IoT Time: Evolving Trends in the Internet of Things

IoT Time: Evolving Trends in the Internet of Things

Ken Briodagh

Copyright © 2017 by Kenneth Briodagh

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published by IoT Evolution, TMCnet & Crossfire Media at Smashwords

First Printing, 2017

IoT Evolution

TMCnet

Crossfire Media

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www.IoTEvolutionWorld.com

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Forward by Rick Whitt, Corporate Director for Strategic Initiatives, Google Inc.

Introduction

Section I: Consumer IoT

Chapter 1: Smart Home

Chapter 2: Smart Transportation

Chapter 3: Gadgets

Chapter 4: Wearables

Chapter 5: Healthcare

Section II: IIoT

Chapter 6: Supply Chain

Chapter 7: Automation

Chapter 8: The Edge

Chapter 9: The Cloud

Section III: Smart City

Chapter 10: Smart Buildings

Chapter 11: Municipal Partnerships

Chapter 12: Transportation Logistics

Chapter 13: Infrastructure

Section IV: IoT Sustainability

Chapter 14: Agriculture

Chapter 15: Energy Efficiency

Chapter 16: Social Conditions

Section V: Security

Chapter 17: Privacy

Chapter 18: Encryption

Chapter 19: Transportation

Chapter 20: Counter-measures

Afterward by Carl Ford

About the Author

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the help of many folks here on the team at IoT Evolution headquarters.

For starters, I would be remiss if I didn’t extend my profuse thanks to Carl Ford. Without his help understanding the issues facing the IoT in terms of connectivity, security, standards and best practices I’d be years behind where I should be. And our constant, mostly friendly, arguments force me to think critically about my opinions before I ever get near writing them out. Thanks especially for that, Carl. Not to mention writing the insightful Afterward and the section headers.

Special thanks to Moe Nagle, who kindly and laboriously edited my writing here. If not for Moe, you’d be subjected to endless subordinate clauses, which get old fast, page-long sentences and interminable parentheticals (mostly because I think I’m funnier than I am). So you should thank Moe, too.

To Dave Rodriguez, Scott Kargman and Rich Tehrani, I extend my sincere appreciation for giving me the time and the encouragement to take time away from the day-to-day operations of managing IoT Evolution to focus on this book, which has been a pleasure to put together. And for bringing me into this industry to begin with, from which I’ve learned so much and found no small amount of inspiration, I will always be grateful to the three of you.

-Ken

Forward: Evolving Trends in the Internet of Things

by Rick Whitt,

Corporate Director for Strategic Initiatives, Google Inc.

When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole …. Nikola Tesla (1926)

Ken Briodagh’s book is a welcome contribution to our growing understanding of the technology and market phenomenon we call the Internet of Things. From a broad array of important data points, collected across numerous consumer and industrial sectors, Ken has successfully woven a rich tapestry demonstrating the current vibrancy and future potential of the IoT.

Ken does a particularly apt job at capturing the trend lines that are becoming more apparent in areas like consumer IoT, the Industrial IoT, the Smart City, and sustainability. Notable trends he has identified include the rise of the do it for me (DIFM) market, the importance of customer-centric experiences, accelerating adoption of IoT in the healthcare space, supply chain logistics, and Industry 4.0 advanced automation. Ken’s book also shows how Cisco’s Fog local computing system, which operates below the cloud layer, is demonstrating some impressive adoption and extension.

Along with evolving commercial trends in IoT, we have some growing understandings of this new conceptual space that ties together physical objects and data flows and advanced analytics. One can plausibly argue that there is no single entity or network or process you can point to and label as IoT. Instead, IoT is largely a mental construct, a convenient ordering principle we have been using to describe a myriad of related activities.

In that respect, IoT is even more nebulous and shape-shifting than the all-purpose legacy Internet we have come to know and love over the past 20 years. Obviously the advent of the online world has been responsible for transforming information-intensive industries such as journalism, entertainment, and communications. Now, the Net can be used as a platform to transform physical industries and activities -- including manufacturing, transportation, infrastructure, supply chains, utilities, agriculture, health care, security, and local services in cities. Ken’s book successfully captures the stages of transformation cutting across these disparate sectors.

So, just how did we get here, and (more importantly) where do we go from here? Below I offer a few brief observations that hopefully will provide some useful guidance.

The What of IoT

We have had the Internet of Things concept with us for less than a generation. The phrase itself was first coined in 1999 by Kevin Ashton. That same year, Neil Gershenfeld, in his When Things Start to Think, picked up on the theme as well.

There are two general schools of thought about what IoT represents. Some consider IoT to be a stage of technology evolution, achieved by merely adding a layer of digital connectivity on top of existing infrastructure and things.

To these advocates, IoT provides a manageable set of developments, working within existing technology tools and markets. In some ways, then, IoT represents the next logical step in the evolution of the Internet:

Fixed computing (you go to your device): 1990s

Mobility (the device goes with you): 2000s

IoT (The Age of the Device): early 2009 (more things connected to the Net than people)

IoE (people, processes, data, things): coming soon.

