Why The Internet of Things (IoT) Lights Your Business…Today

By IoTComplete’s Jimmy Schaeffler

(July 15, 2014; Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA)

No less impactful than Thomas Edison’s 1879 prediction that electricity would radically change every business, the pundits today who foresee every business — first in America, and then globally — being remarkably impacted by the Internet of Things (i.e., IoT, which includes subparts known as the Internet of Everything (IoE) and Machine-To-Machine (M2M)), are shining a lot of true light on a technology-centered plant that will grow, grow, grow.

Original All-IoT Projections

Indeed, IoTComplete has recently completed three-, five-, and ten-year projections of IoT device and machine growth, and no less than 22 bil. separate devices in the personal space and 31 bil. in the business machine space — taking the total projection to more than 50 bil. IoT-connected items — are realistic numbers for IoT growth globally by 2020, just 4 years hence.

In this vein, one small space alone highlights the IoT growth potential: between 15 mil. and 20 mil. automobiles are typically manufactured in the U.S. annually these years. Including a mere five sensors (there are actually dozens and dozens more) into every one of those vehicles quickly suggests a very achievable annual foundation of 100 mil. Multiply this tiny part of but a single industry silo, times the at least hundreds of thousands of similar examples, and the realistic light on IoT growth soon gets really visible and really bright.

On the revenue side, calculating pennies of value per device from the same equation above equates to many bils. of dollars, which arguably should be much more when studying the total impact. $15 bil., $25 bil….more, less?!?…it really doesn’t matter, the IoTComplete message is, it’s just a lot of value.

5 Key Reasons

Not unlike the true value of electrical power, the true value of IoT is hard to limit to a handful of reasons. That is because there are truly hundreds and more reasons why this new technology becomes the new way of doing business, in much less than a decade.

Yet, to really focus on the “major macro movers,” as we term them, IoTComplete has deeply investigated the fields of IoT, and found just a handful of hidden treasures. These five core considerations are…

  • To understand IoT sooner rather than later means you understand your own business and its opportunities. Specifically, one of the great things you understand is how the scores and hundreds of IoT implementations will impact your own business. One example would be how the IoT will permit your business to get the most efficiency and lowest prices out of its electricity needs, by syncing via IoT capabilities with the local utility company. Another basic opportunity would include the ability to utilize an embedded chip within a package to notify your customer of the arrival date and point of a core part for its $10 bil. auto assembly plant.
  • To understand the future of IoT is to understand a (if not THE) # 1 trend affecting your vendors, suppliers, and customers, indeed, affecting all of society and all of the global economy. This cannot be understated. That is because the efficiencies IoT offers, together with an enhanced ease of acceptance and deployment, are driving forces that make “when” the issue, far less than “if.”
  • To understand what IoT means to your customers means you have seized an opportunity that might otherwise have been lost to your competitors. This is especially the case in what may well prove to be the most serious of the initial IoT applications, i.e., M2M realizations. And on a consumer level, a sample situation would involve typical plane delay text and/or email notifications that today arrive late, after you are already at the new gate and on the delayed aircraft, instead arriving in time to actually help you travel. Another would be a package delivery service that pings you and efficiently coordinates a delivery to sync when you are actually home to receive the package.
  • Getting seriously into the IoT early suggests more quickly helping to resolve the huge issues that threaten to hamper the breadth and speed of both personal and professional IoT growth and appreciation. Put another way, with something this good, something this obvious, and something this inevitable, to wait is to waste, and it will require more energy and passion than you might expect (because its scope, breadth, and impact will be so substantial).
  • Follow the key early industry pundits and opinion makers from the start. A handful of top-level companies, and a smaller number of top educational institutions, will have huge sway over key steps just a short time away.

Edison-Like Execution

One thing the Man from Menlo Park, NJ truly understood was how to take ideas from inside the brain to actually practical and massive implementation in that outside world. Companies, governmental entities, and educational institutions have real opportunities — today — to begin the investigation of those real business basics, i.e., the what, where, when, why, how and who of the IoT. From there, steps and strategies toward the development of the IoT arise, most organically.

Because the Iot has so many potential applications, most of which have not yet been revealed and certainly not yet implemented, the future role of the IoT inside and outside every conceivable object and operation, cannot help but remind one of the many successful lessons taught by Thomas A. Edison.

IoTComplete cordially and professionally invites you, our Viewer, our Reader, our Constituent to reach out to IoTComplete, in order to best implement the steps and considerations noted above.

Jimmy Schaeffler is the principal behind the burgeoning new IoT service-provider, IotComplete.com, a Northern California-based entity, focused on the development of and strategies involving future global personal and business technologies…for more information, visit www.IoTComplete.com for contact and more details.