I’m often asked, “When will the Internet of Things materially impact me or my organization?” Given the enormous amount of hype associated with the IoT, the question is reasonable. Fortunately, history offers us a guide to how this is likely to play out. Let’s quickly look at the factors that have typically brought new technologies into common use:

1.     Doing something that you were already doing, but better/faster/cheaper. In business and government operations, this is almost always the case, e.g. stock trading or travel booking, or going way back, automobiles vs. horses-and-carriages. Quirky exceptions include transitioning from a cheap pen, checkbook and calculator into using relatively costly computers and software to do accounting, but over time the benefits overtook concerns about the initial expense. Keep that in mind as we apply this to the burgeoning IoT.

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