Understanding the true power of IoT

Only four years ago, a sur­vey found that four out of five Amer­i­cans had not heard of the inter­net of things (IoT).

IoT describes the net­work of phys­i­cal objects that are embed­ded with sen­sors, soft­ware and oth­er tech­nolo­gies for the pur­pose of con­nect­ing and exchang­ing data with oth­er devices and sys­tems over the inter­net.

For peo­ple like you and I, the most real exam­ple of that is the smart­phone we take every­where with us. Your smart­phone has been get­ting clev­er­er in your pock­et and now IoT is accel­er­at­ing change in our lives and ush­er­ing us rapid­ly into a peri­od of dra­mat­ic change. Again.

We have more than 50 bil­lion devices already con­nect­ed to the inter­net – that’s sev­en per human – but it’s the next ten years which should real­ly grab your atten­tion, with this num­ber expect­ed to grow to over 500 bil­lion by 2030. 

As lead­ers, if you have not already begun to embrace data and oppor­tu­ni­ties to col­lect it and analyse it, you are about to be sub­merged by a data tsuna­mi. This should mat­ter to all lead­ers because it will shape the future of all organ­i­sa­tions. McKinsey’s Glob­al Insti­tute pre­dicts IoT will have an eco­nom­ic impact of between $4 tril­lion and $11 tril­lion by 2025.

The ques­tion is not do I need to swim? But rather, if you want to sur­vive this next dis­rup­tion, can you swim?

What 5G has done for IoT growth

Along­side this mas­sive growth in data avail­abil­i­ty, the sec­ond accel­er­a­tor of IoT has been advances in con­nec­tiv­i­ty. If we take just one area of IoT, say, remote sen­sors in water util­i­ties, we have had tech­nol­o­gy for some time, which was robust in terms of con­nect­ing sen­sors, but was only use­ful as mon­i­tors that could say “I’m too hot” or “I’m bro­ken, please fix me”.

With GPRS, and now 5G, offer­ing us a con­tin­u­ous data stream, we can have a two-way dia­logue with a device, which means we can add con­trol. When I say con­trol, I hope your sens­es are raised. This has rev­o­lu­tionised IoT from an intel­li­gence per­spec­tive, because cen­tralised deci­sions can be made which allow the con­trol of remote devices. For exam­ple, the device might say “the water lev­el is too high in the reser­voir” and the cen­tral sys­tem replies “please dis­charge water down­stream”. 

Of course, if the wrong reser­voir was emp­tied the con­se­quences would be seri­ous and so we reach the third ele­ment of IoT’s recent rapid devel­op­ment: secu­ri­ty. The biggest IoT secu­ri­ty risks involve soft­ware. Soft­ware attacks can exploit entire sys­tems, steal infor­ma­tion, alter data, deny ser­vice and com­pro­mise or dam­age devices.

Many IoT devices still present a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty risk because they are based on old pro­to­cols and eas­i­ly hack­able, but this is chang­ing rapid­ly and secu­ri­ty is increas­ing­ly being baked in at the design stage. How­ev­er, as we move towards a future when more and more pro­cess­ing is done at the point of data col­lec­tion, the edge, there is still much to address.

Time to get with the program

So what does all this mean for us as dig­i­tal lead­ers? We have to see IoT as an oppor­tu­ni­ty or face a bleak future. As lead­ers, we should already be shap­ing over­all strat­e­gy by plac­ing par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on how dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies are con­tin­u­al­ly chang­ing and the oppor­tu­ni­ties this presents our organ­i­sa­tion.

It’s now about you as senior lead­ers recog­nis­ing IoT’s impact and under­stand­ing the art of the pos­si­ble, start­ing with the cul­ture of your organ­i­sa­tion, not strat­e­gy. It’s about mov­ing to a cul­ture that can keep pace with con­stant change, where new mod­els of work­ing and plen­ty of col­lab­o­ra­tion are ener­gis­ing rather than fright­en­ing. So, as lead­ers, let’s ensure we accept we tru­ly face the inter­net of every­thing and learn to swim.