Emerging Technologies

Technology is continuously in motion and that Is indeed the case when it comes to the Internet of Things (IoT) or as some have called it, the Internet of Everything!  There is good reason for their massaging the title.  A recent study suggested that this year, 2020, the global IoT market value is projected to reach over $915 billion USD. Yes, just shy of a trillion $$$. With a double-digit compound annual growth rate, the IoT market is projected to reach $1.9 trillion in 2028. That is a huge amount of money.

When you think about all the work involved in the design, development, marketing, sales, installation, integration, and service involved in the global IoT market today, and in the next few years there is an abundance of work involving IoT.  Now we must add to that work, all the efforts to add security to protect all those IoT devices and the data they produce.  There are projections that the global use of IoT devices will likely top 40 billion units worldwide and all those devices will be generating nearly 80 zettabytes (or 80 times 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of data in 2025.  Since we are talking about data, we must consider last week’s blog about the collection, storage and analysis of all that data, as well as the effort to take actions based on the results of that data analysis.

Here are a few weird IoT devises that I thought might be good or at least humorous to mention to illustrate just how broad of a range the devices have.  First and perhaps my favorite is a ‘Touch-screen Wine Bottle.’ When activated, it provides a wide range of information about the contents of that bottle. Think about applying that to pharmaceuticals! Secondly, is a ‘Dog Alert’ that contacts your smartwatch/smartphone and tells you your dog is barking.  Once alerted, you can go to your home-cams and look inside your home and see what is going on and talk to your dog if you would like.  One individual told me they were working to determine if the dog’s bark suggested if the dog was happy or upset. So here is the third of my top three.  An IoT toilet, plays music, has a soft light, opens when you approach the toilet, has a heated seat and you ASK it to flush. Ok, now one has to wonder, what data that collects, where it goes and in the United States if that is covered by HIPAA regulations.

I am wondering what is next? What are the hot areas of IoT applications in our specific domain(s) or our domains of interest? As we all move into the connected future of the world, innovation and creativity is the limiting factor in the products and services around the IoT explosion and all the data they produce and how that will be used.

Chances are, nearly all of us have heard of the Internet of Things (IoT) by now.  IoT can be many things and that list continues to grow with new innovative ideas being explored daily.  Basically, we can think of it as a non-traditional network connected device.  To expand upon that, IoT is a collection of billions of physical (electro/mechanical) devices that serve a wide variety of purposes and are distributed throughout the world and are connected to the Internet. It is a device or system that is electro/mechanical equipment with digital input/output.  It is a wide variety of network connected computing components.  Each with a unique identifier that enables it to transfer data over a network without any other assistance or interaction. That data is received and processed and utilized by a variety of systems/applications and their number grow minute by minute.

The shrinking physical size and cost of microprocessors is expected to propel the global IoT market forecasts.  All things considered suggests that the number of IoT devices will grow to around $1.6 trillion U.S. dollars by 2025. That is up from just over $210 billion U.S. dollars in size at the end of 2019. Link: https://www.statista.com/statistics/976313/global-iot-market-size/  It is important to keep in mind that IoT will be influenced by a number of emerging technologies and that includes blockchain technology as well as 5G. Many believe that IoT will have a transformative and disruptive impact on business, government, industry and our daily lives. Given the projected growth, variety of applications and estimated value IoT brings to the table, program and project managers will likely see initiatives involving IoT devices and technologies going forward.

We are rapidly moving to a highly connected world. Singularity Hub reported that by 2025 there will likely be 100 billion connected devices. They call it the "trillion-sensor economy." Multiple sources have estimated that data will grow to between 160 and 170 zettabytes by 2025 - that has so many 0s (zeros). That is about a10X increase from today. Some believe that over one-quarter will need real-time processing and analytics. 

Now think about all the data that will be produced!

Happy Holiday's to all and stay safe!

A recently published survey found that upwards of 60 percent of those asked said the biggest hurdle to adopting emerging technologies in their organization is "awareness and engagement".  Perhaps this might be a question for you to ask your organization? Perhaps it is a question we should ask ourselves - how ready are we to manage the program and projects that will clearly be a part of the emerging IoT evolution?

Interesting technology trends material: 
https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/trend/2017-technology-trends

A new article by Business Insider was a real eye-opener!  They project an IoT investment of $6 trillion between 2015 and 2020.  They go on to project that investment will produce a return on investment (ROI) of $12.6 trillion in the following decade.  That certainly looks like a large opportunity for individuals and organizations to make and save big $$$.  That would also seem to indicate a substantial number of projects for all of us!