According to sources, a staggering 5.5 million new devices are connected daily to an increasingly crowded IoT space with an estimated 6.4 billion devices currently “connected.” By 2020, Gartner is predicting as much as 25 billion things will be connected. A lot of the value that both people and companies will derive from these devices heavily depends upon interoperability, which places an emphasis on app development.
When we say IoT , the term”things,” generally focuses on a group of devices large or small that can be connected wirelessly by sensors to the internet, each other and or the main base station. Chunka Mui with Forbes believes that, “The Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical objects imbued with information and communications technologies. It brings together many of the key technologies that will make or break every information intensive company.”
App development for the Industrial IoT vs. consumer IoT
We are use to finding new apps for our phones, smart homes and cars, but what about industrial applications? Contrary to what you might think, Industrial IoT app development surpasses the consumer side when it comes to compensation. In fact the Industrial IoT global market is projected to reach $319 billion dollars by 2020.
Unlike their consumer counterparts, Industrial IoT may not come with out-of-the-box, ready to launch applications, and may require various modifications depending on the industry. The focus for Industrial development has been in translating big data in real-time with the use of Sensor-2-Server solutions.
More reasons developers should jump on the Industrial IoT app train
A few of the top reasons to develop applications for Industrial IoT are as follows: A chance to change your town–by assisting municipalities in becoming smarter cities; allowing you to create your vision–along with 18.5 million professional developers around the globe designing data capture analytics that can be translated in the digital ecosystem; and finally to open up the channel of revenues with the $235 billion dollars annually spent on IoT services.
Today, a developer wanting to dive into this untapped market can start by leveraging the developer community sites with Github, Predix, or Intel’s hub to name a few. Jennifer Riggins with Programmable Web reminds us that, “The most important way to prepare yourself for the Industrial Internet of Things is to stay inquisitive.”
After understanding the need for these complex industrial applications, the next challenge lies in cultivating best practices to replicate success within industry 4.0. Although the market is primed for the developer picking, it will still take trial and error, as it does with any new technology to fine tune more of an industrial application engine. As more resources (and opportunities) become available to the app development community, scalability is going to be the linchpin for enterprise deployments. Think of the value created if a municipality or energy company, for example, could deploy applications to hundreds of devices that reside at the outermost layer of an IT network.
