John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, just published a good blog entry about the potential for change caused by universal connectivity, not just of our mobile gadgets, but of pretty much everything. Much has been made of late of the so-called “Internet of Things (IoT)”, to which Cisco is upping the scope and going so far as to make a bold estimate that 99.4% of objects still remain unconnected. This of course is great fodder for late night talk show hosts. I’ll leave this softball to them, and focus instead on some of the more interesting points in Chamber’s post and the accompanying white paper.
It strikes me that there might be more to Cisco’s Internet of Everything (#I0E) neologism than just a vendor’s attempt to brand what still may be a technology maverick. Internet of Everything sounds so much better than the common alternative when you append Economy on the end, and this is how it first appears in Chamber’s post. And that’s actually important, because adding economy in the same breath is an acknowledgement that this isn’t just marketing opportunism as much as a recognition that like mobility, the IoE is a potentially great catalyst for independent innovation. In fact, Cisco’s paper really isn’t about technology at all, but instead an analysis of market potential represented in each emerging sector, from smart factories to college education.
It is exactly this potential for innovation—a new economy—that is exciting. The combination of Mobile+APIs was so explosive precisely because it combined a technology with enormous creative potential (APIs) with a irresistible business impetus (access to information outside the enterprise network). The geeks love enabling tools, and APIs are nothing if not enabling; mobile just gives them something to build.
I0E of course is the ultimate business driver—and leveraging APIs as the enabler, it equals opportunity of staggering proportion. Like mobile before it—and indeed, social web integration before this—IoE will come about precisely because the foundation of APIs already exists.
It is here where I disagree with some IoT pundits who advocate specialized protocols to optimize performance. No thank you; it isn’t 1990 and opaque binary protocols no longer work for us except when streaming of large data sets (I’m looking at you, video).
Security in the IoE will be a huge issue, and on this topic Cisco has this to say:
IoE security will be addressed through network-powered technology: devices connecting to the network will take advantage of the inherent security that the network provides (rather than trying to ensure security at the device level).
I agree with this, because security coding is still just too hard and too easy to implement wrong. One of the key lessons of mobile development is that we need to make it easy for developers to enable secure communications automatically. Take security out of the hands of developers, put it in the hands of dedicated security professionals, and trust me, the developers will thank you.
As IoE extends to increasingly resource-constrained devices, the simpler we can make secure development, the better. Let application developers focus on creating great apps, and a new economy will follow.
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