical will easily translate to another vertical. In addition, whether the winning platforms are open or closed will play a huge role in the future of the space. My bet would be on openness.” What kind of information did you always wanted to know about your business processes? How do you think Internet of Things can help your organization to create competitor advantage? When Internet of Things is the next big ‘thing’ it also asks for your big next step.