IoT: A Smart Approach to Speaking the Same Connected Language

There is an insatiable hunger for connectivity that gets stronger every day, evidenced by the skyrocketing adoption of IoT devices. Cisco forecasts 50 billion devices by 2020, while IHS Markit predicts 125 billion devices by 2030. However, in the race to meet the growing demand for “smart” devices, manufacturers prioritized rapid development over standardization from both an operating system perspective and from a communication and network standpoint. For IoT to have the transformational impact everyone is imagining, the network must be able to efficiently allow data to transmit quickly and reliably so machines can communicate with one another and report back to those monitoring them. The idea of standardizing communication among connected systems isn’t new. There have been numerous protocols that existed for years under the guise of embedded networking – ZigBee and CAN-BUS being two. None of these networks were ever as pervasive as the Internet of Things (IoT), however, and they were largely proprietary to each company or device.