Internet of Things (IoT) is the next revolution, and we are only at the beginning… the challenges are: How to make a smart use of the huge amount of data collected, enable a seamless use and a compelling User Experience (UX) ; The technology and solutions vendors need to make sure that both the digital service providers and the end users will not drown in the big data; Guarantee privacy and that all the IoT applications will live in harmony as elements of holistic UX. One of the opportunities is to make an open platform, user and context aware system that make a smart use of the data and information. Not simple, yet doable.

Background

IoT is one of the newest industry trends and any technology company has something to say about it if they want to keep being relevant and on the cutting edge:

Peter Diamandis summarized it well in his post $19 Trillion Opportunity:

• The IoT describes the networked connections between devices, people, processes and data.
• By 2020, the IoT has the potential to connect 50 billion people, devices and things.
• In the next 10 years, Cisco is projecting IoT will generate $19 trillion of value – $14 trillion from the private sector, and $5 trillion from governments and public sectors (initiatives like smart cities and infrastructure).
• Imagine a world in which everything is connected and packed with sensors.
• 50+ billion connected devices, loaded with a dozen or more sensors, will create a trillion-sensor ecosystem.
• These devices will create what I call a state of perfect knowledge, where we’ll be able to know what we want, where we want, when we want.
• Combined with the power of data mining and machine learning, the value that you can create and the capabilities you will have as an individual and as a business will be extraordinary.

Business Insider put some numbers around it:

IoT and Owning the Chasms

In “Owning the Chasms” and “Owning the Chasms – So Now What?” I discussed the ecosystem of the digital world, which consists of 4 pillars:

For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that the chasms described in that post are taken care of and that there are no cracks. In other words, each specific service related to IoT is flawless end to end.

In the IoT ecosystem:

• Services are the “smart” processes that are running in the back end of the ecosystem: Big Data, Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence, Analytics and generating recommendations (to be used by any other pillar above, mostly by the “People”)
• Pipes are the networks and the connectivity vehicles (The protocols, “Alphabet Soup”)
• Interfaces are the Input and Output devices that collect information on one end, and provide back recommendations, goods and content (potentially to the same “People”)
• People are these analog creatures who are supposed to be eventually happy at the edges of the ecosystem.

Will they be happy?

Challenges and Some Opportunities

Technology adoption barriers

Business Insider recently addressed two adoption impediments; the first is related to the “pipes” and the second to the “interfaces”:

• The IoT lacks a common set of standards and technologies that would allow for compatibility and ease-of-use. There are currently few standards (or regulations) for what is needed to run an IoT device. Consortia that group together global industrial, tech, and electronics companies are involved in an effort to standardize the IoT and solve the most pressing security concerns.

  Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-internet-of-things-market-will-grow-2014-10#ixzz3XwvhLbQY

• Barriers still persist, and these will inhibit consumer wearables adoption and usage. Smart watches in particular must become standalone computing devices with more robust functionality for the devices to become mainstream. Other barriers include small screen size, clunky style, limited battery life, and lack of a “killer app” that can drive adoption.

  Read more:http://www.businessinsider.com/the-wearable-computing-market-report-2014-10#ixzz3Xva4jX4G

Both challenges above are “tactical” and are typical to any new technology or industry trend we experienced in the last few decades, and I believe that they will be resolved as IoT becomes more prevalent. Even if “pipes” and “interfaces” are fragmented, the choking point and where things can be worked around are the services themselves (if my thermostat is WiFi, my toothbrush is BLE and my Espresso Machine is Zigbee, but my service is agnostic to the protocol, say through a multi-standard gateway, I don’t really care).

Risk of Drowning

The other part of the equation is the amount of data that will be generated, what the digital service providers will do with it, and what value will return to the end users out of this big data. The challenge will be to use all the data in a smart and efficient way. Obviously for vertical use cases (Amazon’s dash for example) that’s not a problem, but in other cases it is. Here are few questions: Will each IoT service provider have it’s own big data? Won’t it be better if they share the data between them? What happens if I move from one service provider to the other? Will my “old” big data be obsolete and my new service provider will start from scratch? An analogy for that is storing pictures in the cloud: in many cases they are not stored in the same place, and there is a big mess: some are in dropbox, some in iCloud, some in Picasa and who knows where the rest are. I can solve this mess and move staff around but it’s a headache. I am not sure it is doable at all with the big data, and besides the service providers are supposed to use and process it: now it is their headache which will impact our user experience eventually.

Privacy

Who owns the data collected through the interfaces? How can one make sure that our privacy is protected? Any hostile entity that will put his hands on the big data, can have a very intimate knowledge that we don’t want him to have. There are some discussions on “IoT Gateways” that will distinguish between “information” and “data” and will handle the privacy. But who will own it? The user? The service provider? How will one take advantage of the “crowd wisdom”, merge the insights with our “private big data” and vice versa?

Islands of IoTs

Although specific IoT services will perfectly work and serve well the customers, each IoT service will be a stand alone one, if things are well defined, perhaps there will be some clusters of IoT services, but they will all be around a specific segment or use case. For example, Amazon (AMZN) will provide us some shopping related IoT services (through “Dash”), Apple (AAPL) (maybe with IBM) may provide us some e-health related services, Google (GOOG) will provide us recommendation services and, and perhaps Colgate (CL) will provide us recommendation about how to better brush our teeth, if the brush will rat on us…

Each Service will master it’s collected data, utilize potentially different pipes and interfaces, but the common thing is that they will all strive to serve the same end users: the “People”. How will we, the people, master all these services, how will we have a seamless, flawless, and most important: Intuitive user experience?

The AT&T’s (T)“connected lifestyle” video, presents a perfect, holistic vision:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOCUPCIWAek

If core elements of this vision become available, perhaps some IoT use cases that are presented there can be enabled by some service providers, but the holistic integration, is far from being a reality.

Dave Evans also addressed the same problem last week in TechCrunch from a different perspective:“With IoT, the problem is at the end-user level. Today, almost all connected devices have their own apps. To get anything done, people have to jump from app to app to control disparate devices, creating a disconnected, rather than a seamless and even enjoyable experience… If IoT stays on its current course, more and more people will become skeptical about the value it can provide. That would be a shame, because the potential of IoT is nearly limitless.”

The Opportunity (call for action)

I believe that the challenges I have described above, uncover great opportunities for us, the entrepreneurs and the sustainable value creators.

Let’s build new ventures that will enable secured, protected and harmonized use of all these IoT islands (both at the backend and the frontend), enable ease of move between the digital service providers and a seamless intuitive user experience.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post, would love to hear your comments and thoughts,

Dror