IoT to experience a steady growth

The evolution of the Internet has had a huge impact on our everyday lives. With the introduction of smart mobile phones in 2007 and now seamless Internet connectivity, our access to information has become direct and simpler than ever before. But, this is only the beginning; the rapidly growing and evolving Internet of Things (IoT) will change everything again. It will have a new massive impact in our lives and without a doubt, it will completely change the structure of society. Despite the fact this statement is perhaps somewhat premature and maybe seem too farfetched to some people ; it is worth considering what impact the Internet  has had on business development, banking, education, social media and file sharing. Tens of new IoT solutions are been introduced daily to the market, from smart home thermostats and smart energy meters to advanced remote access on industrial production lines.

Generally speaking, every device that needs a power supply to work and that has scope to access it remotely can potentially become part of an IoT solution. Lighting, heating and cooling systems, smart TVs and intelligent cars can get connected, sending data to a remote server. An IoT solution is normally composed of a combination of four major ingredients; the sensors, the connectivity, the cloud and the orchestration software. The sensors have been around for a long time, while the programming involved is not particularly complex. The enormous recent development in the field of mobile and wireless communications has been a game changer;  the fast-growing cloud services provide a great solution for the problem of storage and management of big data. The IoT ancestor is machine to machine (M2M), which is only capable of transferring data between the sensor and one station unattended. Normally, this type of information is composed of small data that needs little management - the Google Nest thermostat is a popular M2M example. The most notorious example of cloud growth is set by Amazon S3 service, that had just over 2.9 billion objects on the cloud in 2004, reached 262 billion objects in 2010, hit the 2 trillion objects in 2013 and has been doubling almost every year since.

On the other hand, when it comes to connectivity, Cisco reports a 63 per cent growth of data traffic in cellular communications in 2016. Interestingly enough, the number of mobile network-connected devices and connections grew to 8 billion globally, an increase of 430 million in just a year, the world's population didn't change as much. This indicates that the majority of this drastic change was due to the fast increase of M2M and IoT solutions. Another very interesting quantitative piece of information is revealed in the 18-fold rise of global cellular communication traffic in the past five years. It is obvious that since the dawn of smartphones in 2007 and the gradual introduction of 4G cellular communications since2013, that cellular data usage was going to experience a tremendous increase. Nevertheless, modern telecommunication networks are fully capable of handling this traffic increase and cater for the needs of the commercial IoT solutions. In 2010, IBM predicted "a world of a trillion connected devices" by 2015 while Cisco in 2013 was talking about "50 billion things will be connected to the internet by 2020". A further forecast published by ABI Research in 2014 predicted "41 billion active wireless connected devices" by 2020 when the most recent IHS reports estimate17.6 billion devices for the same year. It seems like the M2M and IoT experts set the expectation sky high at the beginning but people - customers - are not yet ready to accept this fast change.

Learning from past experience, people in wireless communications are getting prepared for the upcoming challenges. In the shade of 4G and WiFi, new telecommunication technologies are gradually being introduced to secure connectivity in remote areas or in areas with poor 4G reception. LoRa is one of these coming very strong into the market, paving the road to success for smart city applications. In a similar manner, GSMA launched the "Mobile IoT initiative" in August 2015 in London to help accelerate the growth of the IoT, somewhat implying there might be a coverage and/or capacity shortage. The scope of the "Mobile IoT initiative" is to develop a new Low Power Wide Area network, provided by Analysys Mason, Machina Research and Strategic Analytics, three of the most respected analyst firms who predict a 2.7 billion LPWA connections by 2022. At the same time, huge activity in the research of IoT has been observed in recent years with conferences, exhibitions and events being held internationally to make new propositions and discuss all the aspects of IoT.

Given the rapid preparations that seem to affect all major technology houses across the world, it is crystal clear that the IoT is happening and it will create new business opportunities. In my opinion, the tech giants will not be able to cover the entire spectrum of services IoT would offer in the following years for end users. It is almost certain that with this opportunity, new technology ventures will start up with innovative solutions and they will gradually gain ground in the market. Some of those companies will not be able to make it through the massive competition and will be absorbed by the competitors or close. However, I am confident that a good number of the new ventures will grow and will play a significant role in the new technology business ecosystem.

Outside the technology business, I expect to see more changes in many other industries such as vehicle production, supply chain, media and transportation. Google is building its own fully autonomous vehicle, while Tesla Motors has its own commercially available driverless model. It is unrealistic to assume that the other car and vehicle manufacturers will stay out of this development. Therefore, IoT and Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication will accelerate the automotive market transformation. In a similar manner, farming practices will completely evolve in the years to come. TV advertisements will be targeted to the needs of the client, and health checks could become a daily routine rather than a sporadic one. An efficient public transportation system will increase the number of passengers who will be leaving their cars at home, while better supply chains will bring costs down and improve customer satisfaction.

