DIGITAL - Predicting the Future of the Internet of Things

As the year comes to an end, experts are making predictions for 2017.

Forrester released their report - Predictions 2017: Security And Skills Will Temper Growth Of IoT - to help companies tackle the rapidly changing Internet of Things (IoT) landscape to deliver and enable connected products and businesses processes.

Their predictions include:

• IoT will be distributed across edge and cloud, boosted by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and containers
• The first prototypes of smart contracts built on blockchain
• AI and machine-learning cloud services will increasingly be used to mine the data coming from IoT devices
• There will be a large-scale IoT security breach
• Hackers will continue to use IoT devices to promulgate DDoS attacks
• IoT will simultaneously shrink and enrich mobile moments.

UK magazine Infosecurity agrees with Forrester’s predictions about security issues, quoting experts from Bitdefender, a data security company.

“We will see a marked rise in IoT attacks against individuals and companies alike, continuing trouble with encrypting ransomware, IoT botnets, adware and the revival of darknet markets for illegal goods and services.”

The growth of blockchain is also being predicted by Database Trends and Applications Magazine with their 10 Big Data and IoT Predictions for 2017.

“Blockchain transforms select financial service applications...For enterprises, blockchain presents a cost savings and opportunity for competitive advantage. In 2017, there will be select, transformational use cases in financial services that emerge with broad implications for the way data is stored and transactions processed.”

Database Trends and Applications experts go on to predict big data and IoT will evolve to help businesses prosper during uncertain times in five ways:

“Self-service data prep will unlock big data’s full value; organizations will replace self-service reporting with embedded analytics; IoT’s adoption and convergence with big data will make automated data onboarding a requirement; 2017’s early adopters of AI and machine learning in analytics will gain a huge first-mover advantage in the digitalization of business; and cybersecurity will be the most prominent big data use case.”

The continued growth of IoT is definitely not in question - IoT was the number one search topic not only among CIOs but across all Forrester clients over the past six months.

Read the entire article about Forrester’s IoT 2017 predictions.