Industries make concerted efforts to envision the future of connected world across sectors
The massive potential of Internet of Things (IoT) to stoke convergence and collaboration worldwide has been reined in by the lack of data security and interoperability among devices and objects. Acknowledging this hurdle, various institutes and organisations in key sectors are striving to frame standards for privacy policies regarding the sharing of information over the Internet.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Internet of Things (IoT) - Disruptive Opportunities in Key Sectors, finds that several standardisation bodies from Europe and the United States are working towards addressing the issue of device interoperability and standard privacy policies.
Both European and American organisations are striving to simplify the seamless flow of information among devices, globally. A case in point is the separate committee formed by the European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI) to focus on Machine2Machine (M2M) communication privacy standardisation. Similarly, the Open Automotive Alliance is a global alliance of automobile companies and technology partners that is working to establish a standard Android platform for communication between mobiles and vehicles.
Another solution to accelerate the wide-scale adoption of several applications and technologies in the IoT space is a unified gateway.
"Gateways that are developed covering all aspects of communication and data handling for various applications could simplify the implementation process for IoT," noted Technical Insights Industry Analyst Swapnadeep Nayak. "Gateways embedded with Java – often used for cloud application development – could further enhance the capability of the platform in terms of interoperability."
Nanotechnology has its part to play in promoting IoT as well. The rapid progress made in the miniaturisation of sensors and radio frequency identification (RFID) will aid the integration of transistors into any kind of physical object, irrespective of the footprint of the device. Participants can also enhance privacy and network security by incorporating smart sensors to track user habits and movement within the cloud.
As IoT requires an open architecture, users tend to be sceptical about the platforms' ability to maintain the integrity of their data. Their concerns can be assuaged to some extent with the convergence of emerging technologies such as Big Data and context-aware computing with IoT. Leveraging the advantages of converged technology will improve the analysis of user data and access rights for the creation of a secure environment for IoT.
"The huge pressure on the network for connectivity with multiple devices could lead to a new artificial intelligent cognitive architecture for managing data network," said Nayak. "Therefore, the success of IoT could well be linked to the efficiency of the cognitive radio network architecture."
Overall, by employing a common cloud infrastructure with a unified application programming interface for all application sectors, IoT can bring down the costs of deployment while enhancing the efficiency of devices with data from countless gadgets.
