What is Internet of Things?

What is the Internet of Things? IoT is about things having an Internet connection anytime, anywhere. In a more technical sense, it consists of the integration of sensors and devices into everyday objects that are connected to the Internet through fixed and wireless networks. The fact that the Internet is present at the same time everywhere allows the mass adoption of this technology to be more feasible. Given their size and cost, sensors are easily integrated into homes, work environments and public places. In this way, any object is susceptible to being connected and “manifesting” on the Net. In addition, the IoT implies that every object can be a source of data. This is beginning to transform the way we do business, the organization of the public sector and the day-to-day lives of millions of people.

But the Internet of Things is much more than ubiquity. For starters, it’s a way to instrument the planet. As everyday objects come to life thanks to RFID sensors and tags, the world becomes more interconnected and those objects, along with machines and people, communicate in a radically different way. 

Thus begins our FTF report on the Internet of Things (hereinafter IoT) that we published in 2010. Below we will show how this trend has developed in the last 10 years.

Even at a basic level, there are many pieces, both technical and non-technical, that must be combined for the IoT to work, the Computer Technology Industry Association (ComTIA) has defined an ecosystem that integrates all the elements involved in the IoT:

Hardware is the IoT stuff. The advancement of miniaturization and its materials allows sensors to be in any device or computer component. Sensors that can measure any parameter and turn it into a digital data. 

The IoT depends on new software platforms that manage the hardware and data that derives from them. In this case, the cloud (Cloud computing) has been unmarked as a fundamental element to facilitate the availability and access to this software.
 IoT regulation and standards will allow both connectivity and data usage to become ubiquitous, just as they did with the development of Internet protocols.
The services that are derived from the IoT are very involved in the ecosystem, since they are the essential ingredient for the achievement of all the benefits of this system. 

Access the full article on the IoT ecosystem in ComTIA here. 

IoT Growth

It is difficult to get exact figures of the growth of the IoT because it is a trend that is present everywhere.

To get an idea, Gartner forecasts that 14.2 billion connected things will be in use this year 2019, and that it will reach 25 billion by 2021.

Again, the Computer Technology Industry Association (ComTIA) has published an article on IoT market size where it was estimated that in 2020 there will be about 50,100 million connected devices and the market will reach a global economic value of 1.9 trillion dollars.  The following graph, in addition, allows to see the evolution of the growth of things connected to IoT.