A LITTLE BEE BOOK

What is the
Internet of Things?
 A LITTLE BEE BOOK
This book belongs to:
What is the
Internet of Things?
Adapted from a variety of sources by Bob Yelland

For more copies of this book, or to read others in the series, visit: littlebeelibrary.com
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 The Internet of Things, or IoT, refers to the growing
range of Internet-connected devices that capture or
generate an enormous amount of information every
day. For consumers, these devices include mobile
phones, smart watches, sports wearables, home
heating and air conditioning systems. For businesses,
these are devices and sensors that can be found in
manufacturing equipment, the supply chain, and in-
vehicle components.

IoT is the third wave of the internet. The 1990s

internet wave connected one billion users while the
2000s mobile wave connected another two billion.
The IoT has the potential to connect 10 times as
many (28 billion) things to the internet by 2020,
ranging from bracelets to cars.

Experts estimate that the data from these devices

will yield insights that drive economic value of
more than 9 trillion by 2025. This convergence of
connecting people, things, data and processes is
transforming our life, business and everything in
between.

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 IoT can make life easier for all of us. Imagine if you
had smart devices in your home, and how they could
change your morning routine.

Start by setting your smart alarm clock for 6am. Your

clock connects to your coffee machine, so it has a
cup of your favourite brew ready for you. Your central
heating system is also connected, so its warm when
you wake up, and theres plenty of hot water.

Your car is connected to your calendar, so the

satellite navigation is set up with your route as you
step into your car. And when you hit traffic it can text
or email your team to let them know youll be a bit
late. Your car then identifies and reserves a parking
space before you arrive.

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 The following significant technology changes have
enabled the rise of the IoT.

Cheap sensors: Prices have halved in the past ten

years, with many available for pennies.

Cheap bandwidth: The cost of bandwidth has

declined by a factor of nearly 40 times over the past
ten years and Wi-Fi coverage is now ubiquitous.

Cheap processing: Similarly, processing and

storage costs have declined by nearly 60 times over
the past ten years, enabling more devices to be not
just connected, but analysed in real-time.

Smartphones: Act as the personal gateway to

the IoT, serving as a remote control or hub for the
connected home, car or health and fitness devices.

IPv6: The newest version of the Internet Protocol

(IP) standard can support 128-bit addresses,
approximately 3.4 x 1038 IoT devices, an almost
limitless number.

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 As almost everythingfrom cars to crops to
conveyor beltsbecomes connected, IoT will
change the way businesses operate. By combining
IoT data with advanced analytics, and even cognitive
computing, business can extract valuable insights to
improve virtually every aspect of their operations.

For instance, in a connected building, data can

be used to save energy and initiate predictive
maintenance. Sensors on the production line can
provide information that increase efficiency. In-store
devices can help retailers improve the customer
experience. And medical data from wearable devices
can be used to save lives. Today, over 50% of IoT
activity is centred in manufacturing, transportation,
smart city, and consumer applications, but within five
years all industries will have rolled out IoT initiatives.

By infusing intelligence into systems and processes,

businesses will be able operate more efficiently,
improve customer satisfaction, discover new
business opportunities, and anticipate risks and
threats so they can address them proactively.

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 IoT can even make businesses and our environment
greener and local government departments will
compete to build innovative and sustainable smart
cities.

The Internet of Things (IoT) can help you conserve

precious resources and eliminate waste. It starts by
making sense of the ocean of raw data produced
every minute by the thousands of connected things
that make up your business, supply chain and
products. When you understand your physical world,
you can see opportunities to improve resource
efficiency, reduce pollution, and stimulate new
thinking and innovation.

Positive environmental stewardship can help reduce

costs, ensure a healthier working environment,
attract talent and build brand awareness.

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 Analyst firm, IDC made a number of IoT predictions
during 2015:
Cloud: Within the next five years, more than 90% of
all IoT data will be hosted in the cloud.

Security: Within two years, 90% of all IT networks

will have an IoT-based security breach, although
many will be considered inconveniences. Chief
Information Security Officers (CISOs) will be forced
to adopt new IoT policies.

The edge: By 2018, 40% of IoT-created data will be

stored, processed, analysed, and acted upon close
to, or at the edge, of the network.

Network capacity: Within three years, 50% of IT

networks will be network constrained with nearly
10% of sites being overwhelmed with IoT data.

Embedded systems: By 2018, 60% of IT solutions

originally developed as proprietary, closed-industry
solutions will become open-sourced, allowing a rush
of vertical-driven IoT markets to form.
Source: IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Internet of Things 2015 Predictions Web Conference

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 With all its promises and potential, IoT has three
major challenges: unified standards for devices,
privacy and security.

The expansion of IoT will be slow without common

standards for the connected devices or sensors.
This requires interoperable, open standards-based
systems.

Data is the currency of IoT, and the secure capture

and transmission of information from things is
critical. In the IoT, everything becomes an access
point on the network, which creates new security
and privacy challenges. To protect your network, you
must understand how data will move from device
to device, across data centres, and even across
borders and develop security and privacy protocols
that will reliably collect the data in compliance with
regulatory obligations.

Without strong security at all joints of the IoT and

protection of data, the progress of IoT will be
hindered by litigation and social resistance.

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 Early applications of the IoT are delivering great
value, and creating opportunities for new, disruptive
business models to emerge.

For example, National Grid is using the IoT to

proactively and predictively maintain the health of
the electricity network in real time. Robert Bosch
is developing intelligent, interconnected automotive
products to deliver on the promise of smarter
vehicles. And Vodafone is gathering and analysing
information from sensors in Spanish cities to improve
urban living from mobility, emergency management,
energy, water, and education, through to healthcare.

And yet, we are merely scratching the surface. Nearly

90% of the 6,000 exabytes of IoT data currently
generated is wasted. For example, only 1% of data
from an oil rig with 30,000 sensors is examined in the
hunt for anomalies.

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 At its heart, the Internet of Things is a data challenge.
The traditional approach to programmable computing
a series of pre-determined, if/then processes
simply cannot process the types of data needed
to fulfil the true promise of the IoT. Programmable
systems thrive on prescribed scenarios using
predictable data. This rigidity limits their usefulness
in addressing many aspects of a complex, fast-
paced world, where the value of data decreases
exponentially every second it goes unused.

Cognitive computing has no such limitations.

Rather than being explicitly programmed, cognitive

systems learn from interactions with humans and
their experiences with their environment. They are not
deterministic. They are probabilistic. And this enables
them to keep pace with the volume, complexity, and
unpredictability of information generated by the IoT.

That means businesses are now able to illuminate

aspects of the IoT that were previously invisible:
allowing businesses to make more informed
decisions.
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 When cognitive computing is applied to the IoT, the
result is what we call Cognitive IoT, which we define
as systems that infuse intelligence into, and learn
from, the physical world.

In addition to generating answers to numerical

problems, cognitive systems can present
unbiased hypotheses, reasoned arguments and
recommendations. They understand an organisations
goals, and can integrate and analyse the relevant data
to help businesses achieve those goals.

The purpose of the Internet of Things is to connect

us more closely with the physical world. It shares
information with us about the cars we drive, the
tools we use, and the buildings we live in. But
without cognitive computing, the usefulness of this
information would be limited by its own complexity
and scale. We would only be able to see slivers of
insight. The rest would remain in the dark.

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