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Gartner predicts 4.9bn connected 'things' by 2015

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 28 Jan 2015
No dominant Internet of things ecosystem will exist until beyond 2018, says Gartner.
No dominant Internet of things ecosystem will exist until beyond 2018, says Gartner.

By 2020, there will be a quarter billion connected vehicles on the road, enabling new in-vehicle services and automated driving capabilities, according to Gartner.

In the next five years, the proportion of new vehicles equipped with this capability will increase dramatically, making connected cars a major element of the Internet of things (IOT), it says. In addition, Gartner forecasts 4.9 billion connected things will be in use in 2015, up 30% from 2014, and reaching 25 billion by 2020.

Here are some of Gartner's IOT predictions:

1. By 2020, the connected kitchen will contribute at least 15% savings in the food and beverage industry, while leveraging big data analytics.

The connected kitchen has received less attention and drawn less focus along the IOT value chain compared to other IOT use cases and digital business opportunities. However, the connected kitchen will deliver significant benefits across industries spanning retail, healthcare and insurance, in addition to significantly addressing sustainability issues.

Some benefits include real-time inventory data collection from sensors related to kitchen ingredients that will enable automated generation and ordering of shopping lists, resulting in a streamlined and efficient inventory and optimised supply chain management.

2. Through 2018, there will be no dominant IOT ecosystem platform; IT leaders will still need to compose solutions from multiple providers.

While companies are building out their IOT ecosystems, there is still no coherent set of business or technical models for the IOT. Standards remain nascent and most IOT projects will entail custom elements. This is further complicated by the lack of dominant technology service providers in the IOT.

"Many standards and ecosystems for the IOT are still in development and some of the vendors and ecosystems may fail during the working lifetime of current IOT projects," says Alfonso Velosa, research director at Gartner.

"CIOs will need to ensure their prime system integrator has a strategy to future-proof their project. This is especially critical if the project involves infrastructure that may be in the field for decades. A gateway-based architecture will be a key approach to future-proofing IOT projects."

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