Cutting through the IoT hysteria

Internet of Things (IoT) is the latest buzzword, like RFID or VoIP of days gone by. Marketers are trying to slap the label on everything, most of which is not actually IoT, but they are ultimately misleading the industry. Like the word “organic” for food products, a lack of definitional standards for IoT has led to overuse and a subsequent loss of serious meaning. Nucleus takes a measured look at IoT, outlining three aspects that a true IoT product needs: 1) there needs to be a device that communicates over the internet; 2) the device needs to interact with an open-ended set of multiple applications or API’s; 3) the device needs to be able to receive commands, either from a hub or from another device. One way information transfer from a sensor, regardless of the shiny analytics engine on the back end, is just old-school instrumentation.