What is the Internet of Things and What does it Mean?
Internet of Things tops Gartner’s Hype Cycle Report, as Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Hybrid Cloud Computing get ready to mature.
Each year, Gartner releases a Hype Cycle Special Report of emerging technologies trends and buzzwords. The key theme of the latest, and 20th anniversary of the report, is the journey to digital business, and reveals “The Internet of Things” (IoT) topping the list as the most hyped technology of 2014, overtaking last year’s “Big Data” reign (see graph below).
The report offers a highlight of overhyped areas and estimates the relative maturity of technologies, trends, IT methodologies and management disciplines. Ultimately, it aims to provide organizations a timeline to assist decision makers such as CIOs, R&D leaders, Entrepreneurs, and global market developers, in identifying and employing the right technologies at the right time.
When a term reaches “the height of its hype”, the natural process follows a trough of disillusionment, a slope of market enlightenment, and ultimately a plateau of productivity with mainstream adoption. Learn more about Hype Cycles here: Interpreting Technology Hype.
Along with Internet of Things at the apex of its hype are “weareable user interfaces” and natural-language question answering, and consumer 3D printing. These buzzwords are predicted to be commonplace technologies within 5 to 10 years, a visible alteration from 2012 and 2013 predictions of IoT maturing in 10+ years.
Cloud related technologies such as Cloud Computing, Hybrid and Private Cloud, and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) are coasting at the peak of their Hype Cycle and are on track to reach expected maturity and market adoption within 2-5 years.
According to Forbes, “In an analysis of the technologies, services, and disciplines that have changed most from 2013 to 2014 in their position on the hype cycle, time to plateau, rating, and adoption rates, Gartner has found that what they call “the four Nexus of Forces (social, mobile, cloud and information),” were highly correlated with the profiles that had changed most significantly on the peak portion of the Hype Cycle.”
Keep your ears out for the newest entry buzzword “Data Science”, which is predicted to plateau in a mere 2-5 years. A preview of technologies currently triggered by innovation will be tomorrow’s inflated buzzwords include Smart Advisors, Smart Robots, Prescriptive Analytics, and Software-Defined Anything.
The 2014 Hype Cycle Special Report evaluates the maturity of more than 2,000 emerging technologies in over 119 areas.
