ABSTRACT
The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to change how we live and work in ways greater than the internet has up to this point. Thus far, the internet has changed how we communicate and access information. Email, instant messaging and social media have accelerated the speed with which we share information with friends, family and colleagues, and the World Wide Web (WWW) has provided a global platform for freely publishing information to the world. However, while these innovations have made significant impacts on the publishing, communications and entertainment sectors, industries in other sectors have been far less affected. The application of computing technologies within businesses has changed back-office processes to an extent in terms of operating efficiencies, but most industries still develop and deliver their goods and services in much the same way they did 30 years ago. The IoT is the next evolution of the computing revolution and will see the embedding of information and communication technologies (ICTs) within machines at home and in the workplace and across a broad range of industrial processes. The effect will be a radical restructuring of industries and business models driven by massive flows of data providing new insights into how the man-made and natural worlds work. New companies will emerge to capitalise on this data while established ones will need to adapt the way they operate or face extinction in the same way that steam, electricity and the internal combustion engine rendered obsolete old ways of working. Within a few years many billions of new devices will be connected via the IoT, generating trillions of dollars of value to businesses and national economies (Gartner, 2014; Manyika et al., 2015; Norton, 2015).