Others see in IoT a wholesale revolution, a disruptive transformation of physical activities, much as the Internet have been doing to information-based sectors. I tend towards this latter view, with the more near-term incremental shifts soon to give way to more radical and pervasive advancements. Alex Hawkinson, CEO of SmartThings, refers to it as the world waking up and finding a voice. In this view, IoT hold the potential to reformulate the way that people live. The challenge is that, ironically, the name IoT is not quite big enough for all of the things that it purports to encompass.

Machine to Machine (M2M) is the Layer 1-2 technology that allows machines to communicate or relay information, over IP or some other protocol. It can be seen as a subset of IoT. M2M sits at the intersection of cloud computing, big data, and mobility, and does not require direct human interaction.

There are various ways to describe this brave new world that IoT is helping to shape: ambient intelligence, pervasive computing, contextual awareness. Cisco has labeled it the Internet of Everything, the networked connection of people, process, data, and things. The IoE builds on top of the IoT, with things as its pillar. In this conception, humans are part of the transformation of data into rich information, via inanimate physical objects and devices (like sensors, consumer devices, and enterprise assets). The IoE process manages the way people, data, and things work together.

While the IoE concept is intriguing, again it seems a bit too limiting. I submit that one can take yet another step and call it the Internet of Everything and Everyone, or IoEE, incorporating the full mix of users and machines – the legacy of both Internet of People, and Internet of Stuff. This all-encompassing platform uses M2M connectivity, Big Data, and AI/Machine Learning intelligence to link to applications, and the cloud. Increasingly we are all living in this collective IoEE system.

The How of IoT

With the IoT/IoE/IoEE system, we are now connecting the unconnected. The environment surrounding us that, up to now, has been silent now has a voice. Indeed, we are increasingly moving bits into atoms. But one takeaway is that it’s all about the data generated by things, not the things themselves.

The evolution of technology platforms has enabled the IoT revolution. These components include:

Moore’s Law (roughly the doubling of hardware capability every 18 months)

Communications networks: expanding from homogenous CMRS (exclusive, proprietary, licensed) to a more heterogenous mix (including shared and unlicensed)

Devices: shifting from dumb voice-primary to smart data-primary

Connectivity: moving from fixed client-server to the mobile cloud

End points: developing from passive consumers to active users

Protocols: moving from IPv4 to IPv6 (the later has 2 to the 128th separate IP addresses, or about 340 undecillion – enough to cover every atom on 100 earths).

Improved JavaScript performance

We are also seeing a continuing decline in the costs of other components, including memory/storage, CPUs, sensors, and RFID.

On top of all this, the industry is witnessing the rise of software-defined anything (SDx). This extends to SDN (networks), SDDC (data centers), SDS (storage), and SDI (infrastructure).

The Why of IoT

Those who embrace the IoT future can see in it at least two advantages, often interrelated: first, creating new user-facing business models that can offer new revenue opportunities, and, second, leveraging greater efficiencies and cost savings in producing existing services. Above and beyond the many obvious use cases highlighted in Ken’s book, this mix of new revenues and reduced costs is a tantalizing prospect.

But the sheer magnitude of the future opportunity also cannot be denied. Cisco estimates that the Internet today now connects about 15 billion devices. Even so, some 99 percent of things remain unconnected to the Net. By 2020, Gartner predicts 30 billion connected devices, Cisco estimates up to 50 billion devices, while IDC sees a staggering 212 billion devices. No matter whose prognostications you believe, we are only scratching the surface of the potential in this burgeoning technology platform.

The economic impact of the IoT era should be considerable. GE estimates that the Industrial Internet could add $10 to 15 trillion to global GDP over the next 20 years. Gartner sees some $1.9 trillion in economic value from IoT by 2020. IDC forecasts an $8.9 trillion ecosystem in 2020. Cisco, a leading supporter of IoT, predicts a potential $14.4 trillion market over the next 10 years. Main drivers will include asset utilization, employee productivity, supply chain and logistics, customer experience, and innovation/time to market.

Who will be making all that money remains an open question. To some, this new era resembles the classic gold rush scenario, where those who sold the picks and shovels came out well ahead of the actual prospectors busy in the fields.

It is not clear, however, whether those who provide the physical connectivity will be among the financial beneficiaries. By one analysis, only about 10 percent of revenue will come from connectivity and associated services. Instead, the vast majority of revenue will be generated from the service wrap, or the actual service facilitated by the M2M connectivity. The coming future might look like a combination of countless numbers of connections, but with very little traffic per connection. Indeed, Machina Research finds that, today, M2M accounts for only about 2 percent of cellular connections. By 2022, M2M will account for 22 percent of connections, mostly using 3G and 4G/LTE spectrum. By the same token, however, while M2M amounts to only 2 percent of all traffic today, it will be less than 1 percent by 2022.

