I suppose it was two months ago, when I first really think about the Internet. I was taking an exam about wireless sensor networks class in my PhD program. I was exhausted because it was also the first months of my new start-up. I had been working on our prototype instead of studying how wireless transmission works when transceiver is mobile etc. During the exam, I suddenly realized that I didn't have to know all these formulas. Learning had changed, why was I still in a class taking an exam? All the information was available on the web, one click ahead and I was expected to memorize them. In other words, I was expected to dump all the information from the books and lectures to my lovely memory as if I don't have access to a broadband connection. OK, that was geeky, let me explain it with an example. Consider you are in 90s. You have limited access to the Internet and when you have a chance to find your favorite album, you made a copy of it so that you can listen to it as you desire. Now, you use Spotify or similar stuff.
Internet has become the common intelligence of the mankind. Almost everyone is contributing to it in their own way and its growing exponentially.
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Global Data Growth per Year in Zetabytes |
It will effect even the most well-established systems such as education, healthcare, multinational corporations etc. In my humble opinion, not a single system will stay undisrupted as the common intelligence grows. Ones that cannot adopt themselves to this rapid change will be replaced.
Today, we are on the edge of a new step in the evolution of the common intelligence. Now, physical things are joining in. Your watch, light bulbs, windows, refrigerator, shoes, glasses and of course your coffee maker are becoming connected to the Internet.
It is estimated that 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020. This means more unique data for the common intelligence. Humans generate only 38% of the global Internet traffic today. (I saw many articles concerned about this, but I couldn't find any information on the uniqueness of the data. Please share if you have access to such information) According to this white paper by HP, generated data per 60 seconds is 1,820 TB where 1 million Richter sensors will generate 100 TB data per day. Yet, considering the huge amount of vertical applications in different areas ranging from Smart Cities, Smart Home, Smart Energy, Smart Cars etc, it is safe to assume device generated data will far exceed human generated data on the Internet. Thus, will add far more value.
Uniqueness of the data is a key here. Things will bring a fresh blood to the Internet. Because, every object is closely coupled with its environment or its unique master device. This has to be digested well to understand the potential of IoT. The Things will become the fingers, ears, eyes, nose and the skin of the common intelligence.
There are numerous companies in the IoT space to create specific IoT solutions to different verticals and large corporations to create platforms as backbones. Yet, even the most well funded companies fail to dominate the IoT market. For instance, recent reports show that around 1 billion dollar is invested to smart home start-ups and there is no clear winner yet.
In my point of view, in order to accelerate the IoT ecosystem, there are three key problems to solve: interoperability, security and convenience. Interoperability means the ability of different devices from different vendors talking and understanding each other. Consider you have a smart coffee maker from brand A and a sleep quality sensor from brand B. Using only the smart coffee machine, you can remotely brew your coffee or only using the sleep quality sensor you can log how well you slept over time and analyze the data. But, these two have to interact with each other over a modest architecture to create greater value. For instance, your sleep quality sensor data must be available to your coffee machine to brew based on your sleep and earlier preferences.
On the other hand, security can be thought as your personal computer security. As long as something is connected to the Internet, there will be a security threat. Considering also the data privacy, security issues must be handled to accelerate adoption of IoT products. I will talk about the convenience issue on my next blog post.
Recent strategic moves of Google, Apple, Intel and Microsoft shows that they are all interested in solving these problems to gain market advantage. Microsoft brought Windows 10 to small embedded devices like Raspberry Pi; Apple and Google has revealed their smart home kits and Intel acquired McAffee and Wind River. Yet, I think it may take some time to see them on real products.
To sum up, the Internet evolution continues stronger with the IoT movement. There are many players now and billions of dollars worth investments made by the investors and companies. However the IoT ecosystem has still problems to solve and who will be the dominant player in this game changer market cannot be foreseen, yet.
Uniqueness of the data is a key here. Things will bring a fresh blood to the Internet. Because, every object is closely coupled with its environment or its unique master device. This has to be digested well to understand the potential of IoT. The Things will become the fingers, ears, eyes, nose and the skin of the common intelligence.
There are numerous companies in the IoT space to create specific IoT solutions to different verticals and large corporations to create platforms as backbones. Yet, even the most well funded companies fail to dominate the IoT market. For instance, recent reports show that around 1 billion dollar is invested to smart home start-ups and there is no clear winner yet.
In my point of view, in order to accelerate the IoT ecosystem, there are three key problems to solve: interoperability, security and convenience. Interoperability means the ability of different devices from different vendors talking and understanding each other. Consider you have a smart coffee maker from brand A and a sleep quality sensor from brand B. Using only the smart coffee machine, you can remotely brew your coffee or only using the sleep quality sensor you can log how well you slept over time and analyze the data. But, these two have to interact with each other over a modest architecture to create greater value. For instance, your sleep quality sensor data must be available to your coffee machine to brew based on your sleep and earlier preferences.
On the other hand, security can be thought as your personal computer security. As long as something is connected to the Internet, there will be a security threat. Considering also the data privacy, security issues must be handled to accelerate adoption of IoT products. I will talk about the convenience issue on my next blog post.
Recent strategic moves of Google, Apple, Intel and Microsoft shows that they are all interested in solving these problems to gain market advantage. Microsoft brought Windows 10 to small embedded devices like Raspberry Pi; Apple and Google has revealed their smart home kits and Intel acquired McAffee and Wind River. Yet, I think it may take some time to see them on real products.
To sum up, the Internet evolution continues stronger with the IoT movement. There are many players now and billions of dollars worth investments made by the investors and companies. However the IoT ecosystem has still problems to solve and who will be the dominant player in this game changer market cannot be foreseen, yet.
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