One of the world’s leading research and advisory firms, Gartner highlighted at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2018 that took place early in November in Barcelona, Spain, the top-10 strategic IoT (internet of things) technologies which will create alternative business models.
“The IoT will continue to deliver new opportunities for digital business innovation for the next decade, many of which will be enabled by new or improved technologies...CIOs who master innovative IoT trends have the opportunity to lead digital innovation in their business,” says Nick Jones, Gartner Research VP.
Gartner identified top-10 trends for IoT which will be mainstream in the upcoming years.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
In the next three years, Gartner expects to see 25 billion things connect with each other, which will generate a gargantuan amount of information.
Imagine all the things you use daily, things that serve you automatically, cameras, sensors etc. will talk to each other. All this gibber needs to be sorted, categorized, filtered… processed. An organization with AI at its side will be able to see the most benefits.
Intimidation level: 6/10 – Your toaster will tell that you enjoy burnt bread to your doctor’s stethoscope as well as your insurance company. Might even call an ambulance right away! Jokes aside, in the wrong hands that is just too much data about everything around us.
Social, Legal, and Ethical IoT
In order to comply with ethics, human rights, personal rights, and all other possible privacy rights, IoT must abide by the regulations which need to be invented yet. Meaning we will have things that communicate with each other (about us, mainly) but the laws regarding gossips (gossips of things – dibs!) are yet to be thought of.
Infonomics and Data Broking
The data collected by ‘everything’ will include everything! Even in raw form, this will be the most valuable asset in the future. So it can be sold, rented, leased… you get the idea. In five years time, Gartner predicts that one of the main activities of IoT’s will be monetization of the data.
Keep in mind that at the moment we are not doing a very satisfactory job protecting the data security from gaming consoles or social media accounts. We are positive in five years everything will change.
The Shift from Intelligent Edge to Intelligent Mesh
This is about the architecture of IoT systems. Before it was a centralized system (who would have thought) which became a cloud-powered system later. In the future, IoTs are expected to be more flexible, respond much faster, and smarter.
An intelligent mesh system is required for such capacity. It is more expensive and more sophisticated, yet there is no shortage in companies willing to work on this.
Intimidation level: 7/10 – More sophisticated doesn’t always mean more secure and easily available.
IoT Governance
Once we have all these, we also need to run, maintain, audit, and manage these talkative things. Governance can be provided by highly specialized staff or technology (remember SKYNET from Terminator, that’s the one).
Sensor Innovation
Things need five sensors to understand their surroundings which later they will communicate with each other: this is hot, that is cold, ventilation off, it is bright, vict.. user A is here, etc. Sensors will evolve as well. Imagine tiny robots which can traverse in your bloodstream and identify diseases, run tests, block a vein, and transfer this information to your mobile phone.
Trusted Hardware and Operating System
Security will be a key deterrent when it comes to IoT systems of the future. Hardware and software combinations are the best for secure systems.
“We advise CIOs to collaborate with chief information security officers to ensure the right staff are involved in reviewing any decisions that involve purchasing IoT devices and embedded operating systems,” says Mr. Jones.
This is extremely important actually. You don’t want an AI-powered network overseeing almost every ‘smart’ device surrounding you to go rogue. If it does, all you can do is hear it say “Hello, Dave, I am afraid I can’t do that!” – 2001 Space Odyssey.
Novel IoT User Experiences
This is about including users in the conversation of the things. For that, new sensors, new algorithms, new experience architectures, and socially aware experiences are required.
Companies will start thinking deeper about what can attract users or for what users will keep using it. A holographic avatar which talks to you? A cute small puffy talking pillow? Or an actual robot which can reply to you with its AI brain? Or a combination of those?
Silicon Chip Innovation
“Currently, most IoT endpoint devices use conventional processor chips, with low-power ARM architectures being particularly popular. However, traditional instruction sets and memory architectures aren’t well-suited to all the tasks that endpoints need to perform… for example, the performance of deep neural networks (DNNs) is often limited by memory bandwidth, rather than processing power,” says Mr. Jones.
Meaning that soon we will have highly sophisticated chips with AI.
New Wireless Networking Technologies for IoT
For so many things to communicate smoothly and without interruption new networks must become available, such as 5G, new satellites, etc.
It looks like Gartner is very well aware where the current innovations are taking us and this list is their wake-up call for companies. Realities and innovations we now see on daily basis are made up things from science fiction stories. With key points being security, regulations, governance, and AI future, Internet of Things systems will hopefully lift humanity higher, opposite to what the pop culture pictures and imaginations we reference in this article.
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