The Internet of Things (IoT) also known as the Internet of Everything is the network of physical objects embedded with electronics, software, and sensors with connectivity that enables these objects to exchange data. The Internet of Everything allows objects to be sensed and controlled remotely across existing network infrastructures thus creating opportunities for direct integration between the physical world and computer-based systems.
Ideally this connectivity results in improved efficiency, accuracy and economic benefit while also opening up new possibilities for more intense and powerful attacks on these highly connected objects as well as new potential for abuse of consumer’s personal information.
IoE has the potential to be the biggest business opportunity in the history of mankind. It is changing the world in extraordinary and wide-ranging ways that will affect everyone.
Like the significant change heralded by the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries we are now at the beginning of a wave of innovation that is changing the way we do business and the way we interact with machines.
Some researchers are predicting that this massive shift will generate nearly US$9 trillion in annual sales by 2020. To put this in perspective, the total annual sales of the San Francisco Bay area’s 150 largest technology companies in 2012 were 677 billion the consumer electronics industry in 2013 was about US$1.1 billion and in 2014 hit a high of US$211.3 billion.
One study conducted by General Electric concluded that the Internet of Things (IoT) over the next twenty years could add as much as $15 trillion to the global gross domestic product (GDP). That is roughly the size of today’s US economy.
The Internet of Everything will change people’s daily lives in diverse ways from the way we drive our car, use and save energy, manage healthcare to the way we work and play. This evolving technology will create new and different jobs and businesses requiring highly skilled workers.
Technology companies working in next-generation intelligent networking, inclusive technologies and Big Data predictive analytics have wide open market opportunities. At the same time boundaries of device authority, security and privacy and universal cyber identity will create new challenges in the realm of security. The World Internet of Things Forum in Barcelona recently identified security and privacy as top concerns as devices and sensors become the eyes and ears of this next century.