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Top ve Internet of
Things trends
for2017
January 3, 2017 | Written by: Chris O'Connor Follow th
Categorized: Business | Platform | Security conversa
The past year has been a transformative and exciting year for the Internet of Tweets
Things. We have seen almost every industry invest in the IoT and leading
IBM Wa
industries quickly move to implementing IoT solutions that are driving the bottom
What do
line. mean fo
compet
#ibmint

The IoT trends driving enterprise digital ibm.co/

transformation
Enterprises are driving the Internet of Things transformation. Consumer products
such as wearables and connected electronics certainly garner a large part of the
market, but IDC estimates more than 80 percent of IoT spend through 2020 will
be on B2B applications and use cases. The Internet of Things will be one of the IBM Wa
primary drivers of the digital transformation that enterprises will undergo in the Thanks
@
coming years, creating a self-learning environment that will drive digital disruption
Dev/Zo
in physical world. IoT will be a critical piece of this transformation as it allows new tour wit
business models to emerge and enables changes in work processes, @
#Watso
productivity improvements, cost containment and enhanced customer @
experiences.

With this in mind, I want to share what I believe will be the top ve IoT trends in
2017.
Embed
APIs
As easy a
Application programming interfaces (APIs) and a sound strategy around them is
becoming increasingly important to enterprises tapping into the IoT. APIs serve as Connect to Wa
a bridge to connect useful information and plentiful data to the Internet of Things, Raspberry Pi 3
making the Internet of Things useful by connecting many disparate things into a the power of c
powerful network that offers astounding possibilities.

APIs are the market enabler, and Internet of Things devices would be useless
without them. By exposing data that enables multiple devices to be connected,
APIs provide an interface between the Internet and the things to reveal previously
unseen possibilities. In the year to come, the power and importance of APIs will
Latest IoT
be at the forefront of the conversation around enablingand more important IoT weekly
monetizing the Internet of Things. 23rd March
2017
IBM brings the power of cognition to the Internet of Things with Watson APIs. In a
physical world in which devices and systems are becoming highly digitized, the Blockchain
capabilities provided by these APIs give IBM clients, partners and developers an March 23, 2
ever fuller sense of the data on which they rely: InterConne
workplace
1. The Natural Language Processing (NLP) API Family enables users to
22, 2017
interact with systems and devices using simple, human language. Natural
Language Processing helps solutions understand the intent of human
language by correlating it with other sources of data to put it into context in
specic situations.

2. The Machine Learning Watson API Family automates data processing and
continuously monitors new data and user interactions to rank data and results
based on learned priorities. Machine Learning can be applied to any data
coming from devices and sensors to automatically understand the current
conditions, whats normal, expected trends, properties to monitor, and
suggested actions when an issue arises.

3. The Video and Image Analytics API Family enables monitoring of

unstructured data from video feeds and image snapshots to identify scenes
and patterns. This knowledge can be combined with machine data to gain a
greater understanding of past events and emerging situations.

4. The Text Analytics API Family enables mining of unstructured textual data
including transcripts from customer call centers, maintenance technician logs,
blog comments, and tweets to nd correlations and patterns in these vast
amounts of data.
Security
As we rely on connected devices to make our lives better and easier, security
must be considered from every aspect. All participants in the IoT ecosystem have
a responsibility for the security of the devices, data and solutions. This means that
device manufacturers, application developers, consumers, operators, integrators
and enterprise businesses all have their part to play to follow best practices.

IoT security requires a multi-layered approach. From a device point of view it

should be considered at the blueprint level that starts with design and
development and keeps hardware, rmware/software, and data secure through
their entire life. The same approach applies if you are a security analyst or
operations personnel responsible for IoT solutions. To enable the full potential of
IoT, security challenges must be addressed through a combination of
interoperability, education and good designand by taking a proactive, not
reactive approach to designing security features, which will result in better
products and solutions.

Understanding the intricacies of IoT and the security around it is something that
we at IBM have taken very seriously. We have invested and combined the
expertise from across the IBM business incorporating thought leaders from IBM
Research, Security and IoT to provide a comprehensive overview of IoT Security.
In our latest POV on cognitive security for the Internet of Things, we share with the
whole IoT community in a bid to disseminate ideas and best practices. In
addition, we continue to work with various organizations who are researching and
publishing recommendations on IoT and security including the Industrial Internet
Consortium (IIC) and IoT Security Foundation (IoTSF).

Platforms
IoT platforms received a great amount of attention in 2016 as most major IoT
players rolled one out in one form or another. Platforms that have the right
elements can provide tremendous value by linking the IoT endpoints to the
applications and analytics needed to generate business outcomes. Its the
linchpin in a holistic IoT solution as it enables the data generated at the endpoints
to be processed and meaningfully used by end users.

