What does the Internet of Things mean??

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I attended a local social session recently on the topic of Retail, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Mobility.

IoT
First, what the heck is the “Internet of Things”? It’s such a high level term, no doubt introduced as a buzzword to make what’s old new again. I think we need a new naming committee.

Essentially, any “thing” that can connect to another device via bluetooth, wireless, wire, etc that is accessible in one way or another over the internet can be classified as an internet-enabled “thing”. We’ve known about this proliferation of “things” for a long time. Just like the Post Office, we’ve been assigning device addresses using an old standard (IPv4) that was able to keep track of 4.3 billion devices. A new standard was introduced in 1999 (IPv6) that let’s us address 37 orders of magnitude more devices. (That’s a quintillard according to Wikipedia)

Let’s take this discussion back up a notch, so within this device range, we have mobile phones, beacons that can be triangulated in an indoor space where GPS doesn’t reach, RFID tags, bar codes that can be read by a mobile phone camera and translated, and all of the back end systems that connect these devices. Whew!

The real discussion revolves around your current customer base, your target customer base, and the ROI of satisfying and capturing those bases.

Can your current infrastructure handle it? Do you know where to start?

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About Me

Mark Travis

What does the Internet of Things mean??