A LITTLE BEE BOOK. What is the Internet of Things?

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1 A LITTLE BEE BOOK What is the Internet of Things?

2 This book belongs to: A LITTLE BEE BOOK What is the Internet of Things? Adapted from a variety of sources by Bob Yelland For more copies of this book, or to read others in the series, visit: littlebeelibrary.com

3 The Internet of Things, or IoT, refers to the growing range of Internet-connected devices that capture or generate an enormous amount of information every day. For consumers, these devices include mobile phones, smart watches, sports wearables, home heating and air conditioning systems. For businesses, these are devices and sensors that can be found in manufacturing equipment, the supply chain, and invehicle components. IoT is the third wave of the internet. The 1990s internet wave connected one billion users while the 2000s mobile wave connected another two billion. The IoT has the potential to connect 10 times as many (28 billion) things to the internet by 2020, ranging from bracelets to cars. Experts estimate that the data from these devices will yield insights that drive economic value of more than 9 trillion by This convergence of connecting people, things, data and processes is transforming our life, business and everything in between. 4

4 IoT can make life easier for all of us. Imagine if you had smart devices in your home, and how they could change your morning routine. Start by setting your smart alarm clock for 6am. Your clock connects to your coffee machine, so it has a cup of your favourite brew ready for you. Your central heating system is also connected, so it s warm when you wake up, and there s plenty of hot water. Your car is connected to your calendar, so the satellite navigation is set up with your route as you step into your car. And when you hit traffic it can text or your team to let them know you ll be a bit late. Your car then identifies and reserves a parking space before you arrive. 6

5 The following significant technology changes have enabled the rise of the IoT. Cheap sensors: Prices have halved in the past ten years, with many available for pennies. Cheap bandwidth: The cost of bandwidth has declined by a factor of nearly 40 times over the past ten years and Wi-Fi coverage is now ubiquitous. Cheap processing: Similarly, processing and storage costs have declined by nearly 60 times over the past ten years, enabling more devices to be not just connected, but analysed in real-time. Smartphones: Act as the personal gateway to the IoT, serving as a remote control or hub for the connected home, car or health and fitness devices. IPv6: The newest version of the Internet Protocol (IP) standard can support 128-bit addresses, approximately 3.4 x IoT devices, an almost limitless number. 8

6 As almost everything from cars to crops to conveyor belts becomes connected, IoT will change the way businesses operate. By combining IoT data with advanced analytics, and even cognitive computing, business can extract valuable insights to improve virtually every aspect of their operations. For instance, in a connected building, data can be used to save energy and initiate predictive maintenance. Sensors on the production line can provide information that increase efficiency. In-store devices can help retailers improve the customer experience. And medical data from wearable devices can be used to save lives. Today, over 50% of IoT activity is centred in manufacturing, transportation, smart city, and consumer applications, but within five years all industries will have rolled out IoT initiatives. By infusing intelligence into systems and processes, businesses will be able operate more efficiently, improve customer satisfaction, discover new business opportunities, and anticipate risks and threats so they can address them proactively. 10

7 IoT can even make businesses and our environment greener and local government departments will compete to build innovative and sustainable smart cities. The Internet of Things (IoT) can help you conserve precious resources and eliminate waste. It starts by making sense of the ocean of raw data produced every minute by the thousands of connected things that make up your business, supply chain and products. When you understand your physical world, you can see opportunities to improve resource efficiency, reduce pollution, and stimulate new thinking and innovation. Positive environmental stewardship can help reduce costs, ensure a healthier working environment, attract talent and build brand awareness. 12

8 Analyst firm, IDC made a number of IoT predictions during 2015: Cloud: Within the next five years, more than 90% of all IoT data will be hosted in the cloud. Security: Within two years, 90% of all IT networks will have an IoT-based security breach, although many will be considered inconveniences. Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) will be forced to adopt new IoT policies. The edge: By 2018, 40% of IoT-created data will be stored, processed, analysed, and acted upon close to, or at the edge, of the network. Network capacity: Within three years, 50% of IT networks will be network constrained with nearly 10% of sites being overwhelmed with IoT data. Embedded systems: By 2018, 60% of IT solutions originally developed as proprietary, closed-industry solutions will become open-sourced, allowing a rush of vertical-driven IoT markets to form. 14 Source: IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Internet of Things 2015 Predictions Web Conference

9 With all its promises and potential, IoT has three major challenges: unified standards for devices, privacy and security. The expansion of IoT will be slow without common standards for the connected devices or sensors. This requires interoperable, open standards-based systems. Data is the currency of IoT, and the secure capture and transmission of information from things is critical. In the IoT, everything becomes an access point on the network, which creates new security and privacy challenges. To protect your network, you must understand how data will move from device to device, across data centres, and even across borders and develop security and privacy protocols that will reliably collect the data in compliance with regulatory obligations. Without strong security at all joints of the IoT and protection of data, the progress of IoT will be hindered by litigation and social resistance. 16

10 Early applications of the IoT are delivering great value, and creating opportunities for new, disruptive business models to emerge. For example, National Grid is using the IoT to proactively and predictively maintain the health of the electricity network in real time. Robert Bosch is developing intelligent, interconnected automotive products to deliver on the promise of smarter vehicles. And Vodafone is gathering and analysing information from sensors in Spanish cities to improve urban living from mobility, emergency management, energy, water, and education, through to healthcare. And yet, we are merely scratching the surface. Nearly 90% of the 6,000 exabytes of IoT data currently generated is wasted. For example, only 1% of data from an oil rig with 30,000 sensors is examined in the hunt for anomalies. 18

11 20 At its heart, the Internet of Things is a data challenge. The traditional approach to programmable computing a series of pre-determined, if/then processes simply cannot process the types of data needed to fulfil the true promise of the IoT. Programmable systems thrive on prescribed scenarios using predictable data. This rigidity limits their usefulness in addressing many aspects of a complex, fastpaced world, where the value of data decreases exponentially every second it goes unused. Cognitive computing has no such limitations. Rather than being explicitly programmed, cognitive systems learn from interactions with humans and their experiences with their environment. They are not deterministic. They are probabilistic. And this enables them to keep pace with the volume, complexity, and unpredictability of information generated by the IoT. That means businesses are now able to illuminate aspects of the IoT that were previously invisible: allowing businesses to make more informed decisions.

12 When cognitive computing is applied to the IoT, the result is what we call Cognitive IoT, which we define as systems that infuse intelligence into, and learn from, the physical world. In addition to generating answers to numerical problems, cognitive systems can present unbiased hypotheses, reasoned arguments and recommendations. They understand an organisation s goals, and can integrate and analyse the relevant data to help businesses achieve those goals. The purpose of the Internet of Things is to connect us more closely with the physical world. It shares information with us about the cars we drive, the tools we use, and the buildings we live in. But without cognitive computing, the usefulness of this information would be limited by its own complexity and scale. We would only be able to see slivers of insight. The rest would remain in the dark. 22

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