Here are the use cases and tech surrounding IoT, such as smart cities supply chains, as well as the blockers, like security, interoperability, and analytics.
With the growing adoption of mobile technologies, AI, and machine learning, new opportunities for building a “smarter” and more convenient world are opening up. Once a science fiction, the concept of a smart home has become a reality: from a light bulb or a coffee machine that you can control with your smartphone, to AI-powered home assistants, such as Mark Zuckerberg’s Jarvis. And this is only a small part of the IoT’s potential.
While it might sound creepy, such “connected” devices are everywhere. Our homes are packed with them, we can wear them anywhere we go, we drive with them, and interact with them at work or even outdoors. Namely, the number of IoT devices worldwide is expected to exceed 75 billion by 2025 (that’s a 400% increase as compared to the data from 2015) .
There are many reasons for such a massive adoption of the IoT projects ideas. Businesses typically see 4 ways how the technology can help them grow their revenue:
That being said, investing in IoT projects is a very lucrative deal, with $6 trillion expected to be spent on IoT solutions by 2020, the expected ROI will reach $13 trillion.
But how exactly can businesses benefit from IoT solutions? To answer that question, let’s consider some of the most interesting use cases for IoT across industries.
Being so deeply integrated into our day-to-day lives, the technology opens up unlimited opportunities for companies across a number of industries, including retail, healthcare, transportation and logistics, and manufacturing. Namely, we see some outstanding opportunities across the following domains.
With the global spending on the Internet of Things expected to reach $1.29 trillion by 2020, (according to IDC) the market will remain one of the most lucrative investment areas. Yet, such a young industry has a number of issues that should be considered. If you are planning to join the IoT wave in the near future, here are several pitfalls to avoid:
While the IoT devices and sensors that you might want to use may be provided by different manufacturers, you need to make sure they will work well together, otherwise, it will be impossible to create a reliable network of connected things. Another aspect of this issue is the integration of the newly established IoT network with your existing business systems and tools.
Reliable and efficient data analytics solutions should be of paramount importance. In order to get the most out of your IoT initiative, you need to properly take care of infrastructure and tooling for data collection and processing.
Security and privacy risks are among the major issues voiced by consumers when it comes to IoT. Thus, if you fail to make your customer’s data safe, no one will use your solution. While there are no standards or proven practices for IoT security, major tech companies are joining forces to build a better data security foundation so that the future can be more safely connected.
While there are no legal regulations for the IoT industry as such, there are numerous domain-specific laws and limitations. Thus, you might face challenges dealing with patents, licenses, and industry compliance standards.
While the listed issues represent some serious challenges for a business, there is one more problem with IoT: How to keep your “things” connected when there is no connection? While at-home Wi-Fi seems like a reliable option, there is always a chance of a power outage or failure. For outdoor IoT, the problem of always keeping the devices on is even bigger.
Solutions like Google Fiber or OneWeb might be able to solve the connectivity problem in the near future, but as of right now, there is no solution for having connectivity with the Internet of Things 100% of the time.
