IoT Predictions for 2019

IoT Predictions for 2019

IoT stands for Internet of Things and includes most connected devices that communicate with each other (M2M / machine to machine). It is a system of interconnected computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers (UIDs) , and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
IoT is the logical upshot of a long, historical process of increasing computational decentralisation, that began with computers the size of a room and ended up with a smartphone in the palm of our hands. It is about computing power becoming increasingly decentralised, agile and mobile, freed from the confines of home and office, starting with the laptop and netbook.. The smartphone then heralded a new era of fast and interactive data sharing and then the proliferation of sensors took things to another level.

The central question, is how do you tell all these miniature devices what to do, and how do you make use of the data that the sensors are collecting? Traditionally, this has required a central computer to process the data, with algorithms, and command and control server. However, the average consumer does not have either the will or know-how, to set up a control server in their house. The answer is at hand! As smartphones became almost ubiquitous, it is the perfect device to act as this command and control server
However, the proliferation of IoT devices means more data and more traffic on an already congested Internet. According to Windows IT Pro, in this year alone, around 3.6 billion devices are connected to the Internet for daily tasks. Furthermore, for businesses, increasingly dependent on data and the speed at which it moves from one point to the next, the availability of a reliable means of connectivity is hugely important. Files are getting bigger. The quality and quantity of the content we consume is growing quickly, and the data we keep contains more detail than ever before.
In 2019, as we move into the era of 5G connectivity, speeds are expected to rise exponentially, think 10 to 100 times faster than your typical cellular connection, and even faster than anything you can get with a physical fibre-optic cable going into your house. It’s not just about supercharging your phone’s connection to the network either; 5G is seen as the underlying technology allowing self-driving cars to talk to each other, or for people to wirelessly stream super high-definition virtual reality content into their headsets. In other words, it’s going to be huge!

In the near future, great progress will be made with IOT’s vulnerability to hacks and other security issues. Hardware manufacturers like Cisco, HPE, Dell and more are building specific infrastructure designed to be more physically rugged and secure, and security vendors will start to offer endpoint security solutions to their existing services to prevent data loss, give insights into network health and threat protection, include privileged user control and application whitelisting and control
IoT has made a great impact on the business environment, providing such advantages as workflow automation, real-time data, improved healthcare, home automation, road traffic optimization, improved decision-making, and  a lot more.
Understanding IoT potential, companies and corporations are making huge investments in this technology:
• According to IDC, by 2020 global IoT spending will reach US$1.29 trillion.
• Experts say that by 2021, global IoT spending will reach nearly US$1.4 trillion.

While companies are migrating toward cloud computing, “edge computing”, driven by the absolute volume and speed of data generated by the IoT, is taking the driver’s seat in the ecosystem.
(Edge Computing can be defined as “pushing the frontier of computing applications, data, and services away from centralized nodes to the logical extremes of a network. It enables analytics and data gathering to occur at the source of the data)

Industry front-runners such as Cisco and HPE have committed huge investments in terms of hardware, software, and service. As smart drones, self-driving vehicles, and other AI-powered smart devices grow and need to connect and communicate in real time through the IoT sensors, the effort of transmitting data to the cloud becomes exceedingly impractical. Edge computing becomes most viable as most of these devices will need real-time response and processing.

The increased deployment of IoT technologies, will make Security, Compliance, and Privacy become critical. The expansion of the IoT ecosystem will lead to increased fragmentation of the network, with the resultant complexity leading to challenges around compliance, security, and privacy of data.
Industry is very much rising to the challenge.. For instance, by 2021, overall market revenues for IoT managed security-as-a-service are set to exceed US$11 Billion.