In fact, when first attempting to grasp a term as broadly defined as IoT, it’s a lot like looking at a long to-do list where all items have equal priority. When applied on any scale, putting the power of IoT into action can first appear fiendishly complex. After analysis, what precipitates out is a vivid picture of precisely how any organization, whether a city or municipality, small business, or large enterprise, is performing and how it could be more efficient and productive. That includes data from sensors on connected devices, as well as data from transactions, ERP data, customer profiles, social media, and a lot more.

If managed and analyzed effectively, this data is a gold mine of opportunity, and one simple analysis of even small amounts of data is usually all it takes for CTOs and CEOs to realize what they’re missing. The rest is either stored away or deleted, the obvious result of either the inability to effectively make use of it, lack of knowledge of its value, or both. Today just over 1% of data produced by sensors on IOT devices is actually used for any meaningful purpose. And although most people still don’t know exactly what IoT means, they’ll know it when they see it, as it positively affects their lifestyle, health, and productivity.

IoT will connect people, places, and processes throughout the world using some technologies that didn’t even exist in 1999. Hackneyed though the term IOT may be, the truth is that even though it took a long time to get started, it’s here, now, and will be one of the most disruptive technologies for people, businesses, and even cities to appear in decades. Little could this now-famous British serial entrepreneur have known in 1999 that the name he chose to define his approach for using RFID in P&G’s supply chain would top Gartner’s 2015 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report. “I could be wrong, but I’m fairly sure the phrase Internet of Things started life as the title of a presentation I made at Procter & Gamble in 1999.' - Kevin Ashton, RFID Journal, 2009

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