It is said that 74 percent of all Internet of Things ventures fail. That means 26 succeed, but 74 percent fizzle out for some reason. The Internet of Things is an enabler of the future. With the Internet of Things, we will be able to optimize irrigation in agriculture, we will be able to optimize air quality indoors, outdoors and we will be able to have full control over our health. And by 2030, there are predictions that every day we will be in contact with 3,000 sensors.
Things that talk
Already today, we have sensors all around us. The car sends information to the manufacturer. We have the connected dishwashers, refrigerators, not to mention all the useful things that make a difference in working life, positioning things, transmitting how a laboratory fridge is doing, for example. But we won’t be able to take advantage of this if we’re going to follow in the footsteps of failure.
From the beginning
I think a lot of the reason why the Internet of Things doesn’t always turn out the way you planned is because you give someone on staff a Raspberry Pi and say, “Here you go, now you’re going to develop our Internet of Things solution”. It’s far too big a threshold to start and it’s pleasing that there are new, easier steps to simplify your IoT journey.
How to get it right
There are three factors in particular that are useful to take on board, whether it’s the Internet of Things or whatever communications venture it may be.
- The solution must be secure. There must be no risk of someone hacking you. And now I’m talking about both long-term and short-term security. That is, you must be able to transfer data securely. But you also have to be able to update the device in the field, because these are solutions that are going to work for many, many years.
- Another thing we miss is scalability. This guy with the Raspberry Pi, he hasn’t been given a scalable platform. He doesn’t have a step to take forward once he’s tested his Raspberry Pi.
- The third thing that applies to any kind of connectivity is that it must be reliable. There is a plethora of cheap components. Yes, lo and behold, now in the footsteps of the component shortage. They are not always adapted for our Swedish mobile networks. They’re not really even suited to any type of mobile network, to be honest. They have a catastrophically poor design, don’t meet basic criteria and they are designed with a focus on being cheap and being able to satisfy a need of the moment. But that’s not sustainable.
So please, is it time for IoT? Think about this failed 74 percent of the projects. There’s no point in starting if you don’t have a clear idea of what’s expected of you along the way.