Do we really need the Internet of Things?

I asked this question to Leon Guzenda, one of the founding members of Objectivity.

This is what Leon says: " That’s a good question. It’s only worth inventing a category if the things that it applies to are sufficiently different from other categories to merit it. If we think of the Internet as a network of connected networks that share the same protocol, then it isn’t necessary to define exactly what each node is. The earliest activities on the Internet were messaging, email and file sharing. The WWW made it possible to set up client-server systems that ran over the Internet. We soon had “push” systems that streamed messages to subscribers rather than having them visit a site and read them. One of the fastest growing uses is the streaming of audio and video. We still haven’t overcome some of the major issues associated with the Internet, notably security, but we’ve come a long way.

Around the turn of the century it became clear that there are real advantages in connecting a wider variety of devices directly to each other in order to improve their effectiveness or an overall system. Separate areas of study, such as smart power grids, cities and homes, each came to the conclusion that new protocols were needed if there were no humans tightly coupled to the loop. Those efforts are now converging to the discipline that we call the Internet of Things (IoT), though you only have to walk the exhibitor hall at any IoT conference to find that we’re at about the same point as we were in the early NoSQL conferences. Some companies have been tackling the problems for many years whilst others are trying to bring value by making it easier to handle connectivity, configuration, security, monitoring, etc."

His main message is that

The  Industrial IoT (IIoT) is vital, because it can help improve our quality of life and safety whilst increasing the efficiency of the systems that serve us.

Full text of the interview here.