2014 Technology Trends: The Internet of Things

Are you looking to make 2014 a breakout year for your business? Of course you are. One way to make this happen is to take advantage of the year's biggest business technology trends. This week we are featuring three trends in particular that will give your organization the competitive edge. For our second trend, we're reporting on the advantages of "The Internet of Things."

Embracing Enhanced Connectivity
The Internet of Things trend actually builds off of our last trend that we looked at called "Business Intelligence Analytics." With the business intelligence trend, we talked about how organizations can gain valuable insight when making important business decisions. This is done by collecting, analyzing, and organizing data from important sources like social media, spending habits of customers, websites, opinions of employees, and much more. Harvesting all of this new data will take new things, a lot things; in fact, it will require an entire Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things refers to new technologies that are essentially connecting "things" to the Internet. Most of these "things" are typically not associated with computers and the Internet. For example, some of the most talked about "Internet of Things" things are refrigerators, automobiles, home heating and cooling units, house lights, and much more; even toilets are being connected to the Internet!

How The Internet of Things Can Benefit Your Business
The practical purposes of connecting all of these new things to the Internet has as much variety as there are things that are being connected. Some things are connected so that they can be controlled via smartphone (making flushing fun!), but the majority of newly connected things are small devices with a singular purpose that feed information to databases. For example, a greenhouse may add hundreds of sensors to their plants so that they can monitor their crop conditions from a single computer.

Retrofitting new things with an Internet connection in order to provide your business with data will help influence your decisions, making your company more profitable. The Internet of Things is projected to be a major trend in 2014 that will continue to skyrocket as humans embrace enhanced connectivity on all of their favorite things, like weapon-wielding robots. In fact, it's estimated that there are currently 1.9 billion things connected to the Internet, and this number is expected to balloon by 400% in the next four years, and we're sure that someone will connect balloons to the Internet as well.

The Internet of Things is still a relatively new concept for the business world, and it's exciting to think about all the different ways this technology will make business easier. As is the case with any trend, if you're able to get in on the ground floor of this technology, then your business will gain a clear advantage over your competitors. To find out what connected things are available to enhance your business experience, give Directive a call at 607.433.2200. We're the trendiest technology company in town!