Google Inc. ’s latest technological marvels point to a future where you’ll never need to visit websites, write a term paper or stress over what to buy for your mother’s birthday.
Source: Google’s new smart products might force it to rethink its ad business – LA Times
South Korea is already one of the most wired countries on Earth, and the latest effort by Samsung and SK Telecom won’t do anything to hurt that fact. The two have paired up to roll out a commercial network dedicated to the Internet of Things (IoT) across the country. The wireless network will serve as infrastructure for various public services and businesses, allowing devices to gather, share and make use of data like weather and traffic conditions.
Source: Samsung rolling out a dedicated Internet of Things network across South Korea
Underwriters Laboratories new Cybersecurity Assurance Program (CAP) looks to certify Internet of Things products. Columnist Rob Enderle writes that these CAP certification will improve IoT security and help CIOs sleep better at night.
Source: New IoT security certification aims to make the world safer | CIO
Google launched its first open-source foray for Nest’s Thread protocol, which paves the way for better connectivity between IoT devices from different manufacturers and between devices and the cloud.
Where Qualcomm and Intel are neck and neck on absolute numbers of patents, Qualcomm has a significantly stronger patent portfolio, according to LexInnova’s research. This might be a major problem for Intel, which has staked its future on IoT. Brian Krzanich, its chief executive, called the company’s IoT group a “primary growth engine” in his 2015 shareholder’s letter. It reported revenue of $651 million for its IoT group for the first quarter of 2016, 22% higher than the previous year. Qualcomm doesn’t report numbers for its IoT products, although it said last year that it made $1 billion in revenue from chips used in smart homes, city infrastructure, cars, and wearables.
Source: Qualcomm (QCOM) has the most valuable patents for the Internet of Things — Quartz
Too few IoT device manufacturers are doing a great job protecting data. That can change.
Source: We Need To Talk About Security On The Internet Of Things – Forbes
The Wi-Fi Alliance recently announced the long-awaited Wi-Fi HaLow standard for products incorporating IEEE 802.11ah wireless networking technology (HaLow is pronounced just like the title of the popular video game from Microsoft). HaLow extends a flavor of Wi-Fi into the 900 MHz band, which provides greater range than the pre-existing 2.4 GHz standard, provides better connectivity through barriers such as walls and promises extensibility in the development of low-power Internet of Things (IoT) applications, such as Smart Home sensors and wearables.
Source: HaLow Is The Natural Next Step In The Evolution Of IoT | TechCrunch
Microsoft has fleshed out its strategy to position its cloud service as a key part of the internet of things fabric with the availability of Azure IoT Hub.
Cisco is acquiring Jasper Technologies, developer of an Internet of Things cloud platform, for $1.4 billion. The move further pushes Cisco toward its transformation into a software company.
Source: Cisco Bets Big On IoT With $1.4 B Jasper Buy – InformationWeek
Microsoft today announced that its Azure IoT Hub — a cloud service for registering, managing, and communicating with Internet-connected devices — will become generally available tomorrow, February 4.
The Internet of Things, which makes everyday objects smarter and connected, could bring electronic brains to more than 1.9 billion devices by the year 2020, according to a forecast by the tech analyst firm Linley Group.
Source: Internet of Things to be used in 1.9B devices by 2020 | VentureBeat | Business | by Dean Takahashi
The new system will be a bold entry into a massive new market When Microsoft announced this week that Windows 10 would be available July 29, Start Button devotees the world over rejoiced. But the return of everyone’s favorite app launcher is just one of many new features rolled into the forthcoming operating system. The biggest and most exciting element added to Windows computers is one that went largely unmentioned: smart home control. Microsoft announced last November Windows 10 would pack a technology called AllJoyn. An open source framework that encourages devices to be interoperable, AllJoyn was developed by the AllSeen Alliance, a group of more than 150 companies including the likes of Electrolux, Honeywell, LG, and Qualcomm that have banded together to make an open standard for Internet of Things (IoT) devices to speak to each other.
Source: This Is Microsoft’s Big Secret Windows 10 Feature | TIME
Cloud software company Salesforce today is announcing the release of IoT Cloud, a new service that will put the company into a new market. Think of IoT Cloud as a tool that non-technical workers can use to automatically kick off specific actions based on data from Internet-connected devices, social media messages, websites, and other sources.
No one really knows how many “things” there are deployed today that have IoT characteristics. IDC’s 2013 estimate was about 9.1 billion, growing to about 28 billion by 2020 and over 50 billion by 2025. You can get pretty much any other number you want, but all the estimates are very large. So what are all these IoT things doing and why are they there? Here’s our attempt to map out the IoT landscape (click to enlarge).
As you can see, there are a whole lot of possible organizational approaches to the constituent parts of IoT. We have chosen a “halo” approach, looking at how IoT principles will be applied to individual people, their surroundings (vehicles and homes), the organization of those surroundings (towns and cities and the highways and other transit systems that connect them), the range of social activities (essentially commerce, but also travel, hospitality, entertainment and leisure) that go on in those surroundings and finally the underpinnings of those activities (“industrial” including agriculture, energy and transport and logistics). We’re not claiming this is an exhaustive taxonomy (we’ve excluded all military and some law enforcement specific uses) or that this is the best way to organize things, but we think it’s a useful start and has been helpful in explaining the opportunity to the businesses we advise.
The size of the circles aren’t important. They’re basically an indication of how far away from the individual each collection of potential IoT ideas will be implemented, but even that isn’t fully consistent – there will be interactions between people and IoT ideas in the workplace as well as in the home or in the store.
So what we have here are six general areas of opportunity.
