Are we to add the Internet of Things to the pantheon of top strategic technology priorities for the decade? That’s the question increasingly in front of IT decision makers these days as tech vendors add the buzzphrase to their marketing and practitioners evaluate the rapidly growing array of related tools and technologies.
That’s not to say there’s much doubt about the phenomenon itself. There’s essentially no question that the Internet of Things (IoT) is fast becoming entrenched both in consumer and enterprise IT. It already seems like just about other new digital device that emerges these days comes with an app to monitor or control it, remote home automation devices are exploding, and everything electric and digital seems to be heading for 24/7 connection to the Internet.
The data is familiar to anyone tracking the story: By 2020, IoT will be a $8.9 trillion market in 2020, with over 212 billion connected things. To put that in perspective, that’s about half the size of the entire U.S. economy, meaning that the connectedness of everything will soon be one of the world’s largest industries, even though one might say it’s nothing more than a convergence of the top pre-existing trends of smart mobility, cloud, and big data.
