Internet of Things: 2017 Predictions
In Predictions 2017: Security and Skills Will Temper Growth of IoT, Forrester argues that the IoT potential to fuel business growth is accompanied by multifaceted complexity. Here are the research firm’s specific predictions for next year:
IoT will be distributed across edge and cloud, boosted by AI and containers
IoT software will be distributed across edge devices, gateways, and cloud services. IoT solutions will be built on modern micro-services and containers that work across this distributed architecture. In addition, AI and machine-learning cloud services will increasingly be used to mine the data coming from IoT devices.
We will see the first prototypes of smart contracts built on blockchain
Researchers have been exploring how to enable reliable autonomous financial transactions, using blockchain technology to ensure distributed transactions. The first real-world experiments will be launched on 2017.
Vendors will offer a dizzying array of wireless tech to support IoT field use cases
Various characteristics of IoT devices such as small bursty traffic, dense sets of connections, or long distances require new forms of wireless connections, such as LoRaWAN, Sigfox, or 3GPP’s narrowband (NB)-IoT. For IoT decision-makers, there will be more than 20 wireless connectivity options and protocols to evaluate.
There will be a large-scale IoT security breach
The areas where IoT has been rapidly adopted are the most vulnerable, e.g., fleet management in transportation, security and surveillance applications in government, inventory and warehouse management applications in retail, and industrial asset management in primary manufacturing.
