Published on 07/29/2016 | Market Sizing
There is no question that we’re at a major inflecting point, where major technologies and sciences are maturing in an unprecedented speed and converging together creating massive disruptive forces of change in every aspect of our life and forever. The idea of connecting everything (IoE) that everything can act and interact seamlessly and intelligently is not new. However, the exponential progress in different technologies and sciences over the last years, renewed the promise of having connected Cognitive Software-Defined Things (CSDT) and rapidly changing the way we see the world around us and the how we envision the future of everything.
Many analysts and well respected thought leaders are talking about the IIoT while others are talking about the IoT or IoE. For instance, GE is focusing on developing intelligent software and hardware for industrial assets and applications. Cisco is focusing on transforming its core business to “smart networking and future IoE infrastructure”. In an article I published early 2013 “The Next Big Thing, the Internet of Things (IoT): The Drivers and the life transforming opportunities" I suggested that if we want to make real progress toward the realization of smart connected digital world we all envision, we’ll have to identify main categories of the IoT that we can work on them separately with different paces and timely address their unique requirements in a way that will accelerate progress without having those categories tangling each other. While I'm not yet ready to add new categories to what I suggested three years ago, the four main categories are as follows: 1. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) 2. The Business Internet of Things (BIoT) 3. The Government Internet of Things (GIoT) 4. The Consumers Internet of Things (CIoT) Back then, my suggestion didn’t make sense to many people. However, the initial experience we’ve so far, proved this suggestion to be true and helpful. Where there are some overlaps, every category imposes its own requirements and challenges in terms of architecture, software and hardware integration, performance, business and operational models, interoperability, scalability as well as cyber physical security. "Over the next few years, the success of IIoT pioneer companies such GE & Siemens will strongly depend on the level of adoption of their smart products by their customers’ community"
On the IIoT front, companies like GE, Siemens, Bosch and Rockwell Automation are investing tremendous resources and many smart people to further develop their IIoT platforms and solutions portfolio. Some companies started to restructure the whole company around the idea of “connected Smart Everything”. The commitment of such leading manufacturing companies is showing tremendous progress on the IIoT front. They’re helping in defining the IIoT and laying the initial foundations for it. However, I do believe that their customers will create more revenues and even will have stronger influence over the future of IIoT. Over the next years, the success of such IIoT pioneer companies will strongly depend on the level of adoption of their new products by their customers’ community – the business network effect. "Cognitive computing systems assisted by Humans are essential to address the complexity of the future Digital Enterprise and potentially make it happen." On the other hand, companies like SAP, IBM and many others are committing tremendous resources to the idea of “Digital Enterprise” and redesigning their overall technology stack to make it happen. These efforts are laying the foundations for exponential growth in the area of BIoT and Digital enterprise over the next years. Companies like SAP laid the foundations for the Digital Enterprise 1.0 since its inception. The new technologies SAP added to its portfolio recently are making it possible for its customers to start implementing their own version of a real-time Digital Enterprise 2.0 and move to Real-Time Digital Enterprise Management (RTDEM) solutions. "Cognitive computing systems can be trained, learn at scale, reason with purpose and can interact with human naturally" If there is one Big Thing in the digital enterprise space today, IBM Watson and similar cognitive systems would be such big thing. The tremendous complexity of the Digital Enterprise can’t be addressed programmatically nor only by humans, who will continue having serious limitations in a digital world. Cognitive systems are not programmed compute systems. They can be trained, learn at scale, reason with purpose and can interact with human naturally. Without cognitive systems trying to make sense of the tremendous amount of data IoT will be able to collect, IoT and Big Data platforms will be just a new way to have “Bigger Data Warehouses”. "The initial architectural models of Smart Cities Operating System (SCOS) are different than what is needed for a Digital Enterprises OS (DEOS)" Many governments and cities around the globe already started own initiatives to understand and evaluate the concept of “Smart connected X” and how it would help in creating modern, enjoyable yet safe life for their residents. Smart cities initiatives such as in Barcelona, Dubai and Singapore have achieved tremendous progress and measurable success. What those cities have achieved in short time proved that governments and cities have to accelerate its transformation from eGovernment to GIoT. This will include addressing the specific requirements and the integration with IIoT, BIoT as well as CIoT. The initial architectural models of smart city operating system (SCOS) are different than what is needed for a Digital Enterprises OS (DEOS). The security and scalability demands of GIoT for example are different and impose real challenges. "The achievements in the IIoT, BIoT as well as the GIoT areas will soon require and inspire massive increase of CIoT hardware and software products, solutions and services" The consumer IoT (CIoT) understandably is still focusing mainly on connected wearable in the areas of health and fitness. It is OK. The achievements in the IIoT, BIoT as well as the GIoT areas will soon require and result in massive increase of CIoT hardware and software products, solutions and services. For instance, a connected fleet of airplanes will enable the airlines to offer new generation of real time smart solutions and better experience not only to customers but also all the people and machines such as engineers, security personnel and airport operators across all the phases of a trip. Soon cars will be able to connect to smart city(ies) infrastructure, where it’ll be able to use and share data and services from street lights to smart parking system to public safety services. All of those new services are already attracting large investments to CIoT.