A diversity of users, things, business models, and use cases

Ken’s book makes it clear that there is a rich assortment of ways that IoT can be used in our daily lives. We are rapidly creating a connections economy, where value accrues to those who best foster, embody, and exploit the network effects at the heart of IoT. Here is a sample list:

Users

Government

Commercial (wholesale and retail)

Managing supply chain and offering new retail experience

Personal

Fab labs and the maker movement; 3D printing, additive manufacturing, open source hardware that creates intelligent connected devices and gadgets

Things

Physical entities that act as IoT nodes

Fixed or mobile

Autonomous or controlled via cloud

Enterprise assets or consumer devices

Provide data or control, or both

With or without sensors and actuators and transistors

Data profiles

Much of the value, and the concern, stems from the data generated by things, not the things themselves, and also those situations where objects meet subjects.

Machine environment data (data about the environment, infrastructure, and other devices)

Aggregate, anonymized personal data

Individual personal data

Putting all this together, the potential use cases seem to abound.

Government user, aggregate data, public interest objective:

EU car regulations require smart meters that provide automatic info about crashes

Smart sensors built in I35W bridge in Minneapolis to monitor for stresses

LA synchronized 4,500 traffic lights and allowed them to make second-by-second decisions; traffic speeds increased by 16 percent

DC police sensors listen for the sound of gunshots in neighborhoods across the city

Santa Cruz, CA police using PredPal to predict and prevent crimes

NSA creating database of license plates to catch illegal aliens

Personal user, own data, new service:

Kits for creating your own smart home

Commercial user, aggregate data, leveraging greater efficiencies internally:

Smart agriculture (weather conditions reflected in fields management)

Smart manufacturing (greater automation of factories and supply chains)

Disposal sensors placed on everyday items (milk cartons)

Commercial or government user, personal data, various purposes:

Wearables as a bridge to IoT

Location-aware ads popping up on the smartphone (consumer as target)

Realtime human behavior profiles and facial recognition from embedded devices for security applications (consumer as topic)

FedEx SenseAware program

Mannequins in stores with cameras behind their eyes

Jawbone and other wearables

Proteus ingestible sensors

Nest thermometer

Sensors placed on skin, or sewn into clothing

Future challenges

While the trend lines for IoT look quite encouraging, some key challenges do remain to the wide-scale adoption and implementation of these platforms. These include unresolved aspects like:

Further developing standardized interfaces and interoperability between disparate platforms;

Creating simplified user experiences (UXs);

Ensuring adequate ubiquitous connectivity for smart autos and other applications;

Accelerating the use of cognitive computing, Machine Learning (ML), and AI algorithmic systems; and

Fostering data protection and security

Many of these challenges are linked to global and national public policies, and industry governance mechanisms. Some forms of government oversight and even regulation could help foster future IoT growth; others could retard that same potential.

As one example, what is the chief policy presumption behind the IoT ecosystem? Do these IoEE systems operate under legacy Internet governance principles (everything is permitted, unless prohibited), or FAA governance (everything is prohibited, unless permitted)?

In brief: how we choose to govern the world of IoT will have a massive impact on how it actually develops. I will touch on a few of these challenges below, highlighting IoT sector governance (at the macro level) and data privacy (at the micro level).

Governance frameworks

According to a 2013 survey of IT professionals, a staggering 99 percent worldwide believe that the IoT poses some type of governance issue. The lead concerns were increased security threats (38 percent) and data privacy (29 percent). Events in the intervening time – including recent distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks utilizing IoT devices – likely have only solidified those concerns.

Similar to the evolution/revolution dichotomy touched on above, the IOT Council has identified two general schools of thoughts about IoT.

First: a reactive framework that perceives IoT in evolutionary terms, as a layer of digital connectivity on top of existing infrastructure and things. Proponents see a manageable set of convergent developments on infrastructure, services, applications, and governance tools.

Second: a proactive framework that sees IoT as a severely disruptive convergence that will be unmanageable with current tools, as it changes the concepts of data and noise; a world where everything can be both analog and digitally approached.

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has concluded that no special IoT governance is warranted. The organization reasons that IoT is not a separate part of the Internet, but just another Net application. Specifically, IoT is the result of an evolutionary change of the Net which leads to a seamless integration of overlay and underlay services. IoT uses established routing, naming, and numbering mechanisms. Thus, the argument goes, there should be no new institutional framework for IoT.

Others advocate for a new framework altogether. This would encompass one unified and specific IoT governance structure that extends across all applications.

In between these two poles is a possible middle ground. Policymakers could extend/tweak the current policy frameworks, particularly for issues like transparency, privacy, and security.

My own bias is toward what I call adaptive policymaking, meaning a careful mixing and matching of policy implements to the functional aspects of the technology in question. Under this approach, the particular type of regulation – the Rules (institutions) and Players (organizations) – should be heavily influenced by the Code (the technology). Or, put more succinctly, form and forum should follow function.

One initial observation is that, unlike the Internet, the IoT space is not a single system, or one that is totally open. Instead, it is comprised of many overlapping networks of open, proprietary, and partially open systems. Closed and open identifiers currently are used as well, and will continue to coexist. This multiplicity of different architectures (some private IP, some public IP) and applications suggests that no single governance structure for IoT will suffice. Instead, we likely would need some elements of current horizontal regulation (privacy, safety, etc.), plus specific standards and principles unique to