‘Internet of Things’ Spells More Than Green Eggs and Ham for Solution Providers

Whenever I hear the term, “Internet of Things,” I can’t help but think that if Dr. Seuss wrote a technology book, that’s what he would call it, with Thing One and Thing Two turning the IT world on its head and causing havoc. The Internet of Things, however, is very real and spells a lot more opportunity than Green Eggs and Ham for solution providers going forward.

The best way I can describe the Internet of Things (IoT) is all devices and components virtually connected. While the term has been around since the late 1990s, it has become front and center in the last few years with the proliferation of mobile devices and the advancements of virtualization and cloud computing. This is solution providers’ sweet spot.

In line with this, earlier this week research giant Gartner said the IoT will grow to 26 billion units installed by 2020, representing a near 30-fold increase from just under 1 billion in 2009. And this prediction excludes actual devices such as PCs, tablets and smartphones.

Solution providers, take notice. The growth of the IT industry will mainly come from those peripheral services supporting this movement.

In fact, IoT product and service suppliers are expected to generate incremental revenue exceeding $300 billion, mostly in services, in 202, resulting in $1.9 trillion in global economic value-add through sales into diverse end markets, according to Gartner.

Gartner defines the IoT as “the network of physical objects that contain embedded technology to communicate and sense or interact with their internal states or the external environment.”

“The growth in IoT will far exceed that of other connected devices. By 2020, the number of smartphones tablets and PCs in use will reach about 7.3 billion units,” said Peter Middleton, research director at Gartner, in a prepared statement. “In contrast, the IoT will have expanded at a much faster rate, resulting in a population of about 26 billion units at that time.”

For solution providers, the money is not going to be in the devices themselves but in the connectivity services, integration, support and security. This should not come as any surprise.

Gartner also said that “ghost” devices with unused connectivity will be fairly common as a result the low cost of adding IoT capability to consumer products. This will be a combination of products that have IoT capability built in but require software to activate it.

While consumers are driving the mobile madness, the big opportunity with regards to IoT will be in the business world. Enterprises will make extensive use of IoT technology with major developments in advanced medical devices, factory automation sensors and applications in industrial robotics, sensor motes for increased agricultural yield, and automotive sensors and infrastructure integrity monitoring systems for diverse areas such as road and railway transportation, water distribution and electrical transmission, according to Gartner.

“By 2020, component costs will have come down to the point that connectivity will become a standard feature, even for processors costing less than $1. This opens up the possibility of connecting just about anything, from the very simple to the very complex, to offer remote control, monitoring and sensing,” said Middleton. “The fact is, that today, many categories of connected things in 2020 don’t yet exist. As product designers dream up ways to exploit the inherent connectivity that will be offered in intelligent products, we expect the variety of devices offered to explode.”

This makes the role of the solution provider even more critical for organizations. Be prepared.

Knock ’em alive!