"IoT is all about upending the current business models and creating new ones" IoT is unlike any technology wave we ever created. While IoT can help us increase the efficiency of what we’ve today, however it is all about upending the current business models and creating new ones. For this we need to rethink what we’ve and create new technologies, standards, products, solutions and services. Most of the immediate values IoT can add today can come from creating new business models around many products we’ve today. However, it is not enough to just bring IT and OT together. Historically, they are not compatible and each one lives in a different world. "Many IoT initiatives failed mainly because they've underestimated the effect of the existing IT and OT infrastructure" Over the last few years, there were many initiatives by many companies to transform parts of the business to a true “Everything connected as a Service - EcaaS” using IoT/M2M technology. Some of them succeeded. Unfortunately, many failed miserably or put on hold mainly because they've underestimated the effect of the existing IT and OT infrastructure on any IoT driven initiative. Therefore, to accelerate the transformation needed for successful adoption of IoT enabled products and services, IT should be first transformed to BIoT and OT should be transformed into IIoT. Only then the IIoT and BIoT will be able (by-design) to seamlessly inter-operate and effectively collaborate in real time to create the Digital Enterprise 2.0. "Successful adoption of IoT enabled products and services requires that the current IT should be transformed to BIoT and OT should be transformed into IIoT"
To be able to leverage the full potentials of the IoT, we should deal with it not only as a set of technologies but as a new business and design paradigm, where everything will be able to inherit and evolve some sort of intelligence to be able to learn, adapt, interact and act. I do believe that by 2025, any product that will not be able to connect and leverage information and services to offer us a better overall experience will have hard time to be positioned anywhere. Such capabilities will redefine the UX we expect the same way today's smart phones and tablets did over the last years. "The progress of smart connected things over the next years will exceed every prediction we’ve today" Over the last weeks and as usual there were a lot of IoT predictions reports from nearly every market research team and many others around the globe. While such reports can sometimes guide and inspire us, I couldn’t agree with most of the predictions. Many technologies such as cognitive computing, quantum computing, non-silicon based hardware, and even the software technologies we’ve today will be and will have to be different before 2030. Many of those reports underestimated or ignored many technologies, which on the surface appear not to be directly related. For example, material science and new hardware design and manufacturing techniques are some of the major enablers for the current smart devices r-evolution we've today. The progress of smart connected things over the next years will beat up every prediction we’ve today and even Moore’s Law will fail at least partially to predict what will happen. "The three big myths of IoT today: One platform, Big Data and Cyber Security" If you believe that with a single architectural framework you’ll be able to connect all the processes across the product life cycle phases; R&D, supply chain, transportation, smart factory and CRM systems, you’re wrong. If you think that once you licensed just one IoT platform, suddenly miracles will happen and you’ll be able to connect millions of sensors and machines then develop, manage, secure and operate Apps for millions of users, look at the enterprise mobility platform you already have. Such an IoT platform doesn’t exist yet and possibly will not exist soon. If you think that by just adding more terabytes of data you’ll solve your efficiency problems and move to EaaS, ask your domain experts and data scientists. They might be able to extract tremendous values by adding few new data sets from few sensors. And by the way, all the antivirus software, behavior analytics, intrusion detection and other cyber security measures we’ve today are not able to 100% secure our current IT systems nor OT systems today. The same applies to the massive number of cyber physical systems (CPS), which will be inspired and enabled by the IoT and other technologies. I can assure you that we’ll never be able to 100% secure our CPS systems, however we’re moving on and we’ll make it happen.
In a world of makers, we achieved tremendous progress on most of the IoT categories and layers. However, I do believe that we still have huge amount of work to do and major road blocks to overcome. Most importantly there are many things which we’ve to rethink and ultimately disrupt the ways we design, implement, manufacture, use, operate and secure things. Over the next weeks, I’ll share my own experience and some thoughts on how to move forward and achieve real progress as follows: 1. Business models and culture changes: Your current business model and culture will eat your IoT initiatives for breakfast. 2. The current architecture frameworks are not taking us anywhere: Biologically inspired architecture framework for the IoT is the only way to go. 3. Without Cognitive Computing Systems (CCS) Digital Enterprise could be one of our big failures: Cognitive computing for Digital Enterprise 2.0. 4. Big data is not the IoT and IoT is not only about Big Data: Stop selling me only your Big Data platform stupid. Sorry, deal with it. 5. There is no single IoT platform yet. Don’t feel ashamed to call it M2M platform for now. Did you license an IoT platform? No? You’re really lucky. 6. IoT systems are cyber physical systems. Securing them is just a fantasy of people who don’t know. How my hot cup of coffee can screw up your entire IoT security.
