Coming out of the Internet of Things ‘Trough of Disillusionment’!
After reaching the peak of inflated expectations five years
ago, IoT spent the last four years in the ‘trough of disillusionment’ before finally
coming up the slope of enlightenment where we are today (Gartner IoT Hype Cycle).
So, what happened during those four years that got us to the point where we are
beginning to see IoT projects emerge on a substantial scale? The answers are
both obvious and somewhat unexpected. Three key areas of IoT evolved!
Semiconductors (Chips)
For the last 50 years the semiconductor industry has been
driven by Moore’s law, roughly a doubling of processing speed and memory
capacity every two years. For IoT this has tremendous impact as what makes a
device Smart – or a Thing – is the ‘potential’ addition of processing power AND
connectivity to every conceivable product. The reason I say potential is that
this is only feasible if adequate processing power and connectivity can be
delivered at an acceptable cost – and only drawing power so that devices can be
powered sufficiently – especially in circumstances where power is only
available through battery. Starting four to five years ago, semiconductor
manufacturers started to introduce so call IoT SOCs (System on a Chip) that
incorporated fast processing, enough memory and radio connectivity that could
be battery powered for initially a year or two. Today’s chips combined with the
right battery technology can be powered for 5-10 years. And the cost for such a
low-end chip is heading towards the magical $1 mark.
Connectivity
While most wireless and all wired connectivity standards
used today existed five years ago, some have evolved as standards (Bluetooth, Zigbee
and LoRaWAN), but others like cellular narrowband IoT have been introduced
since then. More important, all connectivity standards have evolved and become
more robust and easier to use, and where network coverage and gateway availability
is concerned, have become usable across most geographies in the US and Europe
with associated price drops for connectivity where applicable (Cellular NB-IoT
and LoRaWAN).
IoT Cloud Platforms
These went through their own ‘hype cycle’ with alarmist
articles stating that there were more than 500 and counting. Yes, many industry
verticals and geographies will have their own IoT platforms, but what has
happened is that two of the largest cloud providers, Amazon and Microsoft, have
solidified their AWS and Azure IoT offerings, respectively, making them cost
effective alternatives to many special purpose platforms. This has brought down
the overall complexity of implementing IoT and established the IoT platform
component as a well-known corporate IT core cost element instead of loading
monthly ‘per device’ costs onto products and services.
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