IoT has been around for many years now and today it is the much talked topic and buzz word today. IoT just means that the "things" have capability to communicate with each other through wireless network technologies such as Wifi, Blue-tooth, ZigBee, NFC etc to understand each other and communicate over the internet to each other. The 'things' can be any thing from home appliances, tiny wearable computing devices such as watch, glass, shoes to animals! Yes, you can track and understand your pets through devices tied to your pets.
Internet of things, in-fact its internet of everything is changing the way the internet is being used creating new business opportunities. Some examples of new business opportunities are such as real time monitoring your products, processes which can lead to predictive maintenance and operational efficiency. Your mission critical systems can be more real time and productive. Optimization in your supply chain management by having inventory tracking systems in real time. This improves the visibility of the products and processes and thus winning customer royalty. We can have great energy savings by monitoring the device performance.
IoT has impacts in all types of businesses. This is simply because, as of today, there are many gaps which can be filled with IoT solutions. Not all the 'things' at homes communicate without human intervention. The human intervention can be completely avoided by delegating certain decision making processes to a connected device. For Example: The water pumping motor can be started automatically based on the communication from water level monitoring device in the water storage tank. A self learning thermostat such as Nest or Lyric turns off the cooling/heating when nobody is there at home.
IoT has numerous business opportunities in healthcare sector. Patients being at their home are still connected to their doctor. The wearables for patients monitor the patient health data and report to the doctor in real time. So doctors can monitor the patients remotely. When it comes to smart cities, the real advantage of IoT can exploited. The smart street lamps for example can be auto turned off when there are no moving objects there by saving electricity and smart speakers in public can make automatic announcements based the unusual people activities in public etc.
The challenges for IoT could be lack of internet connectivity everywhere. Some of the IoT solutions today are not necessarily needed. People can still live without it, however the advantages of IoT based solutions need to be realized by all the stakeholders. Google is already making effort in providing the internet everywhere by having new projects such Google Loon project, Google Internet Drone system etc. The internet usage is not free as of today and hope internet will be made free for all and thus increasing internet users and that's when IoT makes more sense and leads to unlimited business opportunities.
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