The Internet of Things (IOT) By Mr. Navin Parti, Vice President Q3 Technologies

Gartner, Inc. forecasts that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017, up 31 percent from 2016, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. The total spending on endpoints and services will reach almost $2 trillion in 2017. With growing footprints of digital transformation across different industries and verticals, digitalization is not only limited to becoming paperless, but it has moved a step ahead, where data from different sources are helping organizations in their growth. Q3 feels this is where IOT is going to be one of the key contributors. In fact, McKinsey estimates the potential economic impact of IOT applications to exceed $11.1 trillion per annum by 2025.

As we all know, Internet of Things or IOT is about building a network of physical objects. The world has moved from a network of interconnected computers to a network of interconnected everything. Increased usage of linked devices, faster cloud adoption, growth of high-speed networking systems have motivated every industry to embrace IOT solutions to augment their infrastructure.

Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, RFID, and QR codes are the widely used technologies to enable IOT ecosystems.

With IOT, intelligently linked devices embedded with sensors are able to communicate and exchange data. Any device fitted with sensors and actuators gains the ability to produce, transmit and process data. The data generated is not being used to its full potential and serves around 2% of what it is capable of. Right now, the focus of using IOT is mainly on abnormality detection, control mechanisms or for instructional purposes. IOT data for optimization and predictive analysis is yet to be fully exploited and tapped.

From household equipment to pace makers, everything can be connected and made to communicate. The concept of a smart home, a smart building or a smart city is not alien anymore. A user can interact with devices from remote locations, living a life with intelligent assistance, from devices all around. The innovations in different domains is explained in this article.

IOT in Homes

Appliances ranging from refrigerators to light bulbs, alarm systems to thermostats can communicate with the consumer and with each other to provide for intelligent living and work setting. By 2020, the number of smart household devices shipped is estimated to grow to 193 million from 83 million in 2015.

Google Home, Amazon Echo, or Apple Homepod are a few examples of smart assistants available from top competitors making convenient and smart ecosystems a reality.

IOT in Governance

Smart cities are being developed leveraging the concept of IOT where different infrastructure services like the city street lighting system, waste disposal system, pollution control system, parking system etc are integrated with sensors so that they can send data or receive commands. Sensors embedded in the waste disposal systems will send a notification to the concerned authority once the container is full, city smart parking system can guide you in real time to find a place where parking is currently available and the possibilities are endless.

IOT in Healthcare

IOT finds tremendous use in the healthcare industry as well. Fitness wearables and smartwatches which are gaining popularity nowadays are essentially IOT objects. Smart devices monitor the body against different health parameters (like body temperature, blood pressure and total sleep time) and using this data they empower an individual to live a better and a healthier life.

Remote monitoring of chronic disease patients enables continuous monitoring which is superior to intermittent tests. This in turn could single-handedly save billions of dollars worldwide in the care of heart failure alone. Physicians can also monitor the recovery of their patients and provide extended care using data accrued from sensors.

IOT in Manufacturing

Manufacturing and production industries are using IOT to automate their maintenance processes. Sensors attached to their production units regularly send data against different parameters to assess the performance of machineries and predict any possible failures. Similarly, various assets and raw materials required in these industries are being monitored through sensors which will send notifications before any actual shortage of raw material happens. Predictive analytics like this is helping industries avoid any unplanned interruption.

Industrial equipment manufacturers are formulating business models wherein IOT devices and data is being used to extend their products as service offerings. Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) could add $14.2 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Moreover, investment in IIOT is expected to exceed $60 trillion in the next 15 years.

Implementing IOT

The implementation of an IOT ecosystem in an organization requires a change in the business model. Technical as well as governance obstacles need to be overcome for an organization to set up an effective, value driven IOT ecosystem. Creative business models equip organizations to position their products as services. Small business cases that churn out a quick ROI while addressing minor pain points with IOT devices and networks can be a good start.

Implementing IOT is not just about installing sensors, it involves lot of other activities like receiving data from sensors, processing this data to draw meaningful insights etc. The ability of IOT systems to function effectively in an organization requires interoperability between these systems. This interoperability is required for 40-60 percent of the implementation.

Role of Mobile Phones in IOT

Smartphones are acting as one of the key components in any IOT ecosystem. Given the hardware capabilities that modern smartphones have, they are no less than a computer.

The success of any IOT use case depends on how the sensors involved can be monitored and controlled. Let’s consider an example of fitness wearables. These wearables generate data related to your body and one would be interested to have some applications which can use these data to predict their health. Here mobile devices can be used as an integration point, which can directly connect to these wearables and can capture the data to display the analytics using mobile apps. These mobile devices can be used to send different commands to the IOT devices. For e.g. you can use a mobile app to send commands to your smart home lighting system to increase or decrease the lights. One can imagine multiple such use-cases in home, office and industries where these smartphones can be used as gateway to IOT ecosystem.

Not only these smartphones can be used to control the IOT sensors, but these mobile devices themselves can also act as sensors. Modern smartphones comes with several in-built sensors like gyroscope, accelerometer, proximity sensors and many more. These in-built sensors also make smartphones an important component in your IOT ecosystem.

Conclusion

The real value-add of IOT depends on the data that these devices generate. Industries can improve operations and plan future roadmaps by analyzing this data. The success of any IOT project primarily depends on the predictive/prescriptive analytics done using the data generated. Data generated from IOT devices, when used for optimization and predictive analysis, creates maximum value for both the stakeholders and consumers of the organization. We believe that implementing IOT would test conventional business models and would generate maximum worth through interoperability, optimization and analytics.

Authored by:- Mr. Navin  Parti, Vice President Q3 Technologies

(The views expressed in this article by the author are his own. Technuter.com doesn’t own any responsibility for it.)

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