Gartner highlights AI among its top 10 strategic Internet of Things trends

Nick Jones of Gartner

Gartner, Inc. has highlighted the top strategic Internet of Things (IoT) technology trends that it believes will drive digital business innovation from 2018 to 2023.

“The IoT will continue to deliver new opportunities for digital business innovation for the next decade, many of which will be enabled by new or improved technologies,” says Nick Jones, research vice president at Gartner. “CIOs who master innovative IoT trends have the opportunity to lead digital innovation in their business.”

In addition, CIOs should ensure they have the necessary skills and partners to support key emerging IoT trends and technologies, as, by 2023, the average CIO will be responsible for more than three times as many endpoints as this year.

Analysts discussed how CIOs can lead their businesses to discover IoT opportunities and make IoT projects a success during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, which is taking place here through Thursday.

Gartner shortlists the 10 most strategic IoT technologies and trends that will enable new revenue streams and business models, as well as new experiences and relationships:

Trend No. 1: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Gartner forecasts that 14.2 billion connected things will be in use in 2019, and that the total will reach 25 billion by 2021, producing immense volume of data. “Data is the fuel that powers the IoT and the organisation’s ability to derive meaning from it will define their long term success,” said Mr Jones. “AI will be applied to a wide range of IoT information, including video, still images, speech, network traffic activity and sensor data.

The technology landscape for AI is complex and will remain so through 2023, with many IT vendors investing heavily in AI, variants of AI coexisting, and new AI-based tolls and services emerging. Despite this complexity, it will be possible to achieve good results with AI in a wide range of IoT situations. As a result, CIOs must build an organisation with the tools and skills to exploit AI in their IoT strategy.

Trend No. 2: Social, legal and ethical IoT

As the IoT matures and becomes more widely deployed, a wide range of social, legal and ethical issues will grow in importance. These include ownership of data and the deductions made from it; algorithmic bias; privacy; and compliance with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation.

“Successful deployment of an IoT solution demands that it’s not just technically effective but also socially acceptable,” said Mr Jones. “CIOs must, therefore, educate themselves and their staff in this area, and consider forming groups, such as ethics councils, to review corporate strategy. CIOs should also consider having key algorithms and AI systems reviewed by external consultancies to identify potential bias.”

Trend No. 3: Infonomics and data broking

Last year’s Gartner survey of IoT projects showed 35% of respondents were selling or planning to sell data collected by their products and services. The theory of infonomics takes this monetisation of data further by seeing it as a strategic business asset to be recorded in the company accounts. By 2023, the buying and selling of IoT data will become an essential part of many IoT systems. CIOs must educate their organisations on the risks and opportunities related to data broking in order to set the IT policies required in this area and to advise other parts of the organisation.

Trend No. 4: The shift from intelligent edge to intelligent mesh

The shift from centralised and cloud to edge architectures is well under way in the IoT space. However, this is not the end point because the neat set of layers associated with edge architecture will evolve to a more unstructured architecture comprising of a wide range of “things” and services connected in a dynamic mesh. These mesh architectures will enable more flexible, intelligent and responsive IoT systems — although often at the cost of additional complexities. CIOs must prepare for mesh architectures’ impact on IT infrastructure, skills and sourcing.

Trend No. 5: IoT governance

As the IoT continues to expand, the need for a governance framework that ensures appropriate behaviour in the creation, storage, use and deletion of information related to IoT projects will become increasingly important. Governance ranges from simple technical tasks such as device audits and firmware updates to more complex issues such as the control of devices and the usage of the information they generate. CIOs must take on the role of educating their organisations on governance issues and in some cases invest in staff and technologies to tackle governance.

Trend No. 6: Sensor innovation

The sensor market will evolve continuously through 2023. New sensors will enable a wider range of situations and events to be detected, current sensors will fall in price to become more affordable or will be packaged in new ways to support new applications, and new algorithms will emerge to deduce more information from current sensor technologies. CIOs should ensure their teams are monitoring sensor innovations to identify those that might assist new opportunities and business innovation.

Trend No. 7: Trusted hardware and operating system

Gartner surveys invariably show that security is the most significant area of technical concern for organisations deploying IoT systems. This is because organisations often don’t have control over the source and nature of the software and hardware being utilised in IoT initiatives. “However, by 2023, we expect to see the deployment of hardware and software combinations that together create more trustworthy and secure IoT systems,” said Mr Jones.

“We advise CIOs to collaboratewith chief information security officers to ensure the right staff are involved in reviewing any decisions that involve purchasing IoT devices and embedded operating systems.”

