The Gold Rush of Internet of Things

Transcription

1 The Gold Rush of Internet of Things Labs

2 The Internet of Things (IoT) just might change your everyday life as much as the Internet itself has done. Indeed we already embarked on this new IoT journey, aka Internet of Everything, Web of Objects, Machine-to-Machine, Intelligent Systems, Connected Objects, Smart Things, etc. The near future will see tens of billions connected devices, designed to offer new services in every aspect of our lives. New devices and their services will interact and communicate with other devices, sensors, actuators, industrial machines, the environment, smartphones, etc. This development will generate massive data volumes to be processed locally, in the devices themselves, or remotely: in the devices themselves, in gateways, or in the cloud. This is the Big Picture, and an ideal vision of the IoT, but today s harsh reality is slightly different. LET S START DIGGING Despite all the current ballyhoo and buzz surrounding the so-called Internet of Things, we are just at the start of a long journey. In 2013, the IoT market is by comparison in the Golden Age of 8-bit and 16-bit Personal Computing ( ): years where PCs and Macs were for professionals and geeks only; years where computers were so numerous and so different, that choosing one was a challenge and above all, an Act of Faith: e.g. Oric vs. Spectum, Commodore vs. Amstrad, Atari vs. Amiga, etc.). GOLD HILL Through the 80s and 90s, many companies decided to be part of this Personal Computer Gold Rush. Following the evolution of 8-bit and 16- bit microprocessors, they created their own computers, with proprietary hardware, software, OSes, and peripherals. A new mass market of computers for everyone was born and it exploded. For over a decade, users witnessed this PC war, where some brands were making lots of money while others disappeared. Eventually, the market became more mature and slowly entered a more pacified and standardized 32-bit and 64-bit world. A NEW GOLD MINE The current Internet of Things landscape may be considered at the same level of maturity as the PC market in the 1980s but with a clear difference: As PCs back then were part of the same pretty large family with the same main features, the IoT is definitely not. Moreover, IoT solutions are entering all domains of our everyday personal and professional life. However, at present, the Internet of Things market is not just segmented, it is totally fragmented. Each and every day, new players emerge and fade away as well. Overall, we see a proliferation of niche markets with dedicated smart objects. Nowadays, all things tend to become smart or connected : TVs, cars, glasses, watches, phones. And there is this paradox since even the simplest or dumbest things are becoming smart and connected: cutlery, bottles, or baby nappies. But do all these new and apparently smart things bring real additional services and value to users?

3 GOLD FEVER For many the answer clearly is no. Many players are just adventurers and simply fail to really explore how their connected devices are going to provide real additional services and value to users in the long term. Creating and selling smart devices is trendy and a lot of IoT Gold Rushers hope to quickly generate some cash as in don t make sense, make dollars. For instance this smart headphone that posts on Facebook in real time the music you are listening to? Or a connected bottle that is able to tweet when you pour a drink? Or a smart glass which adds the people you toast with to a social network? Certainly innovative, but how useful are these examples? Do they fulfill a real need? As the IoT market is still very young, with customers thirsty for novelties, marketing is a very powerful weapon to sell any kind of smart device. A clever marketing campaign may suffice today to sell such connected-butnot-so-smart devices. However, the market is growing quickly and users do not like to be treated as fools. Customers easily switch to other devices or manufacturers if they feel that they have been duped. A GOLDEN RULE It is not sufficient for a so-called smart object to add and share something using the Internet Protocol. Instead, a device and its services should be useful and essential in the ecosystem of people who bought it. Smart IoT devices need to be designed with a focus on innovative and lasting usage in an ecosystem of people and things. The innovations need to be in line with real public and customers expectations and needs, otherwise the products will fail. In order to be useful, accepted and faithfully used, smart objects must offer genuine value and also be able to share data and behavior with other objects. The innovations need to be in line with real public and customers expectations and needs, otherwise the products will fail. Consider the hot topic of quantifying ourselves aka the ability for users to use smart devices and to incorporate technology into data acquisition on different aspects of a person s daily life in terms of inputs (e.g. food consumed, quality of surrounding air), states (e.g. mood, arousal, blood oxygen levels), and performance (mental and physical). Related to sports here are already plenty of smart devices with more or less appropriate use: Wristbands: Nike+ Fuelband, Fitbit Flex, Jawbone Up Smart glasses: Laster Technologies ProMobileDisplay, Optinvent ORA head-mounted display, Recon Jet, Google Glasses Smart watches: Sony Smartwatch, I m Watch, Motorola MotoACTV, Basis, Samsung Galaxy Gear, Pebble, or Qualcomm Toq, and probably Apple and Google watches soon Sporting gear: Adidas smartball, 94Fifty basketball, tennis racquets Babolat Play&Connect Recently, even some smart caps with head-up displays appeared. Wearing a sports cap is much more natural than wearing glasses, and it is easy

