It's the Internet of Sensors (IoS) and data that matters most, according to developers at The Technology Partnership (TTP), who say that IoT is, to a large extent, a solution looking for a problem, rather than the other way round.
Steve Taylor, a senior consultant at TTP, said: "There's simply no point in objects talking to each other just for the sake of it and the IoT only provides the communications backbone. An Internet of Sensors looks more like the roots of a tree, with sensors of all types at the extremities, capturing and feeding data upwards to the main trunk - the Internet."
TTP has been working on machine to machine (M2M) and even 'organism to machine' applications for over 20 years, from sensors to monitor cow herds to sensors in orthopaedic joints and F1 engines.
"The IoT hype is supported by silicon vendors eager to dream up new applications for chips," said Taylor. "But that's putting the ‘cart before horse'. It's more important to look at the needs first and then create systems around them. In this world, small changes in the sensor map can lead to very significant commercial gains."
Taylor believes that Google has proven the business case for data-mining to gain insights into our lives, actions and needs. "Business managers throughout industry now want to replicate this with their products and assets," he added.
"There's a huge amount of data which is not being ‘listened to'. In heavy industry for example, saving a few percent of energy by improved temperature modelling can be worth billions.
"There is a need to pump more data to the cloud to gain greater insight into systems and how they perform in reality. This information is extremely valuable, particularly if you can blend local sensor data with historical data."