6Future of IoT

It is possible to identify, for the years to come, four distinct macro-trends that will shape the future of internet technologies, together with the explosion of ubiquitous devices that constitute the future Internet of Things [9]:

  1. The first one, sometimes referred as “exaflood” or “data deluge”, is the explosion of the amount of data collected and exchanged. As current networks are ill-suited for this exponential traffic growth, there is a need by all the actors to re-think current networking and storage architectures. It will be imperative to find novel ways and mechanisms to find, fetch, and transmit data. One relevant reason for this data deluge is the explosion in the number of devices collecting and exchanging information as envisioned as the Internet of Things becomes a reality.

The term exaflood, coined by Bret Swanson of Progress & Freedom Foundation, refers to the growing torrent of data on the Internet.

  1. The energy required to operate the intelligent devices will dramatically decrease. Already today many data centers have reached the maximum level of energy consumption and the acquisition of new devices has necessarily to follow the dismissal of old ones. Therefore, the second trend can be identified covering all devices and systems from the tiniest smart dust to the huge data centers: the search for a zero level of entropy where the device or system will have to harvest its own energy.
  2. Miniaturization of devices is also taking place amazingly fast. The objective of a single-electron transistor is getting closer, which seems the ultimate limit, at least until new discoveries in physics.
  3. Another important trend is towards autonomic resources. The ever growing complexity of systems will be unmanageable, and will hamper the creation of new services and applications, unless the systems will show self-* properties, such as self-management, self-healing and self-configuration.

As a general trend, as it becomes less expensive to integrate technology into physical objects, we will see more application and adoption of IoT. In consequence, IoT will have major implications for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies in the next years.