What the Internet of Things (IoT) Needs to Become a Reality

We’re entering a new era of computing technology that many are calling the Internet of Things (IoT). Machine to machine, machine to infrastructure, machine to environment, the Internet of Everything, the Internet of Intelligent Things, intelligent systems—call it what you want, but it’s happening, and its potential is huge.

We see the IoT as billions of smart, connected “things” (a sort of “universal global neural network” in the cloud) that will encompass every aspect of our lives, and its foundation is the intelligence that embedded processing provides. The IoT is comprised of smart machines interacting and communicating with other machines, objects, environments, and infrastructures. As a result, huge volumes of data are being generated, and that data is being processed into useful actions that can “command and control” things to make our lives much easier and safer—and to reduce our impact on the environment.