?Extending the Internet into the physical world using IoT
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an ecosystem of complex technology that is driven by business requirements which could potentially be simplistic.
The Internet of Things is simply an extension of the current Internet, further into our physical world, into things.
Although the technology is an evolution and one of the latest buzz words, its implementation into business is a revolution, often referred to as the 4th Industrial Revolution. Even though there is a large amount of hype associated with it, it is very real and tangible.
There are two main categories of IoT namely consumer and business where the latter includes commercial, industrial, and infrastructure applications of IoT. The main difference between the two categories is that consumer IoT is typically wearable and business IoT is luggable.
Smart products have been around for more than five decades. These are simple embedded electronic devices. The next step was to connect these devices and the final step is the technical evolution to IoT.
The engineering or plumbing view of IoT consists of a technology stack, going from the media layer, through the networking layer, to the application layer. But it is better to understand what IoT can do for your business.
Business view
Basically, the business view of IoT consists of four parts:
- software-defined product;
- hardware-defined product;
- network fabric; and
- interface to external systems.
Fundamentally these components of IoT products are focused on either collecting data or transforming it into useful information, and is underpinned by an overarching concept known as Big Data. IoT products operate by having the hardware-defined product and external systems collect data which is transported through the network fabric, to the software-defined product, where it's transformed, along with analytics, into business value.
If you would like to known more about how IoT can be useful to yourselves, please inbox me. You can also read my stories on Medium here or read the articles on Forbes titled "A Simple Explanation Of 'The Internet Of Things'".
