Internet of Things: Next Big Thing?

I remember when I was 12 and I wanted to crush the stock market. It all began with an excerpt from the Motley Fool about how the Internet of Things (a network of internet-connected objects able to collect and exchange data ) is the next big thing. Here are some examples of the Internet of Things to paint a picture:


That brand new car that comes preloaded with a bunch of apps? Internet of Things. Those smart home devices that let you control the thermostat and play music with a few words? Internet of Things. That fitness tracker on your wrist that lets you tell your friends and family how your exercise is going? You get the point.

Several years and 0 investments (thankfully) later, I've stumbled upon this BusinessInsider article predicting massive growth in the Internet of Things. By 2020, they predict 34 billion devices connected to the internet. Of those 34 billion, they predict 24 billion will be Internet of Things devices and only 10 billion will be traditional computing devices (smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.)

I'm curious to see what WSO thinks of the Internet of Things and BI's predictions. Your thoughts?

 

No one REALLY cares about security, it's always an afterthought.

Particularly from a commercial/enterprise perspective it's treated as a risk management problem. Hell, lot's of companies actually like $X fraud per year, they can point to it and say "our prices are so high because of fraud!"

 

Curious as well. Although I have seen tons of these estimates, some of them are more conservative than 34 bn. There are endless applications for home use and businesses alike. I'm worried about wearables and around the house goods. I think there is a point where people would rather just turn on a light or adjust the thermostat, rather than use an app. IIOT is the real deal though.

 

The_Regulator is absolutely right. Consumers have become increasingly wary of having IoT enabled home devices and the amount of damage hackers can potentially do ie. unlock doors, windows remotely. Cybersecurity will be paramount going forward if IoT is to expand into all new homes. If people don't feel safe with the devices, they'll never be as popular.

 
TheBuellerBanker:

@The_Regulator is absolutely right. Consumers have become increasingly wary of having IoT enabled home devices and the amount of damage hackers can potentially do ie. unlock doors, windows remotely. Cybersecurity will be paramount going forward if IoT is to expand into all new homes. If people don't feel safe with the devices, they'll never be as popular.

That's why you have a big ass dog for security and let the IoT figure out climate control and appliance maintenance.

 
TheBuellerBanker:

@The_Regulator is absolutely right. Consumers have become increasingly wary of having IoT enabled home devices and the amount of damage hackers can potentially do ie. unlock doors, windows remotely. Cybersecurity will be paramount going forward if IoT is to expand into all new homes. If people don't feel safe with the devices, they'll never be as popular.

Sorry but that's just not true.

Consumers are becoming increasingly less wary of having connected devices in their homes... and unfortunately they couldn't care less about cybersecurity, as evidenced by the shocking lack of "password hygiene" (i.e. 123456 being the most common password, lack of 2-factor authentication, weak WiFi encryption, etc.).

Furthermore the economics of personal IoT cyberattacks don't make sense: why go through the trouble of hacking an IoT enabled door and physically breaking into a house, when one could simply crack a target WiFi and sniff credit card info? Way more upside, far less downside.

 

That was an example of what one could do. And it's a matter of sophistication - thieves could very well physically break in but having electronic access to ones home in the way of controlling doors/windows or even collecting personal data would be an overall cleaner operation for whoever is going to the trouble of breaking into your house in the first place.

Also I agree to a certain extent about consumers when it comes to IoT enabled products such as Amazon Echo etc but at least from those I know, having centralized devices which can control home/car and other more vulnerable locations, security is a bigger and bigger concern as it's a well known fact that hackers sre more than capable of capturing and exposing personal data collected by some of these devices

 

Going forward with IoT, the cloud, and advanced analytics, I believe that a basic level of security should be within an open source purview, shared between all major cyber security companies and IoT users. Moving on from there, security companies can build upon this ecosystem and differentiate themselves.

GoldenCinderblock: "I keep spending all my money on exotic fish so my armor sucks. Is it possible to romance multiple females? I got with the blue chick so far but I am also interested in the electronic chick and the face mask chick."
 

Do some research on how GE is leveraging IoT. I'm not saying you cannot point out another company doing more but damn GE is impressive on its rail division for starters.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
 
Best Response

The IoT has been a thing for many years now. It is to IT M&A what FinTech is to FIG M&A. Every IT company under the sun wants to be classified as an IoT company to get a higher multiple, just like every FIG company want to be a FinTech company for the higher multiple. I remember when I started out at this boutique, we did this one random IT deal for two guys who made radar detectors that could talk to each other. Imagine Waze combined with a radar detector. The radar detectors would log areas where police were using radar and then alert drivers of the location of the police. I thankfully left shortly after we started marketing the company, but I remember how painful writing that CIM was. Not only did I have to put together the standard slides that every CIM has, but I had to find a way to tie these radar detectors into GE's IoT, IBM's Watson, etc. The company never sold.

 

For some reason I find the name "Internet of Things" annoying and also misleading. I believe it's too early to tell (still on early fad status) and more something business/tech journals write about to fill in pages/content.

Colourful TV, colourless Life.
 

so as a telecom engineer, and after diving into this thing i can tell you 80% is marketing hype but there are interesting deals

IBM bought the weather company (the company that owns accuweather and lots of weather sensors on the planes) so they can feed the data gathered to Watson the supercalculator, in my view they can produce more reliable agricultural models and have an edge maybe in commodity trading, stuff such as coffee cacao

i luv you guys happy holidays

 

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