An IoT platform must connect devices, must collect data, must handle thousands
of vendors, dozens of standards and must be able to scale to millions of devices
sending billions of messages. To deliver true value beyond the basics, it must add
cognitive, security, privacy, insight generation and close loop automation. With
these capabilities and the supporting technology advancements, the IoT platform
becomes an agent of transformation for a business.

The recently published report, The Forrester Wave: IoT Software Platforms, Q4
2016 assessed how the leading IoT platforms stack up against each other based
on current offerings, strategy and market presence. I invite you to read the report
to see how IBMs investment in this technology for the past ten years, combined
with new capabilities, has placed us as a leader among IoT platform vendors.

Cognitive Computing
The Internet of Things is at the threshold of a tremendous opportunity.
Connecting things with unique IP addresses has been possible for over a decade,
but the commoditization of sensors, processors and memory now make it viable
to make everyday things move beyond being just connected, but actually making
them intelligent.

Beyond traditional IoT implementations, cognitive computing is increasing the

amount of data to improve the learning environment and increase the possibilities
of what can be done with edge analytics making sensors capable of diagnosing
and adapting to their environment without the need for human intervention.
Another huge advantage of cognitive IoT is the ability to combine multiple data
streams that can identify patterns and give much more context than would be
otherwise available.

Cognitive IoT, AI and machine learning are further enabling enterprises to unlock
IoT value. An exploding amount of IoT data requires a new approach to gather,
analyze and makes sense out of all that data. Such a massive amount of
information from sensors and devices can be used to enhance existing data and
knowledge, uncovering insights capable of transforming industries. But although
making sense out of dark data and edge data is paving our way to revolutionary
ideas and technologies, it requires a cognitive approach that can effectively
handle increasingly large inputs while generating meaningful output.
Programmable systems thrive on prescribed scenarios using predictable data,
and their rigidity can limit their usefulness when addressing the ambiguity and
uncertainty of IoT data. Cognitive systems, however, are not explicitly
programmed. Rather, they learn from interactions with people and from
experiences with their environment. In doing so, they become able to keep pace
with the complexity of the Internet of things, identifying data correlations that
would otherwise go unnoticed.
Blockchain
Blockchain is playing a major part in the Internet of Things by enhancing security,
making transactions more seamless and creating efciencies in the supply chain.

I expect the coming year will be one in which we see companies start to leverage
blockchain in 3 key ways:

1. Build trust blockchain can help build trust between the people and parties
that transact together. Watson IoT blockchain enables devices to participate in
blockchain transactions as a trusted party. While Person A may not know
device B and may not trust it implicitly, the indelible record of transactions and
data from devices stored on the blockchain provide proof and command the
necessary trust for businesses and people to cooperate.

2. Reduce costs IoT and blockchain can enable participants to reduce

monetary and time commitment costs by ultimately removing the middle
man from the process. Transactions and device data are now exhibited on a
peer to peer basis, removing most legal or contractual costs.

3. Accelerate transactions IoT and blockchain enables more transactions

overall because the middle man is removed from the process. Smart
contracts allow for organizations to reduce time needed for completing legal or
contractual commitments.

Blockchain for IoT can transform the way business transactions are conducted
globally through a trustworthy environment to automate and encode business
transactions while preserving enterprise level privacy and security for all parties in
the transaction. IBM Watson IoT Blockchain utilizes blockchain capabilities and
enables information from IoT devices to be used in transactions. This allows IoT
devices to be used in building blockchain-based solutions to help organizations
improve operational efciency, transform customer experience, and adopt new
business models in a secure, private, and decentralized manner, so all
participating organizations gain value.

I expect these 5 things to play a major role in enterprise IoT in 2017 and beyond
the coming year. I also expect to see many things we arent currently thinking
about emerge in the next year as the IoT is evolving so rapidly that there is always
something new. I welcome your thoughts on these trends or other major trends
you believe will drive the Internet of Things this year. Leave a comment with your
thought or Tweet me @ChrisROConnor.
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One Comment

Excellent post, thank you for that. As I see this is a more

technical perspective on how to enable potentials. From what
Ive seen throughout the Startup scene, hardware and software,
Christian Greiner
I would add Business Model Innovation as a trend for 2017.
January 4th,
Investments are going up, despite the risks of starting a
2017
hardware company. We have been waiting for the IoT to be
capitalized outside the consumer workd (i.e.tbit). I guess this
year could be the year
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