The Internet of things requires the cloud to work, and the cloud will evolve to better serve IoT
The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
last week featured plenty of cloud-related announcements from a wide
variety of companies. Indeed, most new devices, from refrigerators to
cars, have a massive cloud-based back end. The cloud components of these
technologies are becoming more systemic. Indeed, the cloud is assumed.
More
and more, people expect everything to be connected. No matter if it’s a
washer and dryer, a refrigerator, or a car, they all communicate or
will communicate with cloud servers. Why? Companies that make these
devices understood early on that it does not make sense to keep all the
smarts and storage in the device itself, and these devices must be
instantly upgradable for them to have long-term value. Think about your
TV service or smartphone updates. That's how cars and thermostats -- and
eventually everything else that’s electronic in your home -- are
beginning to work.
However, there are downsides to all this connectivity -- security,
for one. Although I don’t mind my TV getting hacked, I am concerned
about the connected car I’ll be driving. Worse, I’m not seeing a focus
on security by manufacturers. It’s going to take a few close calls for
the industry to wake up and understand that anything connected must come
with well-defined and well-implemented security.
We’ll see a lot
of growth in cloud-based services for devices in the next few years,
much of it from Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft, plus some
from purpose-built clouds that device developers may share or use
exclusively. We’ll see growth in compute and storage services to support
these devices, and we'll see upgrades in communications networks,
including higher-speed cellular systems that will rival the pace of home
networks.
Keep
in mind that this is not some future development. It’s happening right
now. Look at the number of devices that are connected to your Wi-Fi hub
at home as evidence that we’re undergoing a major change in how we use
technology. This change cannot happen without the use of cloud services.
And the explosion in cloud-enabled devices is one more reason
cloud-based systems usage will explode in the next several years.
Source: InfoWorld
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