🗽 ▫️ 🗄️ Internet of Things Trends: AI Answers Calls, Clouds and 5G Tame Big Data, Housing and Utilities

The Internet of Things will soon be used everywhere: from lighting control in your yard to rocket engine factories. Surprisingly, IoT is most actively implemented in housing and communal services - yes, public utilities are not only involved in printing receipts with rents.

Which industries will also be affected by changes, in which countries the Internet of things will appear faster, how IoT is combined with machine learning, AI and blockchain, and what else to expect from smart sensors - we tell in the digest of the platform of cloud IoT services from Mail.ru Cloud Solutions .

Industrial IoT overtakes conventional Internet of things

“The number of devices for ordinary users has been growing steadily for several years, but industrial IoT is still lagging behind. Its growth was constrained by the lack of suitable technologies and low trust in the Internet of things in general.

However, IoT technologies are now much safer and more affordable. This will be the impetus for the implementation of industrial IoT concepts that were previously only projects. The Internet of Things will help improve important business processes: asset tracking, data collection, building business models, and many others. ”

Lee Stacey, product evangelist at Thingstream . Source

Artificial intelligence will replace call centers of IoT providers

“Artificial intelligence will take on the technical support of smart home users. This is due to an increase in the number of connected devices and the Internet of things services, which is why regular call centers of IoT systems vendors cannot service all incoming calls and letters.

Artificial intelligence will become a technology that either automatically solves problems in real time, or provides useful recommendations for self-solving the issue. AI will use smart speakers, voice assistants and smartphones to communicate with users. ”

Amir Kotler, Co-founder, and CEO, Veego . Source

The amount of data from IoT devices will grow, so their processing will "go" to the clouds

“IoT technologies will develop along with cloud technologies, that is, cloud platforms, thanks to which users of the industrial Internet of things can more easily integrate it into business processes and receive reliable data.

The following development vectors can be distinguished:

IoT platforms will become providers of reliable big data for machine learning engines, on the basis of which you can find new business hypotheses or build predictive strategies, for example, plan actions to help increase profits or the number of customers;
user devices are becoming smaller and cheaper every year, while they collect more and more data;
vertically integrated cloud-based M2M solutions based on IoT and other technologies will appear. This will allow you to get ready-made cloud IoT services and save on the development of special platforms, that is, faster and cheaper to implement an industrial Internet of things. ”

Dmitry Suhamera, Director of Business Development (IOT and Industrial Automation) . Mail.ru Cloud Solutions

Industrial IoT will be implemented globally - in hundreds of factories and plants around the world

“ Industrial IoT will go beyond the scope of pilot projects, such solutions will begin to be implemented globally. Over the past few years, many Fortune 500 companies, such as Mitsubishi, have tested IoT projects, now the processes will go into production. Implementation of IoT usually begins at one plant, now it's time to scale the operating time to tens and hundreds of factories around the world.

Also, manufacturing companies continue to move towards the introduction of third-party clouds. Thus, the integration between industrial IoT devices and the clouds is becoming increasingly important. ”

John Younes, Co-Founder, and COO of Litmus Automation . Source

This is how a factory with robots, industrial IoT, and almost no people might look like:

Companies will learn to squeeze more than just the obvious data from IoT devices

“Every year, industrial IoT devices will create more and more data. Using 5G will allow you to collect data more often and transfer them to processing in a larger volume. Storage of huge amounts of data is only possible in the cloud, so companies will move to hybrid clouds .

In addition, familiar data usage approaches will change. The collection and analysis of data on all production processes or supply chains will help to better understand where problems arise and to prevent them in time. ”

Patrick Callaghan, Enterprise Architect, DataStax . Source

Smart buildings get smarter every month: control lighting and microclimate, warn of danger

“In 2020, we will see more cases of using IoT equipment and systems in hospitals, schools, residential buildings, commercial buildings.

