Last month Bill Chamberlin, the principal analyst for Emerging Tech Trends and Horizon Watch Community Leader for IBM Market Development (hmmm, must have an oversized biz card..) published a list of 20 IoT trends to watch this year that I think provide a pretty good checklist for evaluating what promises to be an important period in which the IoT becomes more mainstream.
It’s interesting to me, especially in light of my recent focus on the topics (and I’ll blog on the recent FTC report on the issue in several days), that he put privacy and security number one on the list, commenting that “Trust and authentication become critical across all elements of the IoT, including devices, the networks, the cloud and software apps.” Amen.
Most of the rest of the list was no surprise, with standards, hardware, software, and edge analytics rounding out the top five (even though it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, I agree edge analytics are going to be crucial as the volume of sensor data increases dramatically: why pass along the vast majority of data, that is probably redundant, to the cloud, vs. just what’s a deviation from the norm and probably more important?).
Two dealing with sensors did strike my eye:
“9. Sensor fusion: Combining data from different sources can improve accuracy. Data from two sensors is better than data from one. Data from lots of sensors is even better.
10. Sensor hubs: Developers will increasingly experiment with sensor hubs for IoT devices, which will be used to offload tasks from the application processor, cutting down on power consumption and improving battery life in the devices”
Both make a lot of sense.
One was particularly noteworthy in light of my last post, about the Gartner survey showing most companies were ill-prepared to plan and launch IoT strategies: “14. Chief IoT Officer: Expect more senior level execs to be put in place to build the enterprise-wide IoT strategy.” Couldn’t agree more that this is vital!
Check out the whole list: I think you’ll find it helpful in tracking this year’s major IoT developments.
