The CISCO survey results that emphasize "Data" first then "Process" and "People" with "Things" last is consistent with abstraction hierarchies in familiar Enterprise Architectures. The level of abstraction that is even higher than Data in EA is the "Business" (and sometimes "Information") layers. These are the layers of value and meaning.

Theory is required to comment business and information layers with the lower levels of abstraction addressed in the CISCO survey. In IOE/IOT, theory is where business and science intersect. New communities are needed to make this intersection principled, sustainable, and reliably productive.