IT is no longer a proprietary tool that could provide competitive advantage to a particular firm. Rather, it has become a commodity for business that firms look up to for digit
ization of their business models. Most businesses are focused on getting products to market more quickly, adapting to regulatory requirements, increasing efficiency, and most importantly-continuing to innovate .This is where an IOT platform can help. People can connect to each other, not through their voices, but through things that they use, cars that they drive, watches that they wear. All this is possible because Internet of Things has made it possible.
The Internet of Things (IoT, sometimes Internet of Everything) is the network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics,softwares,sensors and connectivity to enable objects to exchange data with the manufacturer, operator and/or other connected devices . The buzz about the Internet of things really took off in 2014, when Google acquired smart thermostat and smoke alarm company Nest for $3.2 billion. The Internet of Things allows objects to be sensed and controlled remotely across segments. Earlier, mainframes were replaced by objects like desktop computers-which have further become antique. In the present era, handheld tablets, mobiles are all one needs to access any information anywhere. Internet has become like a digital fabric woven into lives of all of us in some way or the other. It’s started with the Smartphone which can detect where you are, knows how you are holding it ,how much light is there in a room. Hence IOT has the potential to revolutionize life. According to Gartner, Inc. (a technology research and advisory corporation), there will be nearly 26 billion devices on the Internet of Things by 2020. The public sector can play in being a leader in adopting IoT products and services. The IoT represents an opportunity for government to invest smartly, while extracting maximum value for citizens.
The real digital transformation of IoT will happen through digital processes. A key requirement for the success of IoT is the end-to-end digitization of processes. Traditionally, process automation was coordinated around humans, business partners, or enterprise applications. That landscape is changing with the rise of Things. Take, for example, a complex and dynamic digital process: the coordination of the arrival and departure of an airplane in a busy airport. The business outcome is the timely departure. The participants include airport staff (baggage, refuelling, catering) as well as things that can be queried for sensor data or asked to carry out tasks. Autonomous or semi-autonomous Things are becoming active participants in business processes. So IT in increasingly digital enterprises needs to provide not only the technology infrastructure for Things, but also a business process automation platform for making things part of business outcomes.
In India, IoT has huge potential. IoT can be the key to ensure superior consumer engagement and enhanced quality of life, whether it is in retail, utilities, healthcare, transport or in the government sector. It can help drive up the revenue through targeted marketing and better customer service. IoT can also play a significant role in manufacturing and supply chain industries by driving costs down, improving safety of operations and quality of output. It can help eliminate human error to a large extent and provide for better execution of supply chains. , IoT systems could also be responsible for performing actions, not just sensing things. Thus, the internet of things creates an opportunity to measure, collect and analyse an ever-increasing variety of behavioral statistics. Cross-correlation of this data could revolutionize the targeted marketing of products and services. Intelligent shopping systems, for example, could monitor specific users’ purchasing habits in a store by tracking their specific mobile phones. These users could then be provided with special offers on their favorite products, or even location of items that they need, which their fridge has automatically conveyed to the phone.
The IoT infrastructure can be used for monitoring any events or changes in structural conditions that can compromise safety and increase risk. It can also be utilized for scheduling repair and maintenance activities in an efficient manner, by coordinating tasks between different service providers and users of these facilities. In Medical and healthcare systems, IoT devices can be used to enable remote health monitoring and emergency notification systems. These health monitoring devices can range from blood pressure and heart rate monitors to advanced devices capable of monitoring specialized implants, such as pacemakers or advanced hearing aids. Specialized sensors can also be equipped within living spaces to monitor the health and general well-being of senior citizens, while also ensuring that proper treatment is being administered and assisting people regain lost mobility via therapy as well.
Still, the IoT revolution implementation in full degree is not free of hurdles. There has been and still is much hype about the “Internet of Things”. Today, a large number of different means are used to enable communication between heterogeneous devices. We see these as “Intranet of Things”, representing vertical silos that do not support interoperability. However, this balkanisation of efforts will lead to a predictable slowdown in devising a viable global solution. Furthermore, existing solutions do not address the scalability requirements for a future Internet of Things, they provide inappropriate models of governance and fundamentally neglect privacy and security in their design. Concerns have been raised that the Internet of Things is being developed rapidly without appropriate consideration of the profound security challenges involved and the regulatory changes that might be necessary. According to the BI (Business Insider) Intelligence Survey conducted in the last quarter of 2014, 39% of the respondents said that security is the biggest concern in adopting Internet of Things technology. In particular, as the Internet of Things spreads widely, cyber attacks are likely to become an increasingly physical (rather than simply virtual) threat.
However, the opportunities presented by the IoT far outweigh the challenges if managed with the right partner. There’s no doubt that the increasing adoption of IoT will certainly have an impact on the job market in India. Some current roles will become redundant. It should, however, also create new opportunities, some of which we cannot even envision today. There will be new opportunities in traditional verticals. Software development, data management, analytics are all areas that should see strong growth as IoT adoption gains momentum. At the same time, some new hybrid verticals (like IT + Medicine) may emerge. Hence IOT promises to be a technology that would truly revolutionize the world, and engulf every sphere of human life.
References
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/
