Again ... nice post.

I do agree that connections is the key! I believe that various architectures that are showing up on the market today are missing this point, and being designed as "stove pipe" solutions that do not think about routing IoE data like IP packets.

It seems to me that shared sensors and sensor data will be one of the first major stepping stones, and then the introduction of numerous decision support systems (or rule systems) that will determine what outputs need to be triggered, or even what new data sources need to be acquired. As new data analysis tools are made compatible, they will be able to access data streams from sensors and provide new solutions.

As sensors become multi-point, and acuators do also, then extremely dynamic and flexible environments can be created. So it's not just about persistent connections.

Again ... great to see Cisco in this space!