Clayster

The big picture is that IoT is the key to a richer integrated community life and a more sustainable planet. IoT is about connecting everything - people, devices and sensors all over the globe. IoT is what enables the full potential of what we now call Smart Grid, Connected Home, Connected Community, Smart Home, Digital Life, etc. Until IoT becomes more realized, we will live on small islands of buzz words and never-ending standardizations. 

The deluge of new sensors and RFID devices opens an entirely new world of services, applications and business opportunities. Things that were science fiction just a couple of years ago are available on your cell phone today. A good example is interacting with our garbage in ways we never imagined - soda cans telling you how they want to be disposed of - waste management companies updating you about your carbon footprint based on what you threw away yesterday. 

If we don’t understand how our lifestyle impacts the planet, we can’t make a change. Direct, real time information is the success factor - direct awareness made possible by getting new sensors into our everyday lives. We can be superheroes but the community has to give us the tools. We need real time environmental information – real time feedback on how our immediate behaviors are affecting fresh water, air pollution and energy consumption. When this kind of information is as common as playing Angry Birds on your smartphone, routine behaviors will begin to change towards the environmentally responsible. 

State of the art is real time. Real time updates and real time interaction regardless of where you are or how you interact. It requires a strong infrastructure. We need reliable, high speed, flexible networks or else IoT will not become a reality. Our network demands will increase and QoS will reach new heights. This will change how operators handle their networks as well as how operators work together with interrelated networking. 

Communities will step out from their walled-gardens to participate in the new markets – the new opportunities available to service developers and provider/operators. A universal distribution venue and reduced compatibility issues will see the open community inventing new killer apps every day. And new business models that include third party service developers will expand the scope of new services exponentially.