Challenge of connecting everything

We had the opportunity to talk to eric Free, vice-president and general manager of the smart homes and building division of Intel about how the Internet of Things (IoT) has become the buzzword for a new generation of tech and what it actually means.

“Very simply, it’s the connecting of devices to the Cloud to collect data that drives changes or transformation. We sort of laugh, because we’ve been active in the embedded space for more than 30 years and we’ve seen devices connecting to the Internet in the last five to 10 years. Now they’ve slapped a name on it and suddenly we’re seeing a lot of excitement.”

In fact, Intel expects some 50 billion devices to be connected to the Internet by 2020 and many of those will be from the home.

Of those devices, Intel is particularly interested in products for media entertainment, automation and security, health, and energy management for the home.

“What’s really exciting is that we now see the industry moving as a whole,” he said. “However, there are some real challenges ahead.”

According to Free, one of the issues with IoT is that the market is very fragmented at the moment, and there is a lack of standards for interoperability and connectivity of various devices in the home.

To help set these standards, Intel has set up two different consortia to address the issues, namely the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) and Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC).

The OIC is meant to help smart devices talk to each other by setting up a common protocol and communications standard and, at the same time, make it easier for users to make these connections.

The IIC, on the other hand, was set up to address broader issues with regards to how IoT works both in the industry and at home especially when it comes to security.

Free admits that security is a major concern especially when everything in the home is connected to the Cloud in some way — it’s still a tricky situation to balance ease-of-use and making the system secure.