The Internet of Things (IoT) is a topic that continues to garner media attention by the terabyte. Now the IoT is moving beyond the trade journals and industry blogs to find a place in more mainstream publications. The Huffington Post recently took a look at the IoT, and it reached out to BearCom for some perspective.
Business at the Dawn of the Internet of Things by Huffington Post contributor James Moore makes the point that, “Adoption of the IoT as an inevitability also begins to create new business for technology companies as other key markets approach the slowdown caused by saturation. Consumers and the general public may not even be aware of the beginning of the IoT or consider it a potential reality, but hardware and software manufacturers are already seeing its economic value for their industries.”
The article then quotes BearCom’s Kent Huffman, who said, “The IoT presents two significant opportunities for wireless technology companies. One is to provide the necessary device-to-device connectivity. The other, which is obviously larger, is to develop end-to-end solutions. For example, Motorola Solutions is already talking about how retailers can use wireless connectivity in asset tracking, loss prevention, video management systems, energy management, and electronic price labels. But deploying and managing multiple infrastructures adds complexity and costs. Motorola’s WiNG 5 wireless local area network and analytics solution is one effort to bring a range of technologies together in a single, unified system. There will be plenty of others as the market more clearly defines the problems it needs solved.”
The story goes on to say, “Because connectivity to the web is increasingly wireless and involves two-way communication, the IoT creates an almost unprecedented opportunity for companies like BearCom. CMO Huffman describes the IoT’s growth increase partly as a product of the fact that digital radio and wireless technologies are cheaper and easier to implement than physical cabling without the ongoing costs of cellular service, and adding network capacity is simplified when not relying on wired or cellular systems.”
In discussing the industries most likely to be impacted, it said, “Huffman predicts the fastest growth of the IoT will come from organizations that have greater margins delivered through efficiencies and have a cultural sense of urgency and dependency on analytics, which suggests transportation, retail, petrochemical, and manufacturing.”
The conclusion of Moore’s piece was also insightful: “As the IoT era dawns, we can expect integrated and networked devices to recognize our personal profiles and context for our present situations, tailor information to provide products we actually need, and even anticipate our desires, which, collectively, forever changes our lives and the world in which we live.”
