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.

Put together, these three evolutions are what brought IoT out of the ‘trough of disillusionment’ onto the slope of enlightenment.  The good news is that we are now heading into real IoT growth!  

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