What Is Internet of Things?

Nowadays, Internet connectivity worms its way into many devices and machines giving feedback to users, engineers, designers and managers. Thanks to that, all the sectors of the world of manufacturing are developing incredibly fast becoming more effective and profitable.

As a result, a particular and expanding network dubbed the Internet of Things appears. The Internet of things, abbreviated as IoT, is a term formulated in 1999. However, in the past year its transformational impact is growing rapidly. Those who develop this reactive scenario are convinced that it is only beginning.

“The Internet of things is coming, be the disrupter or prepare to be disrupted. There’s no stopping it” said Joe Tucci, CEO of EMC, during  Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Well, but what does IoT mean? To define it correctly, we need to give definition of a Thing in the Internet of Things.

According to WhatIs.com, a thing, in the Internet of Things, is “a person with a heart monitor implant, a farm animal with a biochip transponder, an automobile that has built-in sensors to alert the driver when tire pressure is low – or any other natural or man-made object that can be assigned an IP address and provided with the ability to transfer data over a network.”

“Growing machine-to-machine communication is creating faster processes and better service, decreasing downtime and improving quality. Digital information streams, meanwhile, are flowing from an exponentially growing number of sensor-packed machines in the plant and products in the field. The info is pooled into massive databases that yield predictive analytics; managers and engineers can filter data to extract best practice benchmarks for individual devices and organizations – and spot weaknesses to improve,” reads the Lane Report.

Thus, the Internet of Things is closely linked to machine-to-machine (M2M) communication in manufacturing. Wikipedia defines IoT as “the network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors and connectivity to enable it to achieve greater value and service by exchanging data with the manufacturer, operator and/or other connected devices. Each thing is uniquely identifiable through its embedded computing system but is able to interoperate within the existing Internet infrastructure.”

“The Internet of Things will be as big as the Internet,” says Alex Frommeyer, CEO and partner in Louisville-located Uproar Labs specialized in building and launching of IoT products. “It will produce a very different consumer experience in the next few years.”

There’s a lot of buzz around IoT, but it’s happening because “the underlying realities and technology and what it opens up for business and consumers is substantial,” says Frommeyer. Other experts hesitate to say that IoT’s power will beat that of the Internet itself. And Frommeyer adds that he is “the most aggressive talker about the Internet of Things in the state.”

“I’ve never seen it any more active,” says Steve Sigg, CEO of Lexington-based SIS Inc., a technology and managed IT solutions provider. “An incredible transformation going on in the industry. It is exciting and taxing to keep up with, though.”