Verizon Wireless Business is running a Connected Technology Tour around select U.S. cities and yesterday’s stop was in Minneapolis. Its focus? The impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) and how attendees could, “…learn how businesses and public agencies are leveraging the accelerated growth of connected devices to increase operational efficiencies, enhance safety and security and, in some cases, generate new revenue streams.”
Did it deliver?
The short answer is “yes” since it was incredibly useful and informative to talk with the partners who had booths setup. The things I learned about using wireless technologies for failover and redundant connections—and what solutions were already available—has already enlightened me on possibilities and proved useful for the IoT startups I advise.
Jack Uldrich
The longer answer is “maybe” since several of the attendees I spoke with were very interested in what the keynote speaker, Jack Uldrich, had to say. Billed as a “Global Futurist and Best-Selling Author” Uldrich’s overview of IoT was fairly basic to anyone who has spent any time investigating IoT.
It was unclear to me whether or not the audience knew much of what Uldrich covered—and like me wanted stats-and-facts about the size of the IoT market, what categories are growing and where investments were occurring—but perhaps I was in the minority due to my extensive study of the Internet of Things.
What I really liked (and was probably the point) is that Uldrich’s message was focused to motivate attendees to investigate IoT now and get moving before they were disrupted by some competitor who would, or before their business model was modified or destroyed.
Uldrich defined IoT, talked about why it was happening, that the audience needed to prepare for it, and what was next, all while sprinkling in fun examples to show how we audience members don’t perceive change well. He was undoubtedly preparing us to strongly consider that IoT was a market that would experience exponential change, and if we weren’t paying attention it would suddenly be all around us and we’d be caught flat-footed.
Getting the audience to think about IoT’s growth as exponential change, instead of linear or geometric change, was done by Uldrich using what I’ve always thought was the best example to explain exponential growth: lilypad’s and a lake…
To those who don’t believe IoT will change the world in the near future just because it hasn’t accomplished much yet, consider this little quiz: If a single lily pad began doubling on a small lake on the first day of June and doubled each day thereafter until the entire lake was covered by the end of the month, on Day 20 what percentage of the pond would be covered with lily pads?
The answer is one-tenth of one percent. That’s right, .1%! What happens over the next 10 days is a little short of amazing—the entire pond gets completely covered with lilypads. Such is the nature of exponential growth.
I can say from personal experience (and that I already own about thirty ‘things’ installed at my house already due to SmartThings), that there will be exponential growth of the purchase and use of internet-connected things quickly in the home. But home automation is not the big opportunity.
Businesses adopting IoT—and connecting to the internet mostly in a wireless way—is where the action is. Tracking assets, monitoring remotely, managing vehicles (and where they are, their load and more), and all the possibilities in health care is a huge opportunity for the arguably more dependable (and often the only option for specific use-cases) wireless connectivity.
If the IoT technology space plays out even somewhat like the personal computer, multimedia, and internet space did over the last 35-45 years, once businesses see early adopters enjoying successful implementation of IoT sensors, hubs and analytics to streamline operations and make more money, every other business will scramble to get on board…
…and Verizon Wireless M2M Solutions (machine-to-machine) positioning, services and partners will place them directly in the path of much of this IoT exponential explosion. I’m guessing Verizon thinks so too since they’re investing in seminars just like this one all over the country.
Recent Articles on the Internet of Things:
- The Guardian: Internet of Things: it’s all coming together for a tech revolution
- The Motley Fool: Even the Public Sector Is Diving Into the Internet of Things
- ZDNet: Preparing for the Internet of Things
- GSMA: China Leads Global Connected Living Market With Over 50 Million M2M Connections
- The Telegraph: Is business ready for the Internet of Things? Inanimate objects are getting smarter, so businesses must too
- Yahoo News: Tech giants scramble for lead on ‘Internet of Things’