How the concept of Internet of Things evolved?

ALL BEGAN WITH INTERNET OF THINGS

The concept of Internet of Things (IoT) was created and launched in 1999 by Kevin Ashton from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to state a system where Internet is linked to the physical world through a net of sensors.

Today this is not an idea anymore, but it's a reality continuously evolving that realizes the chance to connect things and places among themselves and the Net, making them able to communicate and adapt their behavior to the data that they are receiving.

Any practical examples? An alarm clock able to ring in advance in case of traffic jam, or a domotics system regulating temperature and light inside the house according to seasons or hours. IoT means, then, bring things into the Net and bring Internet out of computers, smartphones and tablets monitors.

According to one of the latest works about the economic value of the Internet of Things signed by At Kearney, each euro invested in this "technology" will be able to produce up to 12 euros, creating a business that could be around one trillion euros and that will bring benefits not only to the companies engaged in this sector but also to users, especially in terms of energy saving.

INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is the application of the Internet of Things (IoT) technological solutions in the manufacturing sector.

Known also as Industrial Internet, IIoT philosophy is based on the concept of smart machine bigger efficiency when compared to human abilities in learning and transfer data immediately and carefully.

A correct data transfer avoids the company problems and inefficiencies, leading to time and money savings and allowing investments in business intelligence sustainability. Especially in manufacturing system, IIoT expresses its greatest potential for quality control, sustainability processes management and traceability and efficiency of the whole logistics net.

For the moment, one of the main troubles concerning the industrial IoT is the interoperability between devices and machines using different records and having different architectures, and that's why the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC, the non-profit organization created in 2014 to accelerate the development, the adoption and the use in large scale of machines and tools interconnected in the Net) is concentrating on an international level about the statement of common standards.

WHAT'S THE INTERNET OF EVERYTHING?

The Internet of Everything (IoE) can be seen as the implementation of the Internet of Things: in fact, in the IoT, only electronic devices take advantage of the computer network to communicate, while the Internet of Everything is related to the interconnection of devices (smartphones, tablets, smart-watches, fitness trackers and wearable devices in general, smart tvs, household appliances and so on), people, processes and data.

A highly intelligent net, able to listen to needs, understand dynamics and propose suitable solutions, will manage all, offering highly customized new services and functions, that will guarantee more security, simplicity and reliability in different fields.

Nowadays, IoT, IIoT and IoE are not science-fiction anymore, but in the same time are not yet part of our daily life. According to data coming from Cisco, 99% of people and things in the world are not interconnected to the Net and among themselves. But this is not an obstacle: it's something worth to invest in, assets that should be surely used, combining it to the continuous evolutions of communication media and connection technologies to realize the biggest computer network ever seen.