Is the Internet of Things Dead?

There are many definitions of IoT. One that I particularly like is simply “Digitising the Physical World”.

The past 20 years have seen many trends come and go. Some have made mainstream, many have dissipated into the vacuum from which they appeared. Based on my real customer experience, I genuinely believe that Internet of Things (IoT) is a trend that will make the mainstream. The name and definition may change and evolve over time, but early successes (and failures) suggest there may be real business value to be gained. And you won’t necessarily need the budgets of the Westpac’s and Telstra’s of the world to participate.

A recent survey of 200 IT and Business leaders found that 22% of businesses were already deriving business value from IoT.

There are three things I would suggest organisations consider when looking at IoT Projects (in no particular order).

business goal in mind or a problem you are trying to solve. Eg. I want to look for data that might suggest a catastrophic pollution event that I can action before the event occurs. I have seen many organisations burning cash on projects just because they thought they should be looking at the latest trend. Anyone remember Big Data?

start small, with a grander vision in mind. Start with “your things” and use systems and devices you are familiar with. This will increase the chance of success of your project. 

Think about integrating existing business information with machine generated data to enhance decision making. This will likely multiply the business value you can derive from this initiative.

In short, I believe IoT is more than just a passing trend. As the cost of technology (Raspberry Pi can now be bought for $25) continues to drop and the robustness of analytics solutions continues to improve, IoT is now a much more mainstream trend, with already proven business value.