The internet of things (IoT) is a catch-all term for the growing number of electronics that aren’t traditional computing devices, but are connected to the internet to send data, receive instructions, or both. An incredibly broad range of ‘things’ that fall under the IoT umbrella: sensors, wearables, robots, drones, connected cars, smart homes and smart cities. 

How big is the IoT? 

In a word: enormous. Cisco predicts the number of IoT devices will hit 500 billion by 2030. If you’re asking how that is even possible, just count the number of IoT devices you interact with in your daily life, including smart watch, fitness tracker, doorbell camera, smart thermostat, garage door opener, etc. Similarly, in the enterprise world, everything is becoming Internet-connected. . 

How does the IoT work? 

The first element of an IoT system is the device that gathers data. Broadly speaking, these are internet-connected devices, so they each have an IP address. In the next step in the IoT process, collected data is transmitted from the devices to a gathering point. Moving the data can be done wirelessly using a range of technologies or over wired networks. Data can be sent over the internet to a data center or the cloud. Or the transfer can be performed in phases, with intermediary devices aggregating the data, formatting it, filtering it, discarding irrelevant or duplicative data, then sending the important data along for further analysis. The final step, data processing and analytics, can take place in data centers or the cloud. 

For an IoT ecosystem to work, devices need to be authenticated, provisioned, configured, and monitored, as well as patched and updated as necessary. Too often, all this happens within the context of a single vendor’s proprietary systems – or, it doesn’t happen at all, which is even more risky.

Let Access Tech help you with your IoT ecosystem where we’ll walk you through all the steps to keep your devices connected and efficient. We’ve helped customers for over a decade with their IoT connectivity.