Almost 200 years have passed since the start of the Industrial Revolution and my prediction is that we are in front of another historic moment, a new revolution that will have serious consequences in the business world. It is also my impression that a major reason for the slower than initially forecasted adoption of IoT solutions is a consequence of the difficulty businesses have identifying new streams of revenue. Moreover, what is difficult to identify is public behaviour. If the IoT was a product of the traditional business world, the profit would come from selling the product or a hardware device. But in the world that we live in, the device might come for free as long as there was a recurring revenue from an IoT solution. In a similar manner, in the old business model, the offering would be a standalone product that would be ageing soon after purchase, while the emerging market model will be offering a product that updates itself, increasing its value and services.

In such a new environment, entrepreneurship difficulties are many and the business world has to move a long way ahead to prepare the ground for innovation. Currently, key business practices are at best blurred, the income generating possibilities are yet to be investigated while most of the commercially available IoT solutions are still at a premature stage. Besides all those, the biggest obstacle to new business ventures is no other than a massive and complex ecosystem. It completely lacks structure and a governing body that will help shape the environment and make the roles in the ecosystem discrete.  The traditional business models concentrate on the stakeholder but it is obvious that in new markets the interest will shift to the designers, innovators and developers. It is crucial for business managers to first organise the shape of the ecosystem before deciding on the business model of a new venture.

On the other hand, this premature state of the IoT landscape is keeping large enterprises in an observing position, unprepared to aggressively hit a poorly structured market. This gives new entrepreneurs the freedom to be innovative about their products, their streams of revenue and of course the business planning.

The 2nd University of Northampton IoT event was organised and held at the University last month with "Entrepreneurship in Technology" being the central topic of the event. Some exceptional speakers in the field presented their views on emerging businesses from their personal experiences. It was impressive to hear how they all have fantastic innovative ideas to present; they were all very excited and convinced that sooner or later the IoT and M2M industry will take off but it was unclear to them too where will the profit come from.

In the years to come, handheld device functions will shrink, and wearable devices will very rapidly gain ground and their share in the market. A smartwatch is already capable of taking basic health condition measurements (such as pulse, blood pressure, temperature etc) throughout the day and when those readings are poor trigger alarms to the user, a doctor, a medical centre or a hospital depending on how critical the condition of the patient is. An ambulance can be automatically dispatched to the location provided by the GPS receiver of the smartwatch, in case the patient is not in a good physical position to ask for help. A fully autonomous first aid drone could fly to the location of the patient (given that there is somebody there to help) while the wearable device can provide a continuous feedback to the hospital where the patient will be taken. In the meantime, the appropriate preparations will be made at the hospital to treat the patient efficiently, and, if necessary, instantly find a free bed.

Connected animals are the new trend in IoT. Small devices fitted on sheep or cattle can detect the location of the animal in a field, the amount of distance travelled in a day, the quantity and quality of the food consumed and finally the amount of milk produced. The farmer will be receiving information from all the animals on the farm, on a live basis, and will be able to intervene if necessary.

One of the first fields automation took place in was farming. Automatic watering systems are necessarily used in dry areas of the world where resources are limited and water economy is essential. Nevertheless, by taking regional measurements on a farm and knowing the soil and weather conditions, an adaptive watering system will only spray the areas where soil needs it. This will save water, reduce the energy wasted and maintain the crop's condition uniform across the farm.

A tracking device reporting the position of a refrigerator lorry in the country, equipped with various sensors in the carriage that will be monitoring the condition of the food, can guarantee fast delivery and excellent condition of the products carried. It also allows both the supplier and the reseller to track the location of the load. They can both collect crucial data that will help them make future decisions, such as adjust the temperature in the refrigerator, build a new warehouse to serve a certain geographic area and a lot more.

It is predicted that by 2020, at least 80 per cent of the new cars shipped worldwide will be equipped with entertainment systems that will run either iOS or Android operating systems. The dashboard units will be capable of receiving voice instructions, to perhaps find a great restaurant with comfortable parking, get scores and reviews, navigate from present position to the desired location using 3D maps and comfortable turn-to-turn navigation. The system will be notified well in advance of an upcoming fast moving emergency vehicle and will give instruction to pull over or reroute to take an earlier turn to make room on the road.

Living in an era when technology is rapidly evolving, the public is very familiar with unrestricted access to information and the Internet, while the following generations will be brought up with the technology. The environment is fully appropriate for new ventures, with a focus on high-tech products. The IoT will be playing the central-most role in this new era while the world is been prepared to for a new dawn. Pending the developments of business and legal frameworks where new technologies can grow,the IoT will experience a steady and smooth growth.