The essence of IoT (Internet of Things)
Internet of Things(IoT): A global mega-trend recognized by the industry pundits that has the power to change our future and potentially become the next industrial revolution, sometimes referred to as Industrie 4.0.
The Internet of things (IoT) is the network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity which enable these objects to connect and exchange data.[1][2][3] Each thing is uniquely identifiable through its embedded computing system but is able to inter-operate within the existing Internet infrastructure. Experts and industry analysts estimate that the IoT will consist of about 30 billion objects by 2020 — Wikipedia
To simplify things, we interviewed Nisarg Desai, who is the Director of Product Management, IoT at GlobalSign to provide his deep perspective on this space.
Why is IoT important for everyone?
There are two fundamental elements that constitute the primary motive of IoT.
- Convenience (for consumers): This is as simple as doing something with less effort, than traditional means. IoT is one way in which we are willing to open up new ways of business experiences by powering objects to physically interacting with other objects and services, so we can gather data, analyze data and leverage it for the end consumer benefit.
- Efficiency (for both consumers and businesses): In a limited resources world, consuming more resources means consuming more time, which increases costs. As time goes by, we have to find more efficient ways to survive. We need to raise the bar on our processes to be more efficient. E.g: Take Supply Chain in Agriculture, Consumer Goods and Manufacturing. These asset-heavy labor intensive industries have tremendous amount of opportunity to use less resources, lower the cost and make things a lot easier. Hopefully, by doing this, we will reach our penultimate intent i.e. to preserve our resources to next generation and more.
Business efficiency will increase ROI, and customers get higher quality or lower cost from the improvements driven from IoT.
Myth: IoT is just not about Fitbit’s and wearables. Within few years this word might be replaced by something else. Its a new way of thinking about things.
Lets Deconstruct it: Internet + Things
The current scope of internet is limited to WiFi, LTE and protocols. But in future, new technologies such as(LORA, WiSUN FAN) will be a part of this function.
With things, currently, it’s sensors but tomorrow it will be almost all devices that gather or channel data.
Now we are going one level deeper.
A smart fridge, a smart TV, a smart oven that talks to another smart fridge, another smart TV, another smart oven.
In future we will go another level deeper.
A temperature sensor and a camera that connects to my left over food in the fridge to tell me when is my pasta expiring.
IoT provides visibility at a granular level.
What is the current state of IoT?
From an end consumer perspective, its still naive.
Past three years, there has been a lot of marketing push, so we are at the point where we have just past the hype wave (in the above chart) and are entering the disillusionment phase, where there will be an element of cynicism from consumers involved given the lack of shipped products in full action.
But, in a few years, we expect consumers to draw inferences from the first mature industry, the Industrial IoT where the opportunity lies in solving complex value chains.
How big is the IoT market?
Per Gartner, revenues and profits for businesses that can be attributed from IoT is positioned to touch $470B by 2020. Expected profit from that is $60B ~ 15%.
But the most mature market we are seeing right now is with the Industrial IoT that is positioned to touch $195.47 Billion By 2022.
What is a simple use case for the Industry IoT?
For instance, the largest crop manufactured in the US is corn. For the agricultural company, if Google tomorrow comes up with a Nest thermostat that can deeply monitor and control mechanisms this becomes a huge benefit for the farm.
Borrowing aspects from micro-segmentation (in the software field) there are two ways to approach yield: 1) Make seeds better 2) Reduced wastage
Sensors and Drones allow you to do that.
Sensors have the ability to monitor chemical composition, moisture, fertilization applications, personalized and regionalized applications for growth agents. This data can be combined with drone tracking to understand which crops are healthy, which are not doing well and identify disease affected areas.
You cannot control or predict the climate, but industry farms powered with smart sensors and drones can react in a much better way. This will increase our responsiveness and preparedness.
How are these tasks performed today?
There are both manual and automation controls. Manual process where people perform field monitoring and collect soil samples and enter this data in the legacy systems.
With IoT powered sensors, you have irrigation and motion sensors that constantly track the data points. Smart valves can be connected to a dynamically controlled system. And now the farm can make data driven decisions at a regional, sub-regional and at a state level.
How and where can GlobalSign help?
GlobalSign is a software security company who ensures devices are who they claim to be.
They offer solutions to authenticate sensors, gateways, and nodes in IoT networks. Any IP connected device can be authenticated and our underlying technology is providing device certificates that serve as authorities of identification for the device.
Providers are authorized and certificated for these devices. Once these devices are secured, data coming from them can be encrypted and accurate, this increases the device trust. Learn more at www.globalsign.com/internet-of-things/
