Long back in time, the Edison light bulb was considered a technological breakthrough that shed some light on our daily lives. To tackle the challenges of modern society and address the current business needs, humans have come up with a number of inventions to make their living comfortable and work processes more efficient and cost-effective. Whether through wires or without them, direct communication between various devices or M2M (machine-to-machine) is one of the ideas that was first introduced to the world at the beginning of the 20th century, later evolving into more complex systems with the rise of the Internet.

Today: Things as We Know Them Now

Allowing us to enjoy more free time, machines taking care of our routine tasks have already transformed our homes, the way we commute to the office and pay for products and services.

Nowadays, devices and software take care of our routine tasks allowing us to enjoy more free time, and have already transformed our homes, the way we commute to the office, and pay for products and services.

For example, the forecast for 2016 was about $740 billion spent on on IoT including manufacturing, utility, and freight monitoring among other industries contributing to the 9-digit total number.

The industry potential is immense. So what are the trends in numbers for this particular business sector?

Future: What’s Around the Corner?

Although some people have doubts about the positive implications of arising technologies, we cannot deny that they change the way we connect with each other and do business on a daily basis. With the number of electronic devices nowadays exceeding the population of the Earth, we will have more and more physical objects connected within a decade. The growing popularity of M2M products is the reason to take a moment and think of what the future of this industry segment holds for us.

According to  annual forecasts of Machina Research, 2017 started to reflect the steady growth for the IoT market. The growth of the M2M segment will rely on a few trends to watch. How will these tendencies alter our daily routines and the way businesses operate? Let us have a sneak peek.

Distant Yet So Close: Remote Collaboration

With the culture of  digital nomads becoming more and more popular and opening new horizons for business owners, M2M will fuel the effectiveness of collaboration with remote employees. By connecting numerous physical objects into one single network, associates working for your business from different locations around the globe will be able to tackle more complex assignments and embrace new challenges with the help of IoT. Some research studies show that employees who are not stuck behind their office desks are more content with their lives. Thus, you can expect greater gains when allowing more freedom and flexibility to your remote team trotting the globe and working on the go all thanks to M2M communications.

More Emphasis on Security

To tame hackers and their evil genius, industry leaders are to take a more precise look at matters of safety and join forces to help users with threats that come along with IoT. The market players are to have more intelligent systems in order to cope with a growing popularity of M2M and the cyber security issues arising. We are to learn how to make data protection our number one priority in order to prevent scandals related to security on the web similar to notorious past  attacks.

Tough Love: IoT and Headhunting

The scarcity of talent that would contribute in further development of IoT is likely to be the constraint of tomorrow. Apart from good digital marketers that are hard to find, companies launching various Internet of Things projects complain that their staff search is a headache. What’s the solution then? If you can’t find a true professional, just grow one. Therefore, industry leaders will increase their investment on raising new talents to become an asset to their existing teams. Lack of professionals who know the industry inside and out might be a challenge, but thanks to IoT, it’s surely not the end of the world.

Thoughtful Resource Management and CSR

In his  newly released book, a technology-savvy blogger and editor, Ken Briodagh, mentions sustainability as one of the trends to keep an eye on. Quality control of goods manufactured and resource monitoring systems become a pivotal tool for authorities to keep local budgets under control. Most integrated mechanisms of this kind follow the sustainability trend, but are quite costly. It is important to remember that they are proven to deliver on their promise in the long run and bring more efficiency into financial planning.

Every technology evolves; IoT and M2M are not exceptions. With its continuing adoption, we will see broader use of interconnected devices and machine to machine communication as well as the latest trends that will break new ground giving exciting opportunities in both daily life and business domain.

WRITTEN BY

Alexander Kulitski, CEO at Smart IT

Alex is Founder and CEO of Smart IT and is the co-founder and executive CTO at MEDvidi. Being a serial entrepreneur, he is a keen investor in technology startups and runs several successful side projects besides Smart IT and MEDvidi. [email protected]

#IoT