By Chuck Martin
To say there’s a lot of money involved in the Internet of Things would be a tremendous understatement.
This point was hit home at the IoTC Next conference recently held at The Times Center in New York.
Opening speaker Brett May, chief operating officer and general manager, IoT, at McKinsey and Company, pegged IoT spending as heading to $800 billion to $1 trillion.
The key that he noted here is that companies are starting to move out of the pilot stages into real IoT deployments.
The impressive lineup of speakers assembled by the Internet of Things Consortium, the well-known business development association for the IoT ecosystem, covered everything from the financing of an IoT project to how to market connected products to businesses and consumers.
One of the challenges mentioned by several speakers was the actual consumer understanding of concepts such as smart homes, along with suggestion of new nomenclature for better identification and marketing.
An underlying theme across numerous discussions was security.
A panel discussion with Beverly Rider, senior vice president and chief commercial officer of Hitachi, Gregg Bishop, commissioner of the NYC Department of Small Business Services, and Samir Saini, former CIO of the City of New York, concluded that it should be the responsibility of manufacturers to solve security issues.
“Device makers should be responsible,” said one of the panelists.
Driving the investments in IoT are the potential to increase revenue and improve customer engagement, another recurring theme at the IoTC conference.
Savvy businesses see the potential in an IoT future. That’s why speakers at the summit included top executives from Procter & Gamble, Google, Cox Homelife, IBM, Comcast, ADT, Bose, Arm, Nestle, WarnerMedia, b8ta, Mastercard, Hitachi and Ericsson, all involved in IoT innovation.
Most consumers may not even be aware of the Internet of Things, but the participants at IoTC Next, the primo IoT event of the year, are in the process of creating their future.
