Posts Tagged ‘IoE’
3 Internet of Everything Trends from 2013
We are well past the customary Happy New Year greetings timeframe into 2014, and on the heels of the first big acquisition in the IoT/IoE space, I wanted to recap key announcements and initiatives from 2013 that have set the stage for 2014:
Formation of Dedicated Divisions
One trend in 2013 was for major companies to re-organize themselves to create groups or divisions within for Internet of Everything – chief among them were Cisco Systems and Intel. They joined IBM, I think, was the pioneer to organize itself around the Smarter Planet initiative. It is not clear to me if the group is formed around Wind River which it had acquired or Wind River has been moved to this new group. GE made several announcements and is heavily investing in their initiative that they have tagged as Industrial Internet.
Bosch followed at CES 2014 with its announcement forming Bosch Connected Devices & Solutions.
Alliances & Standards
The second observable trend was groups forming as a part of Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) and Open Source Initiatives. Two major announcements were the formation of a Smarthome alliance by ABB, Bosch, Cisco and LG and Qualcomm releasing its AllJoyn framework to the Open Source Community and forming the AllSeen alliance.
IBM had open-sourced the MQTT standard and in 2013 it was adopted by Oasis and bunch of companies to be advanced as a reliable messaging protocol for IoT.
Money Flow: Crowd-funding, Exits & Investments
Corporate investors ranked high in investments made in the IoT/IoE space in 2013.
Crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo continued to be major sources of funding for IoT startups likes Canary. Lifx which was funded in 2012 on Kickstarter, launched their bulbs in 2013.
Crowd-funded companies from 2012 brought in VC-led investments in 2013 – chief among them SmartThings and Variable Inc. (Node).
Tado, Revolv, Arrayent, Zoneoff, Ayla, Fitbit, Dropcam, Estimote, Withings, and Netatmo are some of the key startups in the IoT/IoE space raising money in 2013.
Sensinode was acquired by ARM – an interesting case signaling ARM wants to be in the IoT/IoE market beyond providing semiconductor IP. ThingWorx was acquired by PTC.
In summary, the three trends above will increase the momentum making 2014 a watershed year in IoT/IoE.
Exploring the Internet of (Every)Thing
Last year I embarked on a journey to explore the Internet of Things or as Cisco calls it “Internet of Everything” (IoE). I like the notion of IoE not because it is coined by my day job employer but because it is about everything. Smartthings, the much talked about IoT startup, talks up the “Physical Graph” because thanks to the Social Networking era the term “Graph” puts you in vogue. [But really graph? do we want to be relegated to a 2D world of graph?]
I have installed, experimented, hacked and studied many IoT offerings, here is the current list:
Philips Hue (and my review here & here)
Wireless Sensor Tags (my review here)
Nest (Teardown/Review of here and here)
All the above and more are enabling discrete systems to get connected – the first step towards the IoE. As these systems proliferate and standardize in terms of presence and interoperability the need for a fabric that ties all of them together will emerge. I believe Tim O’Reilly describes this notion very well – Software above a Single Device.
I am excited to play a role in tying together the Internet of Everything.
All Things CC: 