Ashish Gulati, Country Head, Telit India

The internet of things (IoT) has finally emerged from a prolonged primary stage and is going mainstream. As per TechCrunch, IoT is reaching escape velo­city. Internet-connected sensors and applications will soon be monitoring and even running every aspect of our lives – from “smart” homes to self-driven cars to retail stores and all the way to managing our health and fitness.

Ever since the development of microprocessors and network-based instruments, companies in process industries such as oil and gas, chemicals, refining, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and mining have been avidly exploring how to use sensors to make their processes more reliable, efficient and safe.

Service cloud being a new era of service for the connected world has radically changed the typical IT infrastructure from a defined set of assets owned and controlled by an organisation to a constantly fluctuating roster of resources that may or may not lie within the IT department’s visibility and control. Alongside, we have witnessed an explosion in new internet-connected life forms, mobile devices, tablets, sensors, ac­tu­ators, home appliances, monitoring systems, content access devices and wireless ter­minals. Applications running on these devices range from recreation to services critical to the functioning of our social and economic infrastructure.

Considering the falling cost of processors, connecting anything and everything seems possible. Each device acts as a sensor, collecting data about its environment. When connected, a device can transmit any data we choose to other devices. Pro­perly contextualised, this creates a rich, un­limited trove of information. A big part of proper context is location. Devices can potentially talk to each other by accessing a single network, the same way users access a network using a single device now. With a living, breathing, communicating network, vehicles, homes, cities and people will eventually transform into smarter vehicles, smarter homes, smarter cities and eventually, smarter people.

IoT will, in the foreseeable future, deliver an unparalleled opportunity for spatial analysis. Unfortunately, current analytical methods are largely manual and relatively cumbersome. Each day, for ins­tance, when a person prepares to leave for work, he or she embraces a litany of chores before leaving. Check the weather and traffic, adjust the thermostat, flip the lights, set the alarm or lock the door. Now imagine a whole smart city. A transit stop could tell when the next bus or train is coming in real time; not based on the daily schedule. A smart car could direct the driver to the nearest vacant parking spot. Similarly, smart appliances could make blowouts a thing of the past by controlling millions of high-consumption devices during peak demand.

Companies are building these systems now. But they will need more than mass-produced devices and a world covered in sensors. A whole ecosystem of connectivity from digital and physical infrastructure to apps needs to exist. Network operators will need sophisticated software solutions, spatial analytics and prescriptive modelling tools. If that happens, it will be possible to witness the first true integration of the physical, digital and analytical worlds. The internet revolution has redefined business-to-consumer industries such as media, retail and financial services. In the next 10 years, the IoT revolution will dramatically alter manufacturing, energy, agriculture, transportation and other in­dustrial sectors of the economy, which together account for nearly two-thirds of the global gross domestic product. It will also fundamentally transform how people work through new interactions between humans and machines. As the industrial internet gains broader adoption, businesses will shift from products to outcome-based services, where businesses compete on their ability to deliver measurable results to customers. Such outcomes may range from guaranteed machine uptimes on factory floors to actual amounts of energy saving in commercial buildings, or to guaranteed crop yields from a specific farmland.

All the above-mentioned facts lead to the core issue of security. IoT security concerns every aspect of the digital landscape, with high market expectations from consultation firms, enterprises and carriers. Although IoT brings many benefits, it also brings threats. Unfortunately, the in­dustry’s understanding of security issues varies. There is a gap between the ideal and the real scenario. However, fortunately, IoT will definitely be standardised, open, secure and made easy to use in the future. We must embrace cooperation and innovation from a global perspective to jointly build a multilayered, end-to-end secure IoT world and contribute to the development of the ideology, theories and architecture. However, this will take time. We must seize the opportunity and work together to accelerate the process. To realise the ideal, security is critical.

In order to promote the large-scale deployment of IoT, the industry must raise awareness, and governments and international organisations must improve the corresponding laws, regulations and standards. Further, a healthy ecosystem must be formed to build a trusted, managed and secure world with IoT.