The Growth of Internet of Things: Effective Technology Opportunities

What is the ratio of people to devices? 7.5 billion to 25 billion is an impressive statistic. Forecasts promise even more impressive growth figures for the devices used by mankind with access to the Internet. Nearly half of that 25 billion is from the Internet of Things devices, otherwise known as the Internet of Everything (IoT).

In general, the Internet of Things in the consumer market (B2C) has long been present in everyday life - these are Smartwatches and TV, smart clothes, smart homes, and advanced devices for animals. Their advantages are obvious to us, but as far as IoT in businesses (B2B) is concerned, it is much more interesting and efficient in a global and economic sense. The basic rule of the Internet of Things is that it is autonomous and should work together for the benefit of the people. The common information space and the way things “communicate” with each other is the Internet.

The industry began its rapid development back in 2008, but my path in IT began 9 years ago as a System Administrator in a logistics company. Even there was a minimal request for IoT - trucks need to be monitored, data taken from them about the speed, engine operating time, data on the mileage, and status of other sensors should be analyzed. Later, thanks to the rapid evolution of the Internet of Things and my interest in this area, I became a DevOps engineer in that field.

Initially, I was attracted to smart homes ideology on a national scale, but IoT has found widespread use in smaller businesses. For Russia, I am sure, this is a powerful tool to bring domestic companies to the world arena. One of the main commercial goals of IoT is to monetize information (the more data, the more productive we can function).

The Russian IoT market is at its very start and is far from mature, but entrepreneurs are well aware that technologies provide unlimited opportunities for development, so many of them are introducing the Internet of Things. The market volume in 2020 is about $980 million according to J’son & Partners Consulting, the average check is small, but the number of implemented projects is constantly increasing.

Over the next 10 years, the profit from the implementation of IoT will be about $200 billion, according to Cisco Systems, Inc. It is important to note that the Internet of Things in business is not just a tribute to the digital technology trend, but an investment in a management evolutionary model of running and promoting a company.

Now the portrait of an IoT consumer looks something like this: an enterprise with a billion-dollar turnover per year or an enterprise with more than a hundred pieces of specialized equipment from which you need to capture data. I believe that this portrait should be more diverse due to the fact that the Internet of Things consolidates multi-factor interaction objects, reduces the total and transaction costs, makes the business resilient to internal and external problems.

Here is what every entrepreneur wants: to take the best positions in their field, to establish close contact with customers and personalize offers for them, to expand the sales market, and to promptly reacting to changes in market conditions. And here the Internet of Things comes in handy too.

If you had the question: “Is the Internet of Things, what, omnipotent and omnipresent?”, then I would immodestly say: “Yes! If not fully now, then very soon. "

This is a unique technology that possesses intellectual abilities. It has the ability to self-develop, collect, store, and analyze factors that do not remain without a quick response to any change.

Not so long ago in Russia corporations finally stopped showing just slides and started doing real work. For example, Rostelecom began to actively promote its projects at the national level in the development of the industrial Internet. Commercial organizations such as chain stores, cafes and restaurants, logistics, transport, and insurance companies are assisted by private teams of specialists who have had experience in similar projects or abroad. In the future, such teams can organize their own startups, which are actively supported by domestic and foreign accelerators.

Decomposition plays a significant role in IoT. For example, my work at Nokia Corporation was as exciting as possible, but not the easiest, because the task was to make a set of microservices out of a huge monolith that would work harmoniously with each other, performing their functions. This is a serious architecture in which a lot depends on data transfer protocols and object communication. Here, in practice, the growth potential of the Internet of Things affects adjacent markets became tangible for me.

In the modern world, cybersecurity plays a decisive role because there is an acute question of how to protect the data transmission paths from the sensor to the server. The difficulty is that the architecture is simple, and there are many IoT sensors, so it is not always possible to control all flows - hence the theft and misuse of information. In addition to cybersecurity giants such as Kaspersky, Eset, and Symantec, startups are emerging that focus only on information security in the IoT. Talented professionals will always be in the business with the full-scale implementation of the Internet of Things.

The same with cloud data storage: a sensor with wireless communication is there at every step (by the way, this is also a data security gap that needs to be actively worked on), there will be much more information than there is now on the Internet, so we will need additional services and "places" for storing data.

The Internet of Things is a powerful lever of influence on our society, the labor market, and the success of companies. And whatever the business model of the organization, you need to follow a basic set of solutions that fully satisfies the objectives of the IoT: understanding the strategy, regulating processes, correct device management protocols, collecting and analyzing information, protecting it, and having storage.

And, of course, the development of 5G will not ignore the IoT. People are loyal to technology and progress - there is demand. It is now important for us, developers, to create a high-quality IoT offer in Russia that will comply with the legislation, take into account the nuances of reality, domestic business, and the mentality of the Russian people. This task has great potential with high-quality implementation, to which, I am sure, we will definitely come.