IoT – The New Revolution of the Internet

Just as the invention of money changed the economic conditions of the world, the Internet is also going to change the economic condition of the whole world along with human behavior. The Internet has gone far beyond the initial e-mail and has penetrated humans and things. It is not known when the people of the whole world will be united, but now many devices of the world are going to unite on one platform, and the name of that platform is “Internet of Things” (IoT).

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most influential factors shaping the business of the future. It represents the innovation that is driving a new digital economy, an economy of interconnected things, that will drive business opportunities and decisions through sensors, tracking, measuring, mapping. In India it is slowly spreading its feet.

Experts estimate that in the next two years, there will be more than 2 billion IoT devices connected in India, out of which it aims to connect at least one billion devices using the IoT platform. Companies like SigFox and LoRA are working on the Internet of Things on a large scale mainly on the LPWAN technology, which connects millions of devices through free spectrum which gives way to low energy consumption. Both these companies have started seeing the future of IoT in India.

“Internet of Things” (IoT), smart city, smart building, smart grid, smart power, smart home, or smart office is becoming a subject of debate across the globe. It is a new concept that is going to affect everything we live, walk and work in. But do you know what this “IoT” is and how are we going to be drawn to it?

We have come a long way from the era when the Internet was only for computers and mobiles, now it has entered our everyday devices and has also included our everyday things in itself. Now laptop or mobile is not needed for internet, your everyday thing can be used for it. IoT technology makes it internet enabled. Today like our television sets, our electricity, distribution transformer even our car have become smart with the help of the IoT technology the only limitation is our imagination.

As Internet becomes widely available, the cost of connecting is decreasing day by day, more and more devices are being built with Wi-Fi capabilities and sensors built into them, technology costs are decreasing, and smartphone penetration is skyrocketing. All these things are preparing the ground for IoT.

We can simply state, the Internet of Things is basically the concept of connecting any number of devices to the Internet and/or to each other. This includes everything from mobile phones, coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps, air conditoning units, electric switches, car,etc.  almost anything else you can think of. IoT will create a huge network of not only things but also people, and thus we can rephrase IoT(Internet of Things) to IoE (Internet of Everything).

Being smart won’t be limited to Humans and cities, we will have smart buildings, smart homes, smart office, smart agriculture, smart factory, smart streetlight, smart grid, smart power, smart car, and smart will be our lifestyle. It is going to change our lives and the way we do business in the coming years.

Imagine, you are leaving for a meeting, your car will take you wherever you want to go according to your calendar and this smart car will have already done its preparation for your meeting based on the information it possess the meeting time, the real-time traffic, the route to take, when to leave, what brief will you have to give on the way.

Your alarm, your office, your laptop, your car, the traffice, the meeting participants will all be interconnected and work in harmony with each other. Your smart car can also send a message to inform the meeting participants about your schedule or your arrival based on you commute or the plan.

In the future with IoT, your alarm clock may alert you. Wake you up as per the schedule, your coffee machine will make your refreshing coffee by itself.

The offices are going to be an IoT concept, which apart from auto sensors, what things are going to be lacking in the office, everything from the fire alarm to knowing the status of things, not only for AC or light on-off, printer, stationery you will also get notification of stress arising out of work.

On a larger scale, IoT can also be applied to transport networks, with this “smart city” helping us improve efficiency for things like smart waste management, smart energy use; help us understand and improve how we work and live.

The world is rapidly adopting the IoT in the utility sector as it is the need of time and quick benefit-oriented. In utility the Smart Grid, Smart Transformer, IoT based distribution transformer monitoring system, Smart Electricity, etc which is helping in better service and cost-saving.

The reality is that IoT is a field with virtually infinite connections and possibilities, which we may not fully understand today. In the future, it certainly opens the door for many challenges with lots of opportunities, in which health security and work for human beings is a big issue. With billions of devices connected together, it is also a challenge to keep information secure. Also, if all the things are connected, can all your actions, even the example of the car mentioned above, be affected by the hacker? Could your coffee machine be affected as well? Privacy and data are a big issue in IoT today, so one can only imagine how interactions and concerns will grow when we are connected with billions of devices all over the world. Another thing that can be particularly faced is the glut of data, which will make data management a new field that can involve storing, tracking, analyzing, and generating large amounts of data.

Talks about IoT have been happening around the world from the past several years. Experts want to understand how it will affect the earth and human life. They are trying to understand whether it will disturb the hitherto well-organized systems, information systems, and national boundaries and policies in a way. The best thing we can do for now is to update ourselves about what this IoT is all about, the way forward time will tell.