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Microsoft has a new Windows 10 release for Internet of things (IoT) devices, specifically the Raspberry Pi 2 and the MinnowBoard Max maker boards.
Compact, customizable and affordable, computing boards like the Raspberry Pi 2 have attracted the attention of both technology enthusiasts and businesses. Their tiny dimensions, generous processing power (comparatively speaking) and developer-friendly attributes have catapulted the device category from hobbyist tools to IoT building blocks.
And Microsoft wants a piece of the action.
“Windows 10 IoT Core is a new edition for Windows targeted towards small, embedded devices that may or may not have screens,” said Steve Teixeira, director of program management for the Internet of Things group at Microsoft, in an Aug. 10 announcement. “For devices with screens, Windows 10 IoT Core does not have a Windows shell experience; instead you can write a Universal Windows app that is the interface and ‘personality’ for your device.”
More than a recently-released operating system for desktop PCs, tablets and 2-in-1s, Windows 10 is an ambitious effort by Microsoft to unify its software foundation across a wide variety of devices, including mobile phones, Xbox One, the massive Surface Hub all-in-one conference room system, the upcoming HoloLens augmented reality headset and now IoT hardware.
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via Microsoft Squeezes Windows 10 Into Internet of Things Devices.
Last month’s revelation that hackers could remotely seize control of over a million Chrysler automobiles has delivered a stark warning that life in an ultra-networked world could be very dangerous, indeed.
“I think it is a seminal moment,” said Paddy Srinivasan, vice president at LogMeIn Inc., a Boston company in the forefront of building the “Internet of Things,” the ongoing effort to tie household appliances and nearly everything else to the Web. “These new devices need a fresh approach and a new way of thinking about security, and that is the missing piece.”
At the end of July, two network engineers, Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, used an Internet-connected computer to take control of a Chrysler Jeep Cherokee driving down a highway in St. Louis. As a reporter for the technology magazine Wired sat helpless in the driver’s seat, Miller and Valasek activated the windshield wipers, turned the radio and air conditioning up full blast, and disengaged the car’s transmission to make the vehicle undriveable — all from Miller’s basement, 10 miles away.
Within days, Chrysler’s parent company, FCA US LLC, recalled 1.4 million vehicles that were susceptible to the same kind of Internet attack.
The following week, computer security researcher Samy Kamkar revealed that he had hacked the OnStar communications system found in many General Motors cars. By attaching a small Wi-Fi receiver to a vehicle, Kamkar could remotely learn the car’s location, unlock its doors, or start its engine. General Motors said it has issued a fix that will solve the problem.
“Cybersecurity is an absolute top priority for automakers,” said Wade Newton, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing the world’s largest car makers. The alliance, he said, is creating a new program for sharing and analyzing information on digital security threats.
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via After car hack, Internet of Things looks riskier | BetaBoston.
Technology is the future of retail. Digital data, machine learning, cloud-powered analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) will separate the wheat from the chaff in tomorrow’s retail industry.
A recent Sector Insights government report (PDF) said that retailers will need to embrace the latest technology trends, such as big data, and have the skills to work with digital systems if they are to be successful in the future.
The retail industry is on the whole a voracious adopter of modern data-centric technology, aping the manufacturing world by using big data analytics to streamline supply chains, and using smartphone apps and wireless beacons to harvest customer data to deliver better service.
However, Robert Hetu, retail research director at analyst house Gartner, noted that, despite having the technology to collect and access large amounts of digital data, retailers fail to put it to effective use.
“With the rise of digital media came explosive growth in data volumes, and inexpensive storage encouraged retention of data with no present value because of the hope that it would be fruitful in the future,” he said.
“Today, retail BI [business intelligence] analysts are so busy gathering information, often in reaction to an opportunity or challenge perceived by the business, that there is no time to analyse the data and glean useful information.”
Hetu explained that this situation has led to a disconnect between analysing data and putting it to use in real time to quickly benefit a business.
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Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is already the largest e-commerce site in the world by overall visitors. However, the company’s ambitions extend far beyond selling physical and digital products — it wants to expand into the growing Internet of Things market.
The Internet of Things, or IoT, connects everyday devices like home appliances, smartwatches, and cars with each other and the cloud. Networking giant Cisco estimates that the total number of connected devices worldwide will double from 25 billion this year to 50 billion by 2020. Research firm IDC estimates that annual spending on IoT devices and services will surge from $656 billion in 2014 to $1.7 trillion in 2020.
Amazon plans to tap into this booming market with “smart” devices which could boost the strength of Amazon’s ecosystem.
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via 3 Ways Amazon Inc. Could Become An Internet of Things Superpower — The Motley Fool.
Like many technological advances, the Internet of Things has been long in coming. Ubiquitous or Pervasive Computing dates back to the 1990s, when neither the necessary low-cost devices nor ubiquitous wireless networking were anywhere near ready. But IoT has now reached an inflection point, with over 10 billion interconnected smart devices already out there, a number that’s expected to rapidly expand to tens of billions by 2025 and to hundreds of billions in the decades ahead.
“The myriad possibilities that arise from the ability to monitor and control things in the physical world electronically have inspired a surge of innovation and enthusiasm,” writes McKinsey & Co. in a June, 2015 report, The Internet of Things: Mapping the Value Beyond the Hype. The report analyzes the long term economic potential of IoT, and uses this analysis to estimate the economic value of several IoT-based solutions by 2025. Given the breadth and complex nature of IoT-based solutions, quantifying their potential value is very difficult indeed, especially since such smart solutions,–smart cities, smart homes, smart health care–are still in the very early stages of development.
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via Measuring the Economic Potential of the Internet of Things – The CIO Report – WSJ.
Consulting Trends 