“The internet already connects everyone and it’s about to connect everything. The ubiquity of always-on connectivity, the declining price and increasing versatility of sensors, and the benefits of remote information and control is prompting a new generation of devices ranging from doorknobs to thermostats to refridgerators to lightbulbs.
From the largest technology and manufacturing companies to a cavalcade of startups, the Internet of Things is exploding.”
Appinions.
The report above also indicates that Apple, Microsoft and Cisco had all held the number one position in the Net Influencer Score (NIS) in the 90 days of Appinion’s study indicating that no clear leader has emerged in the IoT (Internet of Things) market.
That the major tech brands are all heavily involved (throw in Google’s involvement as demonstrated by their recent acquisition of Nest Labs) suggests there is a huge nascent market to tap into.
Appinions indicates that there are three distinct sectors:
- Connectivity devices
- Home automation
- Software platforms
Whilst all three are of interest from an end-to-end service delivery perspective, it is in the software platforms that is of most cross-over interest with OSS and CSPs. Just as CSPs have improved their speed to market with providing unified communication products to customers through partnerships with third-party service providers, it seems there is a clear opportunity for similar partnerships on IoT.
Not only do CSPs get to provide value-added services to customers, but they gain additional revenues without necessarily having to develop deep IoT domain knowledge (the partners hold most of that). The other potentially big up-side for CSPs is gaining access to IoT data to augment OSS data for analytics purposes (I caveat that within the constraints of customer privacy of course).