‘Internet of Things’, may change ‘Internet of Everything’

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The term; Internet of Things (IoT) emerged which means, a network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which are enabled to collect and exchange data. IoT is an ultimate idea which is going to change the entire internet system. Yes, something that neither the Government nor any agencies can afford to ignore.

Internet researchers believe that IoT is the future of internet; shouldn’t we gear-up for this change? This much-hyped idea is not just an alarm, but time for the entire market to evolve. Iot is exponentially much risky, challenging, yet rewarding than any technical arrangement that was deployed yesterday. Increasingly connected, sensor-laden and data-driven systems are poised to change everything from national security to office-space management. The only issue is that, implementing IoT would generate more data, therein increasing complexity which most of the agencies couldn’t handle.

Cisco posits that IoT will generate $4.6 trillion for the public sector before 2025 in value added and costs saved. And although the General Services Administration (GSA) has not yet come close to those sorts of returns, the agency— which manages nearly 10,000 government-owned buildings around the country— has pioneered IoT building management with its GSALink initiative. Read more in the Original article: Internet of Everything: A $4.6 Trillion Public-Sector Opportunity. Collecting 29 million data points per day from myriad sensors throughout its buildings, GSA is able to monitor everything from light use to humidity, enabling the agency to boost productivity and promote good health by optimizing conditions when workers are present and saving on energy costs when they’re not.

Other big adopters include the intelligence community and the Defense Department. Warfighters can benefit from sensors that improve their tactical awareness, while vitals monitors can help commanders know who’s healthy or injured. Gary Hall, chief technology officer for Federal Defense at Cisco said, “I do see the Defense Department out in front [of IoT].” Hall added that there is plenty of room for crossover. Municipal experiments with smart lighting or parking, for instance, could inform similar adoption on agency campuses or military bases. “I’ve been on a lot of military bases, and the parking situation could certainly be improved,” he quipped.

The term “Internet of Things” refers to the physical elements of a connected network — the “things” — while the term “Internet of Everything” is all encompassing including: servers, sensors, data flows between them, people interpreting the data and even people talking to other people about the system.

Now the most important question remains unanswered; Can humans deal with the volume?

The number of connected “things” is expected to balloon from around 16 billion today to 50 billion by 2020, with skyrocketing data generation spurring a need for a 750 percent expansion in data center capacity. Hall pointed to the problem of “big, large data” because both the overall volume and the size of individual files have exploded. That creates a need for pre-processing with machines rather than people. He stated that, “Humans can’t deal with the volume of data we’re producing”. The CTO of Federal Defence concluded by warning the Government agencies quoting, “It’s not something they can avoid.”

Editor’s Note: Ideas inspired from;

Noble, Zach. “Are Agencies Really Ready for the Internet of Things?
— FCW.”FCW. N.p., 1 June 2015. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.