Historically, the maintenance of buildings was aimed at solving problems after they arose. Now that IoT and cloud technologies are combined on a single platform , it is time to implement predictive analytics. That is, according to the sensors, you can understand where the problems arise, and eliminate them in advance. "

Mark Pipher, VP and General Manager of FacilityConneX . Source

5G will make reality fantastic cities of the future

“The advent of 5G, LPWAN protocols such as LTE-M and NB-IoT, the consolidation of existing LTE networks will allow the introduction of intelligent technologies in smart cities that improve the lives of citizens. These are CCTV cameras, efficient traffic management, smart street lighting, garbage collection and emergency response buttons. That which was impossible a year or two ago, this year will become a reality. "

Harald Remmert, Director, Engineering, Digi . Source

More about smart cities in the video:

The main consumers of IoT are utilities, smart cars and healthcare

“The number of IoT devices used in enterprises and transport will increase by 21% in 2020. The main consumers of the Internet of things - housing and communal services , the fastest growing segment will be the automation of buildings, in particular the intelligent measurement of electricity and security. Automotive and healthcare are the next industries in terms of IoT adoption. ”

Peter Middleton, Senior Research Director, Gartner . Source

Asian Internet of Things Demand Surge

“There is huge demand for IIoT in countries such as China, Japan, India and South Korea, and this is due to the significant increase in end users. The growing commercialization of Internet of Things apps in these developing countries is driving the entire IIoT market. Also in this region, the introduction of the Internet of things is encouraged at the state level. ”

Mordor Intelligence Report . Source

Blockchain and machine learning pump the Internet of things

“Due to the risk of data leakage, we can expect companies to focus on innovative methods for secure data exchange, possibly using blockchain.

Also, more and more enterprises will use machine learning models to predict and prevent failures. Machine learning will become more automated, companies will connect increasingly large capital assets to ML cloud platforms, integrate clouds and IoT devices to work more efficiently with data. ”

Dr. Jeff Jensen, CTO of Arundo Analytics . Source

Electronic circuits for IoT sensors will print to the printer

“IoT has become popular due to the fact that devices equipped with chips are relatively inexpensive. However, there is a growing interest in new technologies and materials, in particular in flexible printed electronics. To use it for IoT sensors, it is necessary to modify the manufacturing process.

Manufacturers of flexible printed electronics are likely to switch to new materials, such as liquid silicone (cyclohexasilane), since it does not need to be exposed to high temperatures to use it. ”

Michael Kraft, CEO of The Coretec Group . Source

This is what flexible printed electronics look like, which should replace conventional electronic circuits:

IoT devices get faster with edge computing

“In 2020, there may be some shift towards boundary computing . As companies strive to increase the efficiency of working with data, they will process it on the devices themselves or in the cloud - it depends on the amount of information.

In smart cities with thousands of IoT nodes running mission-critical applications, edge computing may be the only way to provide the device’s real-time response speed. ”

Jeff Manning, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Channels, Cybera . Source

Collecting IoT data is not enough - businesses will have to learn how to process them quickly

“Smart cars and equipment connected to the Internet will produce huge amounts of time-stamped data that companies must collect and analyze. In this case, the time element will be crucial for the analytics of such data. Many enterprises will realize that they need a special strategy for these time series in order to squeeze all the value out of them.

Evan Kaplan , CEO, InfluxData . Source

It seems IoT already needs standards: MQTT will be the main protocol for exchanging data between sensors

“Currently, IoT devices use different messaging protocols, for example: XMPP, AMQP, DDS. Such fragmentation has been an obstacle to progress in IoT from the start.

Messaging protocols are one area where standardization is required.

MQTT is likely to take the lead. It has been around for over 25 years, is simple, consumes little power - combined with other benefits, this makes it the ideal standard for IoT. Additional features added to MQTT for relaying data from sensor networks will allow IoT devices to use even less energy to send messages. ”

Lee Stacey, product evangelist at Thingstream . Source

A little more about IoT trends for 2020 in the video:

The digest was prepared by the “Tomorrow Cloudy” portal, Mail.ru Cloud Solutions

What else to read on the topic :

Internet of Things Trends: AI Answers Calls, Clouds and 5G Tame Big Data, Housing and Utilities - Leader in Innovation