The Internet of Everything: An Opportunistic View from the Clouds

The Internet of Everything (IoE) describes machine-to-machine (M2M) compute entities that track and measure real-time data that can be used to build out a data history for analytics that could be used to optimize the quality of life. The opportunity is represented by devices used in a person’s everyday life that are connected to the Internet, have the ability to learn a person’s consumption behavior, and embody the goal to improve the efficacy of services and goods delivery and consumption. Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers says that the Internet of Everything could be a $19 trillion opportunity. 1

Cloud computing plays a lead role in this large projected market, especially as the connected devices all vie for the same connected resources. Cloud provides the infrastructure, connectivity, web scale, agility, simplicity of use, and availability of services that the IoE can leverage as a framework. Cloud contributes to the connected ecosystem. All that data being generated is ripe for analysis, consumption, compliance, security, and protection. And as this marketplace is coming to fruition, the future of IoE is tied to the future of cloud.

Accordingly in a recent Cisco blog2, Gee Rittenhouse Ph.D. answers the top 5 questions about the future of cloud. Those questions are:

When will all the major clouds support the same set of APIs?

When will they support migration of data/workloads form one cloud to another natively?

What comes after the race to the bottom in cloud storage prices plays out?

When will we see a true cloud exchange?

How can we be sure our data is safe in your cloud from prying eyes?

I invite you to read Cisco’s cloud blog post. It is listed in the reference section below. With respect to the IoE, I’d like to focus on question 4 and Gee’s answer. I completely agree that a true cloud exchange can only be delivered via a catalog with some of the features that Gee describes in his response. In fact, I’ve described that very catalog as an ITaaS Catalog, whose primary goal is to create a marketplace to optimizes services delivery and consumption. 3  This optimization and simplification of cloud services delivery and consumption is key to cloud adoption success and mirrors the one that needs to take place for the IoE success.

In closing, it will be interesting to see the landscape that comes with the rise of the IoE and the cloud ecosystems that enable it.

References

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-08/cisco-ceo-pegs-internet-of-things-as-19-trillion-market.html

http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/want-to-hear-ciscos-pov-on-the-top-5-questions-about-the-future-of-cloud/

http://blog.gravitant.com/2014/04/11/the-it-as-a-service-itaas-catalog/