Creating an App-Centric Network for the Internet of Things
“The Internet of Things will bloom,” Monte Zweben predicted via an email to me. “IOT will finally live up to the hype, as more machine-generated data will be collected.”
It’s hard to argue with Zweben’s predictions. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Splice Machine, a Hadoop RDBMS, but he’s also known as a Big Data expert who worked at NASA.
Zweben’s also not the only one who foresees big things for the IoT in 2015.
“The Internet of Things will be a real thing in 2015, many of the CIOs we hear are having plans of at least a few pilot projects if not full fledged projects in that space for 2015,” writes Srinivasan Sundara Rajan, vice president of technology for GAVS. “It will be clear that most of these will be green field initiatives as the tools, platforms and frameworks for IoT projects are just evolving.”
No kidding.
That’s the part of these predictions that gets me. By all accounts, IoT requires a handle on Big Data, and the surveys show that adoption is mostly used for innovation only in the technology, technology services and insurance sectors. Is it reasonable to be skeptical when companies still don’t have a firm, enterprise-wide grasp of Big Data? Or application modernization? Or mobile data? Or, for that matter, the middleware to handle all of it?
Actually, now that I think about it, it’s not at all reasonable to expect technology to wait. Historically, data ranks just above security as one of the last issues addressed when new technology is introduced. If the past is a predictor of the future, then we can expect that the IoT will take off in 2015, and then we’ll spend 2016 unraveling the data problems.
After all, it’s not like the “things” are waiting anyway. As Information Week’s commentator Michael Hay points out, there’s already raw data from cameras and sensors in public waterways, streets and venues. The equipment is there, and some of it is already sending data via radio, closed circuit and sometimes Wi-Fi. Heck, there’s already an IoT map.
The cloud does actually present a bright spot, though. Ovum foresees existing middleware and machine-to-machine integration as the first step for specific IoT use cases, but as IoT evolves, it predicts the cloud will play a larger role.
“Cloud-based IoT platforms will continue to gain traction and play a key role in the first wave of IoT adoption by enterprises,” writes Ovum analyst Saurabh Sharma. “However, a lack of common (vendor and platform-agnostic) connectivity standards will hinder wider IoT adoption, especially from the perspective of enterprise IoT initiatives of reasonable scale.”
Loraine Lawson is a veteran technology reporter and blogger. She currently writes the Integration blog for IT Business Edge, which covers all aspects of integration technology, including data governance and best practices. She has also covered IT/Business Alignment and IT Security for IT Business Edge. Before becoming a freelance writer, Lawson worked at TechRepublic as a site editor and writer, covering mobile, IT management, IT security and other technology trends. Previously, she was a webmaster at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and a newspaper journalist. Follow Lawson at Google+ and on Twitter.
