The ability to draw on an ever-increasing array of data from a variety of sources is called collectively “The Internet of Things” (IoT). IoT is now recognised and considered a key driver of the digital transformation agenda that enables businesses to reinvent products, services, internal operations and business models. So what are the origins of IoT?
"The ‘perfect storm’ for IoT was created from broadband internet becoming more widely available, the decreasing costs of connecting devices, more devices being created with built in WIFI capabilities and senors and the smartphone penetration sky-rocketing."
(Source: A Simple Explanation to the 'Internet of Things' by Jacob Morgan)
And so all the key elements for IoT existed due to smartphones:
IoT is a rapidly growing global sector, Gartner predicts the IoT market will be worth $15 trillion by 2030. At Vortex IoT we firmly believe that by facilitating the adoption of rugged sensor technology into challenging real-world industrial applications, the efficiency and performance of businesses will be vastly improved.
By the end of 2017, there were 8.4 billion connected devices globally, an increase of 31% from 2016 and a figure that is more than double the year-on-year growth achieved across 2012-2016.
Cisco had this to say in December 2017:
“2018 will be a watershed year for IoT, where we move from a first phase that focused on incremental improvements, to a new phase in which IoT gains momentum as barriers and challenges are addressed, in terms of security market structures, industry standards and so on. We are moving beyond the basics, to an era of more advanced value propositions. From that perspective IoT in 2018 will be about the transformational impact these technologies can have, “less about hype, and more about business benefit.”
At our Swansea HQ we are actively developing and deploying new and cutting-edge technologies that solve known business problems.
Industrial IoT simply is just a term used to define when IoT is implemented in an industrial and manufacturing environment.
Industry 4.0 is the term used to describe the move towards digitalisation which has led to the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies and industrial settings. This includes IoT, cloud computing and cyber-physical systems. Industry 4.0 will see shifts in Heavy Industry which will be heavily driven by IoT and Artificial Intelligence.
"The Industrial Internet provides a way to get better visibility and insight into the company's operations and assets through integration of machine sensors, middle ware, software, and back-end cloud compute and storage systems. Therefore, providing a solution of transforming business operational processes using the feedback from the results gained by interrogating large data sets through advanced analytics.
The business gains are achieved through operational efficiency gains and accelerated productivity, which results in reduced unplanned downtime and optimized efficiency and therefore profits."
(Source: Industry 4.0 by A Gilchrist)
Aidan Fyans Vortex IoT R&D Engineer