What’s the future for IoT?

We asked 19 executives involved in different IoT companies this question. Their answers predict a future of completely connected devices and real-time access to virtually any data imaginable for completely informed decision making.

Here’s what they said:

1. We’ll overestimate what it can do in 10 years and underestimate what it can do in 20. More seamless interaction. We’re removing humanity—in some places this is good, in others? (e.g., electronic seal with alzheimers patient versus a real person).
2. The ability to aggregate and analyze disparate data. Whatever you can monitor/measure and imagine, you’ll be able to do.
3. We are currently at the Internet of Thing. Every manufacturer is creating a single product. We have to go across manufacturers and start talking to one another. This is two to five years aways.
4. The market is endless. It’s exciting. Build great software with a sophisticated backend with multiple security levels like Cisco is offering. Bring order and sophistication to data. Security is currently 10th on the list. It needs to be in the top five. Security is an art that involves cryptography. Most companies don’t have the talent they need to develop secure products.
5. Very wild west. Major players will emerge. Platform wars will enable a vast network of sensors to work together. A dominant platform will emerge. There are a lot of custom platforms right now. We’ll see more standardization of platforms and more plug and play. Right now everyone is doing different things for different reasons - raw socket versus HTTP requests. Things will standardize over time. Ten years ago I worked on a vehicle management system that, today, has evolved to more standardized common protocol for a more reliable and scalable infrastructure. Hardware manufacturers that make server boards are now doing distributed processing because data is not going to a centralized location. There’s so much data, you have to decide what’s relevant to keep.
6. It’s becoming ubiquitous. In 10 years, anything that needs to be connected will have the ability to be present on the internet.
7. We will have 25 to 50 billion connected devices which will connect via a mesh network. This will bring global, ubiquitous access to data and will make the life of telcos more difficult. Google is looking in to ubiquitous wi-fi - the devices can connect to the network or range of devices through a decentralized mesh network. Cloud networks are expanding. The global cloud will have all devices residing there. Render connected devices provide computational power to someone on the other side of the world.
8. More and more devices are connected to each other via APTs. Connect all the things that you want. Drive to your home, garage door opens without pressing a button, coffee starts, heat adjusts, etc.
9. We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Adoption of technology is a fraction of what it will be.
10. Piece of human computer interaction. Bigger than putting things on the internet. Make it understandable, understanding, enhance humanity. Make IoT move in a more humanistic way.
11. Unified ecosystem of all devices where companies talk to each other. There has to be a standard. Maybe it’s established by Apple or Google because of the size of their user bases.
12. We will continue to see the evolution of personal devices - glasses, watches, personal devices, home devices. Hardware will connect everything. This will be led at the enterprise level by the IBMs and Ciscos. I’m not as close to the enterprise level. Will introduce to Belkin and Fitbit.
13. The ability to use data from devices to make intelligent, informed decisions.
14. Using data to iterate your products quickly while they’re in the customers’ hands.
15. Creating a smarter world. Companies not working in silos. Open to other partners, providers and vendors to promote the sharing of information, automation and best practices.
16. Remaking everything - healthcare, cars, cities, homes, industry.
17. It’s exciting. We haven’t even started to fully understand the possibilities of getting remote control via the phone. Learning patterns will automatically adjust over time and people will see new possibilities.
18. Visibility and reliability. The percent of industrial equipment that is currently connected is between one and 25% depending on the company. There’s tremendous opportunity to connect equipment. Likewise, the probability of detecting an important event without false positives is about 30%, except at GE where we’re a world class 99%. The ability to tell what’s wrong and to diagnose a solution is nowhere near 99%. We’re probably at 30% right now. We must improve the model of the machine and the people that interacted with it and what they did. When we’re able to capture more information on the machines and the people, we’ll move from anomaly detection to correction. Providing better operational data to the cloud will help us improve operational optimization.
19. It will evolve like other IT. Wildly hyped and then clocked and scaled over the next five to seven years. The next frontier will be more customer centric. We’re currently working with a commercial carpet manufacturer putting RFID chips in squares of carpet to see traffic patterns in stores.