Trend 8: Novel IoT user experiences

The IoT user experience (UX) covers a wide range of technologies and design techniques. It will be driven by four factors: new sensors, new algorithms, new experience architectures and context, and socially aware experiences. With an increasing number of interactions occurring with things that don’t have screens and keyboards, organisations’ UX designers will be required to use new technologies and adopt new perspectives if they want to create a superior UX that reduces friction, locks in users, and encourages usage and retention.

Trend No. 9: Silicon chip innovation

“Currently, most IoT endpoint devices use conventional processor chips, with low-power ARM architectures being particularly popular. However, traditional instruction sets and memory architectures aren’t well-suited to all the tasks that endpoints need to perform,” said Mr Jones. “For example, the performance of deep neural networks (DNNs) is often limited by memory bandwidth, rather than processing power.”

By 2023, it’s expected that new special-purpose chips will reduce the power consumption required to run a DNN, enabling new edge architectures and embedded DNN functions in low-power IoT endpoints. This will support new capabilities such as data analytics integrated with sensors, and speech recognition included in low cost battery-powered devices. CIOs are advised to take note of this trend as silicon chips enabling functions such as embedded AI will in turn enable organisations to create highly innovative products and services.

Trend No. 10: New wireless networking technologies for IoT

IoT networking involves balancing a set of competing requirements, such as endpoint cost, power consumption, bandwidth, latency, connection density, operating cost, quality of service, and range. No single networking technology optimises all of these and new IoT networking technologies will provide CIOs with additional choice and flexibility. In particular they should explore 5G, the forthcoming generation of low earth orbit satellites, and backscatter networks.

Comment on this article below or via Twitter: @IoTNow_OR @jcIoTnow

RECENT ARTICLES

Surrey leads new £8 million FORT centre for advancing secure networks

Posted on: March 18, 2024

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) announced that Surrey’s 5G/6G Innovation Centre will lead a new £8 million Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Open Secure Networks (FORT). 

Read more

Protecting assets with LTE, NTN & 5G LPWA

Posted on: March 15, 2024

In this compelling piece, part of the Key Industry Insights Series, Analyst Robin Duke-Woolley of Beecham Research and Kevin Guan of Fibocom, explain how LTE Cat 4/1/1bis/M, NTN and 5G LPWA are working to change the game for protecting goods and supply chains with total, global coverage asset tracking for reduced losses and improved operations

Read more
FEATURED IoT STORIES

What is IoT? A Beginner’s Guide

Posted on: April 5, 2023

What is IoT? IoT, or the Internet of Things, refers to the connection of everyday objects, or “things,” to the internet, allowing them to collect, transmit, and share data. This interconnected network of devices transforms previously “dumb” objects, such as toasters or security cameras, into smart devices that can interact with each other and their

Read more

The IoT Adoption Boom – Everything You Need to Know

Posted on: September 28, 2022

In an age when we seem to go through technology boom after technology boom, it’s hard to imagine one sticking out. However, IoT adoption, or the Internet of Things adoption, is leading the charge to dominate the next decade’s discussion around business IT. Below, we’ll discuss the current boom, what’s driving it, where it’s going,

Read more

9 IoT applications that will change everything

Posted on: September 1, 2021

Whether you are a future-minded CEO, tech-driven CEO or IT leader, you’ve come across the term IoT before. It’s often used alongside superlatives regarding how it will revolutionize the way you work, play, and live. But is it just another buzzword, or is it the as-promised technological holy grail? The truth is that Internet of

Read more

Which IoT Platform 2021? IoT Now Enterprise Buyers’ Guide

Posted on: August 30, 2021

There are several different parts in a complete IoT solution, all of which must work together to get the result needed, write IoT Now Enterprise Buyers’ Guide – Which IoT Platform 2021? authors Robin Duke-Woolley, the CEO and Bill Ingle, a senior analyst, at Beecham Research. Figure 1 shows these parts and, although not all

Read more

CAT-M1 vs NB-IoT – examining the real differences

Posted on: June 21, 2021

As industry players look to provide the next generation of IoT connectivity, two different standards have emerged under release 13 of 3GPP – CAT-M1 and NB-IoT.

Read more

IoT and home automation: What does the future hold?

Posted on: June 10, 2020

Once a dream, home automation using iot is slowly but steadily becoming a part of daily lives around the world. In fact, it is believed that the global market for smart home automation will reach $40 billion by 2020.

Read more

5 challenges still facing the Internet of Things

Posted on: June 3, 2020

The Internet of Things (IoT) has quickly become a huge part of how people live, communicate and do business. All around the world, web-enabled devices are turning our world into a more switched-on place to live.

Read more