Internet of Things Growing Bigger in Consumers' Lives: Gartner

The impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) on consumers' lives and corporate business models is rapidly increasing and by 2020, more than half of major new business processes will incorporate some element of the IoT, research company Gartner has predicted.

"This is possible due to the cost of 'instrumenting' physical things with sensors and connecting them to other things - devices, systems and people - continues to drop," said Gartner its recent report.

Internet of Things is basically connecting any device with an on and off switch to the internet - smartphones, headphones, coffee makers, air-conditioner, television, washing machines, lamps, wearable devices and almost anything else you can think of.

"The IoT is relevant in virtually every industry, although not in every application. There will be no purely 'IoT applications'. Rather, there will be many applications that leverage the IoT in some small or large aspect of their work," said W. Roy Schulte, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, in a statement.

Through 2018, 75 percent of IoT projects would take up to twice as long as planned and three out of four IoT projects to face schedule extensions of up to 100 percent with the consequent cost overruns.

The more ambitious and complicated the project, the greater the schedule overruns leading to compromises and significant weaknesses in performance, security or integration.

For this, the IoT project will be required to be refactored and perhaps even recalled and redeployed.

"Product-centered enterprises will be the worst affected," Alfonso Velosa, research vice president at Gartner, added.

By 2020, a black market exceeding $5 billion (roughly Rs. 33,692 crores) would exist to sell fake sensor and video data for enabling criminal activity and protecting personal privacy.

"The IoT has enormous potential to collect continuous data about our environment," said Ted Friedman, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

By 2020, addressing compromises in IoT security will have increased security costs to 20 percent of annual security budgets, from less than one percent in 2015.

As the use of IoT devices grows, however, the unique requirements of IoT architecture, design and implementation over multiple industry segments and scenarios will also grow, the report added.