7 Ridiculous Misconceptions about IoT
Chinese Whispers is a popular game that many of you may have played in your childhood. It is the game in which a verbal message is told to a person in his/her ear and this message is then passed from one person to the next and the last person on the line is supposed to voice out the message loudly. Usually, the message is considerably different from the original one.
This phenomenon holds true even for technology. What I mean is, usually businesses fail to grasp the complete benefits of newer technologies such as IoT and harbor several misconceptions about them as well.
In this post, we try to clear some of these common misconceptions.
Misconception 1: IoT is a new concept
Although it is just recently that the word IoT is receiving huge traction, the underlying business and technology models have been around for quite a few years now. The term Internet of Things was in fact coined at MIT, way back in 1999, to describe the architecture of the connected RIFD devices. These connected devices and their fundamental technology have been used by many businesses worldwide to keep up with the rapidly changing technology and optimize the business operations.
Misconception 2: IoT is about sensors
Yes, sensors are a crucial aspect of IoT, however, there is much more to IoT than that. From the end consumer’s perspective, a product makes sense to them only when the overall experience is provided — and sensors are just one part of the overall equation. A product generally includes several things such as APIs, networks, gateways, hubs, cloud, software, and communication between physical objects. Additionally, management and support of the entire IoT solution also play a big role.
Misconception 3: IoT is appropriate just for giant enterprises
This one is big. It is a common misconception about any new age technology and IoT is no different. The truth of the matter is that the decreasing prices of cloud services and hardware components, coupled with the increasing availability of open source tools is reducing the costs of IoT significantly. What it also means is that IoT is certainly not a privilege for large corporates but small and mid-size companies can also reap the benefits of this technology in abundance.
Misconception 4: IoT is a technology for the consumer market
Smartwatches, fitness bands, smart TV, smart Fridge are a few popular examples of IoT applications. However, not many people know that there are a whole lot of IoT applications which are already existing in business environments as well. For example, Rolls-Royce uses IoT to make Intelligent Engines, Virgin Atlantic uses it for making the flights safer, the farms in Sweden use it for farm management and so on and so forth.
Misconception 5: IoT is not safe
When it comes to connected devices communicating over the Cloud, it is impossible to deny the possibility of attacks. However, in acknowledgment to this, a lot of work is already being done by the industry leaders in the IoT security space. New network security protocols and government regulations like HIPAA are forcing the industry to take more measures towards securing private data. Moreover, everything about IoT is not hackable.
Misconception 6: IoT solution development is easy
Since a lot of cheap sensors, open source tools, software, and cloud have been widely proliferated, it comes as no surprise that businesses believe it is extremely easy to build and maintain an IoT solution. Building an IoT solution is much more than just a smart application, a smart product, a mobile app, Cloud hosting, or a dashboard. Numerous other aspects such as privacy, security, reliability, repeatability, reusability, and scalability are equally important if not more and also need to be handled uniquely in the case of IoT applications. Besides, you also need a team of specialists such as data scientists, division engineers, industrial network engineers, mobile application developers, and enterprise connectivity experts. Hiring, training, and retaining such talent is more difficult and time-consuming than it seems.
Misconception 7: Everything related to IoT is already innovated
If you think that everything that is to be invented and developed about IoT has been done, you couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, IoT allows a lot of scope for out-of-the-box thinking and creating innovative solutions that in turn provide business value. IoT is, in fact, a treasure trove of possibilities that can bring about some major paradigm shifts in the way businesses are conducted today.
