The internet of things is fundamentally altering how organizations do business, and maturing underlying technologies will make IoT easier to implement and help investors and companies seize new opportunities. By connecting devices and sensors to the internet, we are entering an age where data analytics, connectivity, and automation are creating innovations and progress previously out of reach. As the Industry 4.0 and home automation movements gain more traction, we will see IoT devices and embedded systems become more and more prevalent in our daily lives. The businesses that understand the use cases and potential of IoT are the businesses that will likely drive innovation over the next 10 years. After years of hype, anticipation, and steady uptake, the Internet of Things (IoT) seems poised to cross over into mainstream business use. The number of businesses that use IoT technologies has increased from 13% in 2018 to about 25% today. And the worldwide number of IoT-connected devices is projected to increase to 43 billion by 2023, according to a report by Ericsson. This level of uptake is both a result and an impetus of the developing technologies that underpin the IoT. For one, technological advancement means that IoT technology will become easier to implement, opening the door for a wider variety of companies to benefit from IoT applications. Indeed, although large enterprises began to invest their sizable resources in IoT technologies years ago, the beneficiaries of this latest wave of IoT maturity will be small and medium-size enterprises.
