Some of the biggest names in technology are starting to push Internet of Things operating systems in preparation for when everything is connected to everything.
But do we really need them?
![Is it really a good idea to have so many things interconnected?](http://web.archive.org./web/20170606141337im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/1/3/7/5/6/u/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.13732b.png/1438574366983.jpg)
Typically, the Internet of Things (IoT) refers to devices, machines, and computers connected to each other through the internet. Among other areas, the concept can be applied to medical systems, home automation, transport systems and heavy industry.
While a case can be made for one standard operating system – think Android, Windows – so machines can easily talk to almost any other; there are those who believe interoperability is the key to connect existing systems without creating a new one.
![Interconnected: The Internet of Things is the way of the future.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170606141337im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/1/3/7/5/1/g/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.13732b.png/1423115257979.jpg)
GE's system, Predix, is part of the company's "Industrial Internet" philosophy. Last year GE Australia Chief Information Officer Mark Sheppard said it "glues together the machines, the data, the algorithms and the analysis and allows us to form that safe secure method so we can quickly produce applications". At the time the company had built 40 applications for machine-to-machine communications.
In December Intel launched its own system, the Intel IoT Platform. According to the company, the Internet of Things has "enormous potential to drive economic value and social change", but it lamented 85 per cent of "things" are still unconnected and security threats are pervasive.
Most experts Fairfax Media spoke to about the viability of dedicated IoT systems said it was a matter of the application.
"The value of such a dedicated system is in its ability to focus on specific challenges while still fitting the IoT vision," is how Dr Arkady Zaslavsky, a CSIRO research scientist working with semantic data management, puts it.
Tatham Oddie, CIO of software developer Readify, describes approaches like those of GE and Intel as end-to-end solutions.
"The opportunity of IoT lies is integrating physical intelligence right through to business processes, and back out again," he says. "It's mostly a build versus buy continuum."
With 26 billion devices due to be connected in the next five years according to analysis firm Gartner, dedicated IoT frameworks might seem like a way to handle the incoming explosion of data.
But as Rob Livingstone, UTS Fellow and IT consultant says, the amount of data won't be the problem. Compared to high bandwidth systems like HD video over Netflix, the amount of traffic from embedded devices in plane engines, wearable heart monitors and train locomotives will be comparatively low.
The gorilla in the room, he says, is security. "When [IoT systems] are involved in processing and controlling physical processes, the consequences of a hack or intrusion ... is the biggest issue."
Livingstone says even when you transmit data on secure point-to-point systems or an 'off-net' network that's separate from public or consumer internet traffic, there's still no real assurance.
"No organisation can guarantee they'll never have a disgruntled employee or their internal processes or protocols have been implemented to the nth degree," he says.
But Charles King, president of technology analyst Pund-IT, says that's exactly where the big firms can offer a point of difference in IoT.
"[Intel] is one of the few vendors in the space that seem to understand that you need to start with a gateway in order to automate and secure the results," he says. "The individual devices will be incredibly hard to secure individually, it will require too much headroom. Early companies in the consumer space like smartphones for home automation and Sonos for music either discovered this early on or over time."
Interoperability is another issue. Back in March, Android was an emerging IoT player, but only one of many that use different operating systems and software frameworks.
The different languages behind existing software in buildings, transport, manufacturing, etc aren't going to be replaced or rewritten any time soon, but to King, that's another problem systems like Intel's gateway approach could solve.
"You can begin to write apps that allow various systems to interact but that will open up a new can of worms because the designers of [those systems] didn't anticipate it when they designed the products. Intel's gateway is designed to limit or eliminate those dangers."
- With Matthew Hall
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