Besides VR, what else can leverage the Internet of Things in 2016?

In 2016, the Internet of Things was written into the 13th Five-Year Plan, and will also be the highlight of the Shenzhen Yunqi Conference on April 20 this year. The spark of the Internet of Things has quietly blossomed.

No one would deny that VR is the hottest industry in the technology circle in 2016. As an important member of wearable devices, the popularity of VR has sounded the clarion call for the advancement of the Internet of Things.

According to Gartner data, 6.4 billion devices are expected to be connected to the Internet globally in 2016, and this number will grow to 20.8 billion by 2020. In addition to Gartner, many other organizations, such as IMS and IDC, have made similar predictions: the number of connected devices will increase several times in five years.

In fact, as early as 1957, Morton Heilig created the first VR. Why did VR become popular only in recent years? The reason is simple. Only when content providers, equipment manufacturers, channel distributors, and service providers begin to pour in, the market will flourish. In recent years, the development of the Internet of Things has been very slow, until the rise of wearable devices in recent years, there has been some improvement. In order to leverage the Internet of Things industry, in addition to VR, you may also need these:

True “interconnection”

The lack of communication standards has always been a major obstacle to the development of the Internet of Things. From chipsets to operating systems, from gateways to applications, each industry and individual country has its own standards, which makes it impossible for terminals and networks to achieve true "interconnection". If the current situation of the Internet of Things industry is not broken, user devices will not be able to achieve seamless connection. The standard dispute exists not only between companies, but also between countries. Since it is impossible to shake the giants, how can industry companies achieve cross-brand interconnection? The cloud platform provides a good answer.

The same gateway can support a variety of different communication technologies, such as WiFi, Bluetooth, etc., and different terminals can access multiple cloud platforms to enable data to be interconnected in the cloud, ultimately achieving interconnection between different products.

In the field of Internet of Things, everyone knows the importance of unified communication standards, but without strong enterprises to promote it, this process will be slow. Microsoft, Cisco, Intel and BAT in China have already started to lay out the Internet of Things and promote the customization of Internet of Things standards. With the rise of VR, the competitive balance between various open standards and closed company protocols will be broken, and the debate on whether the Internet of Things is open or closed will soon be confirmed.

IoT Ecosystem Closed Loop

The IoT industry ecosystem consists of three major parts: infrastructure layer, platform layer (horizontal) and application layer (vertical). The infrastructure layer includes chips, sensors, network protocols, operating systems, etc., the platform layer includes developer tools, sensor networks, cloud platforms, etc., and the application layer includes wearable devices, smart homes , Internet of Vehicles , smart medical care and industrial robots, etc.

It can be seen that the IoT ecosystem covers a very wide range, and the development of each link is also uneven. Foreign companies such as Microsoft, Apple, and AT&T, and domestic companies such as Alibaba and Xiaomi are actively participating in promoting the construction of a closed loop of the IoT ecosystem. Major companies want to extend their advantages in the IoT field and leverage each other. For example, AT&T uses its own 4G LTE technology to cooperate with cloud computing manufacturer Salesforce to achieve data interconnection in the IoT. Another example is Xiaomi's smart camera Xiaoyi, which uses Alibaba Cloud's cloud computing platform to achieve all-weather mobile monitoring and data confidentiality.

Similar cross-border collaborations are becoming more and more common, and no single company can take on everything. They either have to play a platform support role or go deep into subdivided industry fields from the perspective of being integrated. Startups or companies need to clearly define their position in the IoT ecosystem and perform their respective duties in order to continuously bring about the industry effect of connecting things to things.

More secure data transmission

This year's CCTV 315 Gala once exposed such a scene: a drone on a mission was suddenly hijacked, the smart socket in the home was out of control and the light was flickering, the smart oven exceeded the temperature limit and heated up on its own, the bedroom under the surveillance of the smart camera was in full view, and the money in the bank card was transferred away by the smart POS machine without knowing it... CCTV's "hacker blockbuster" opened the audience's eyes.

IoT security was listed as the top of the five major focus issues at CES 2016. Plain text network communication, lack of anti-decompilation processing for sensitive information, and weak permission management links all pose hidden dangers to the development of IoT. How to ensure that consumers can enjoy the benefits safely and reliably is probably the top priority for the entire IoT ecosystem.

As consumers' security awareness increases, communication encryption, biometrics and other technologies are rapidly becoming popular. Ecosystem vendors are also actively studying response strategies. Alibaba Cloud, a domestic cloud computing giant, has released services such as HTTPS communication encryption and permission management, and has cooperated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences to develop quantum communication technology to ensure communication security. At the Shenzhen Yunqi Conference on April 20, Alibaba Cloud will also release a new IoT solution and launch IoT products such as IoT kits.

The advancement of technology has never been the only factor driving its widespread application. The rapid development of cloud computing and big data has become the key factors that have led to the full-scale outbreak of the Internet of Things. Whether the Internet of Things can be leveraged in 2016 depends on what kind of blueprint cloud computing vendors can draw for the Internet of Things.