IoT

To understand what IoT is better, let's go back a few years.

In the nineties, the internet was invented and became generally available. During this time, almost everyone moved toward having a presence on the internet and started creating static web pages. Eventually, the static content became dynamic and content was generated on the fly, based on context. In almost all cases, a browser was needed to access the internet. There was a plethora of browsers; without them, using the internet was a challenge.

During the first decade of this century, there was an interesting development growing – the rise of hand-held devices, such as mobile phones and tablets. Mobile phones started becoming cheaper by the day and available ubiquitously. The hardware and software capabilities of these handheld devices were improving considerably; so much so that people started using browsers on mobile devices rather than desktops. But one particularly distinct change was the rise of mobile apps. Mobile apps are downloaded from some store and connected to the internet to talk to backend systems. Toward the end of the last decade, there were millions of apps available with almost every conceivable functionality built into them. The backend system for these apps was built on the cloud so that they could be scaled rapidly. This was the age of connecting applications and servers.

But, was this the pinnacle of innovation? What was the next evolution of the internet? Another paradigm has been taking center-stage: IoT. Instead of just mobile and tablet devices connecting to the internet, why can't other devices connect to the internet? Previously, such devices were available only in select markets, were costly, were not available to the masses, and had limited hardware and software capabilities. However, during the first part of the current decade, the commercialization of these devices started on a grand scale. These devices have been becoming smaller and smaller, more capable in terms of hardware and software, have more storage and compute power, can connect to the internet on various protocols, and can be attached to almost anything. This is the age of connecting devices to servers, applications, and other devices.

This led to the formulation of the idea that IoT applications could change the way industries were operating. Newer solutions that were unheard of before started being realized. Now these devices can be attached to anything; they can get information and send it to a backend system that can assimilate information from all the devices and either take action on or report incidents.

Examples of IoT applications include vehicle tracking systems, which can track all the vital parameters of a vehicle and send details to a centralized data store for analysis; smart city services, such as tracking pollution levels, temperature, street congestion, and so on; and agriculture-related activities, such as measuring soil fertility, humidity, and so on.