Top 10 IoT Technologies and Trends for 2017
December 2, 2016 1:30 AM
Top 10 IoT Technologies and Topics for 2017
"The IoT demands an extensive range of new technologies and skills that many organizations have yet to master," says Nick Jones, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "A recurring theme in the IoT space is the immaturity of technologies and services and of the vendors providing them. Architecting for this immaturity and managing the risk it creates will be a key challenge for organizations exploiting the IoT."Read on for Gartner's top 10 IoT techs through 2018:
IoT Security
"Experienced IoT security specialists are scarce, and security solutions are currently fragmented and involve multiple vendors," says Jones. "New threats will emerge through 2021 as hackers find new ways to attack IoT devices and protocols, so long-lived "things" may need updatable hardware and software to adapt during their life span."
IoT Analytics
New analytic tools and algorithms are needed already, but as data volumes increase through 2021, the needs of the IoT may diverge even further from traditional analytics, Gartner writes.
IoT Device Management
This category includes device monitoring, firmware and software updates, diagnostics, crash analysis and reporting, physical management, and security management. Tools must be capable of managing and monitoring potentially millions of devices, Gartner notes.
Low-Power, Short-Range IoT Networks
Low-power, short-range networks will dominate wireless IoT connectivity through 2025, Gartner predicts. However, commercial and technical trade-offs mean that many solutions will coexist, with no single dominant winner and clusters emerging around certain technologies, applications and vendor ecosystems.
Low-Power, Wide-Area Networks
Traditional cellular networks don't deliver a good combination of technical features and operational cost for those IoT applications that need wide-area coverage combined with relatively low bandwidth, good battery life, low hardware and operating cost, and high connection density, Gartner explains. The first low-power wide-area networks have been based on proprietary technologies, but in the long term emerging standards such as Narrowband IoT will likely dominate this space, according to the report.
IoT Processors
When it comes to the processors that define device capabilities, there are complex trade-offs between features, hardware cost, software cost and software upgradability, Gartner says. As a result, understanding the implications of processor choices will demand deep technical skills, the company adds.
IoT Operating Systems
Traditional operating systems are too bloated and require too much power to work on IoT devices. But a wide range of IoT-specific operating systems has been developed to suit many different hardware footprints and feature needs, according to Gartner.
Event Stream Processing
With the IoT, millions of events per second can occur in some situations. To address such requirements, distributed stream computing platforms (DSCPs) have emerged, Gartner notes. These typically use parallel architectures to process very high-rate data streams to perform real-time analytics and pattern identification.
IoT Platforms
The infrastructure services required by the IoT fall into three categories:1. Low-level device control and operations2. IoT data acquisition, transformation and management3. IoT application development
IoT Standards and Ecosystems
Standards and their associated APIs will be essential because IoT devices will need to interoperate and communicate, and many IoT business models will rely on sharing data between multiple devices and organizations, Gartner predicts. Organizations creating products may have to develop variants to support multiple standards or ecosystems and be prepared to update products during their life span as the standards evolve and new standards and related APIs emerge.