A VC perspective: what happened to the Internet of Things?

IoT is more than smart homes and connected appliances; it could soon expand to include manufacturing floors, healthcare, transportation, and energy grids.

Industry experts and excited consumers have pegged Internet of Things (IoT) as the next Industrial Revolution. IoT is transforming the way businesses, governments and consumers connect with the physical world, driving digital transformation that enterprises will undergo in the coming years.

This year, more than $1.3 billion were invested in IoT, witnessing an amazing measure of activity in Blockchain for security and artificial intelligence. The startup environment for IoT security has been one of the fastest accelerating sectors in private funding; capital tracking in 2017 was close to $500 million with constant month-over-month growth.

Despite the expansion in capital allocation to IoT security players, it is expected that these significant technology organisations will drive a bias towards stronger technologies, the biggest guiding factor being that all the resources will be put in this space as IoT is where the future is headed.

Top 2017 Trends - Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming everyday physical objects, encompassing the informational ecosystem that will make our lives easier.

From houses to parking lots, the IoT is adding more and more things into the digital overlap each day; this is probably going to make the IoT space a multi-trillion-dollar industry soon.

The top five IoT technology trends that gained momentum in the market in 2017 are:

• IoT Marketplaces With its emergence, IoT marketplaces have been revolutionising, modernising and automating the industrial tools and processes. Organisations using IoT marketplaces can now connect and interact with a wide range of vendors, thereby sharing and monitoring data tools and data security without making any significant investments.
• 
  
• Machine Learning Tapping into new IoT opportunities this year, Machine Learning dives into a large amount of data and digests it at once. Its ability helps streamline data analytics thereby enabling industries to feed all sorts of IoT data to AI apps, enhancing business goals and services.
• 
  
• Blockchain Another technology taking over the IoT space is Blockchain. It proved to be the missing link to settle scalability, privacy and reliability concerns in IoT, thereby helping track billions of connected devices, process transactions, and create a resilient ecosystem for devices to work in the IoT industry. Blockchain in IoT solution increases trust and faster transactions while protecting data transmitting between devices.
• 
  
• Artificial Intelligence IoT with AI got recognised to help companies review and analyse billions of data points to find patterns and similarities for better decision-making. Industries are using AI to mine data coming in from IoT devices to support business goals and create what’s meaningful.
• 
  
• Predictive Data & Data Analytics One of the biggest verticals to have received recognition in IoT, witnessing an exponential growth of unstructured data in almost all industries is Big Data and Predictive Analytics. Businesses can now make sense of the data collected through IoT-enabled devices and accelerate the decision-making process, thereby contributing to a bigger picture.
• 
  

 Apart from the technologies that transformed the IoT space in 2017, there are predictions of a world-changing impact which Internet of Things may have on commerce and lifestyle globally in the coming year.

Market watch - Changes IoT will bring In 2018

Cognitive IoT or Cognitive Computing will enable enterprises to unlock true IoT value going forward. 2018 will witness an exploding amount of IoT data with a whole new approach to gather, analyse and uncover insights capable of transforming industries. Cognitive systems are programmed to learn from interactions with people and experiences within their environment, further enhancing the pace at which it deals with the complexity of Internet of Things.

After receiving a great amount of attention in 2017, IoT platforms will soon provide a tremendous value keeping in mind the endpoints of the apps and analytics required for generating better business outcomes. IoT platforms will move beyond the basics by adding cognitive, security, privacy and insight generation to close loop automation.

Industries such as healthcare will turn to big data-driven solutions and will reshape how people access and pay for healthcare services. Patients have already started turning towards networked gadgets and wearable technologies that remind them when to take the medicines, when to exercise, monitor their heart rate and stress levels etc.

Looking at all the changes and growth in the IoT space in the last two years, security has received the utmost importance, making everyone from device manufacturers, application developers, consumers, vendors, and businesses to take responsibility.

IoT intricacies and security will rise with time to enable full potential, taking a proactive approach to design security features resulting in better platforms.

The bottom line

Without a doubt, the IoT space is poised to disrupt industries. Investors are seriously taking notice of the IoT, investing in its expansion. It is not easy to predict the future and we don’t know the true capabilities of IoT yet but if this is the next BIG THING, then getting in soon will be elementary to progress. We can’t wait to see how this technology unfolds in 2018.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)