Internet of Things
According to Gartner, there were eight billion con-
nected "things" (aka IoT devices) as of 2017, and there
will be 20 billion of them in 2020. These numbers can
be even bigger depending on who you talk to. IoT
devices are now not just simple sensors; most of them
are actually tiny computers which have compute,
storage and communication capabilities. These
"smart" devices will bring a plethora of business ben-
efits, but also a whole slew of problems around secu-
rity and privacy.
provide faster speed (1.4 Gbps median speed), higher
capacity and lower latency. These advanced features
will bring about new use cases described below.
Elastic Cloud Computing
This basically offers "unlimited" computer resources—
unlimited compute and unlimited storage capabili-
ties. This means companies can drastically cut IT
costs by leveraging cheaper cloud services. They can
also gain business flexibility by scaling up or down
compute and/or storage resources as needed.
In the last few years, we have seen the IoT industry
make significant advances. With its ecosystem
maturing, we have witnessed pervasive adoption of
IoT across many industry verticals. Large enterprises
such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, T-Mobile, AT&T,
GE, Boeing and many other companies are all active
in the IoT space. Artificial Intelligence
High Speed LTE Wireless
Communication Networks The above technologies converged nicely in the IoT
space, as they form the three layers an IoT solution
usually has:
AI went through a long winter for two decades, finally
emerging as a powerful technology in the last few
years, with Google TensorFlow, Microsoft Azure AI,
Amazon Machine Learning and IBM Watson gaining
traction in large enterprises.
We currently use 4G LTE through our mobile phones.
Carriers are now testing 5G LTE and plan to roll out
5G LTE networks in 2020. Compared with 4G, 5G will 1. IoT devices
These cutting-
edge technologies are
converging – a major
trend that enterprises
need to understand
when they create IoT
strategies. 3. Analytics "engine" in the remote data centers
(i.e., cloud), powered by Business Intelligence
(BI) and machine learning /artificial intelligence
algorithms
50 | THE DOPPLER | FALL 2018
2. Communication "pipe": an LTE network that
provides connectivity between the devices and
cloud
What does this technological convergence mean for
enterprises? The combined powerful features of IoT,
LTE, cloud and AI will take IoT from being simply a
means of connecting devices to deliver basic business
value like tracking and control, to a disruptor that
creates huge business value in edge computing, high-
bandwidth applications and predictive analytics. Let
us examine those IoT layers again: