Charting the connected future

How to get cats online? The power of IoT

Talking about the what, why and how of IoT

We saw it first with PCs, then phones, and now, embedded devices and the IoT. Back in 2011 Ericsson predicted 50 billion connected devices by 2020. In the same year Apple launched the iPhone 4S. This really stretched the imagination. Back then only few people dared to imagine things like getting cats online.

What happened since then? Today we have about 35 to 40 billion installed IoT devices, IDC predicts that we will have 55.7 connected IoT devices by 2025. So Ericsson was almost right with its crazy prediction of 2011. And we have internet connected cat. “To get that cat online four things had to happen”, described Daniel Cooley.

1. unlimited cloud infrastructure
2. data networks
3. computers in every single pocket
4. billions of low-cost powerful connectivity solutions

“What is most exciting about embedded computing to me today is, that it is going online. Any CPU out there is a candidate for connecting to the cloud. We have billions of these things surrounding us. It is a very powerful concept. We will spend the rest of our careers designing generation after generation after generation of this IoT technology.”, said Cooley.

But what is IoT? For Cooley it is closing the air gap and connecting it to the cloud. “Once connected, everything is different. It sets the data free”, according to Cooley.

Massive effects of IoT on the global economy

For many industries connectivity is the first step into digitalization, e.g. digital shelf labels in retail. “The cloud comes down. We are starting to see many end markets with billions of potential sockets out there, where there was nothing before. It all starts with connectivity. The barriers of entry are falling, and devices spread everywhere”, outlined Cooley.

For him OT is a thousand times bigger than IT. It transforms business models all over the globe. IoT unlocks values and because of that there is no way back. He emphasized the impact of IoT in several examples. Beehive tracking in the agricultural sector, personalized health care base on individual data collected on the body of the single patient or theft protection, data logging and predictive maintenance for tools at construction sites. You name it … McKinsey is predicting in its IoT report of 2021 that by 2030 the IoT could enable 5.5 trillion to 12.6 trillion US-Dollar in value globally. This means that 5 to 10 % of the global GDP is resting on the technology the embedded community is building.

What do we need to get to the next level of IoT?

With this in mind, Daniel Cooley presented four steps that we need to do to get to the next level of IoT on our way to the connected future. To emphasize the importance of working together on this he invited four guest speakers to present these four steps:

1. accelerate software
2. secure your products
3. connect device teams and cloud teams
4. empower data governance

There are still obstacles to overcome on the way to a connected future:

• adopt wireless into the industrial environment
• fill the gap between proof of concept and scale
• powering all these MUCs
• AI and all questions that come with it.

But according to Daniel Cooley “there is no end in sight” of the development towards IoT, so we better deal with it – and shape it.

Watch the whole keynote of Daniel Cooley