4 to imagine the usefulness of connecting a smart cap with other devices to overview human body parameters. We could immediately adapt our training and exercises by retrieving and displaying various data in the head-up display, for instance: Pulse and oxygen in blood (SPO2) Breathing Body temperature Electrocardiogram Glucometer Galvanic skin response sensor Blood pressure sensor Acceleration Number of strides However, such a multi-parameter Quantified Self approach is not yet available. All devices exist separately and are considered smart, but they are not designed to be connected to sensors or devices from other manufacturers. The same problem exists with smart watches: Either they are not connectable to other devices or they must be used with devices from a single manufacturer: the Galaxy Gear smart watch by Samsung can only be combined with Samsung tablets and smartphones. Moreover, smart watches often are nothing more than a simple remote smartphone screen. Some watches are designed for a specific situation, such as the Nismo Watch from Nissan, dedicated to driving only. Perhaps they can work independently from your smartphone, such as the Omate Truesmart watch (which replaces the smartphone itself). The innovations need to be in line with real public and customers expectations and needs, otherwise the products will fail. Probably only future breakthroughs will be more disruptive, such as smart textile (and companies like Primo1D with electronics directly embedded in yarn), or future generations of smart watches with extended battery-life. This is crucial since users need better features, functions and services from a connected devices ecosystem than an extension of their current smartphone. Quantifying ourselves beyond sports might well involve monitoring the health of elder or sick people, or the physical condition of army soldiers. FOR NOW, SILENCE SEEMS GOLDEN This is the state of the art in the nascent Internet of Things market: fragmented and also extremely segregated in each of its fragmented domains, namely: Segregated by technology: proprietary or non-interoperable communication protocols between smart devices. Segregated by manufacturers who want to defend their turf, and do not want to share information and data from their devices (even in case of the device owners themselves) and want to keep user data secret for their own use.

5 CONCLUSION Today, users are trapped in a vendor lock-in. If they want to extend their ecosystem of smart objects to enrich or facilitate their own life, they are forced to stay with the same manufacturer, as smart devices for the most part fail to interoperate. Smart and connected digital devices compete on innovative ways to attract users and in the market of analysis, processing and displaying data a fierce battle is going on. Data analysis is another huge IoT market in parallel with the devices and services themselves. Understanding the usage and sharing data among users is key for companies to better understand and motivate their customers who have become one with the product/services combination. In order to move the IoT world to the next level, it is necessary to change: to enable connected objects to share a common understanding (instead of a common language/ protocol) Users generate vast volumes of behavioral data by using connected devices, and these are sold e.g. for targeted ads. Therefore much research and development focuses on processing and understanding data streams coming from devices. But even with big data and semantic technologies, IoT will remain in silos, segregated and fragmented if things stay the same. INTEROPERABILITY IS THE GOLD STANDARD In order to move the IoT world to the next level, it is necessary to change: to enable connected objects to share a common understanding (instead of a common language/protocol), allowing real device-to-device or machineto-machine interoperability. Also more intelligence needs to be put into each device for smarter behavior. Connected devices that share directly a set of information and events will greatly enhance the possibilities in user ecosystems, and free users from vendor lock-in. Only then will the Internet of Things genuinely make sense. Only by sharing information at the device level cross-vendor machine-tomachine that is the IoT will truly augment people. This will allow an exponential expansion of connected devices, for users will be free to choose the best suited smart devices regarding their own personal use. Standardization of IoT communication protocols and interoperability at every level, from device to IT, in order to provide an interoperable ecosystem of connected objects is the key to a successful evolution and transformation of the IoT market. If this basic openness fails to occur there is a strong risk that every time an object has been made smart, and every time its niche market has become saturated by a multitude of small companies providing the same but noninteroperable smart object, we will find ourselves in the situation the PC market was and the smartphone market is in. For PCs and smartphones this may work since they are multi-function devices but smart and connected digital things will only be of optimal use in at least an ecosystem of open standards where fundamental interoperability is the norm. Credibility and mainstream adoption of the IoT are at stake.

6 THE POT OF GOLD AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW The Internet of Things promises to transform how we communicate, our way of thinking, our social lives, and our quality of life in many respects. As for now, the IoT market is too fragmented and segregated to achieve this goal. The rainbow shines and we are at the beginning of a journey: Today, the IoT already benefits industries and vertical markets but many barriers have to be overcome for smart and connected digital things to spread out. The anemic Gold Rush of proprietary so-called smart devices is bound to continue in numerous niche markets: Gold diggers hope to make their fortune quickly, but only the most innovative ones will survive. For the sustainable development of an IoT ecosystem where interoperability is guaranteed, players must standardize and ideally open up their API s. Only then there will be this proverbial pot of gold at the end of a currently bright but possibly fast-fading rainbow. David Excoffier IoT R&D/innovation manager Sogeti HighTech