Founder's Message

IoT is not a hype - It will disrupt Every 'Thing' by 2020

Nearly all those studying in the universities today, have grown up with Internet. I am not one of them. However, as IIT-alumnus, my 'web' of friends was already 'world-wide' when Internet was invented. One of my friends working in famous European particle physics lab-CERN, recalls a memo that Tim Berners-Lee, who was working there as Fellow, wrote to his boss in 1989. That memo included a proposal of a global hypertext information-sharing space- WWW- World Wide Web. His boss took more than a year to approve it- but once approved, rest was history.

That memo of Tim, 28 years back, transformed the world. Hardly there is any other invention in human history that changed our lives so much and so fast! With initial reactions that 'internet was just a hype', now the world lives with internet, eats with internet and sleeps with internet. As per 2016 report of UN, 50 percent of the global population uses internet! By 2020 nearly all the world is expected to be Internet-citizens or Netizens!

We all, young and old, are NOW growing with another more exciting transformation called IoT-Internet of Things. While WWW allowed 'people to people' communications, IoT allows communication between machines, between buildings, between roads, in reality between 'things'. Many would like to call it 'Internet of Everything'. While, as in the past, some are busy calling it a hype, IoT is spreading like water on the slope. It is not spreading, it is gushing.

IoT is not confined to research labs like CERN, NASA and IITs. It not only benefit scientists in developed countries, China and India, its benefits are reaching the distant area even in Africa. Private sector has collaborated with governments and NGOs to put IoT sensors on water pumps in rural Africa. This enables the private sector and NGOs that assist the farmers in Africa to install the pumps to monitor their operations.

In Rwanda, only 56% of the water pumps were working consistently before IoT was introduced. After adding the 'Sweet Sense' technology to track the pumps' function via cellular phones, IoT systems and analytics, the water pumps were able to be repaired more quickly and 91% of the pumps could be kept working on a regular basis. Their electricity consumption and efficiency improved. That is huge difference in life of the people and in mitigating emissions leading to climate change.

IoT connectivity can help in keeping agricultural water systems on, only when required and provide clean water for more days out of the year for more people. Pumps can be connected by sensors to soil which can be connected to soil-laboratories and soil-health cards which can be connected to fertilizer-inputs to the soil. Sensors on crops could sense pests and trigger dosages of bio- pesticides. IoT can thus achieve improved food production and better health. Both, food and health security, are part of the SDGs-Sustainable Development Goals.

To be sure, IoT is in fledgling stage in Africa. They've yet to scale up there. But potential is enormous. IoT is 'gushing' in other parts of the world, though, if one sees numbers in Gartner's or Cisco's predictions, reports by Intel and United Nations.

As per these reports, world population today is 7.6 billion and would be around 8-8.5 billion in 2020. Number related to Machines-to Machines connected by IoT (called M2M) today is about 5 billion and would be 50 to 75 billion by 2020, nearly 10 times the world population!

Those studying in universities today, when they would be out in the market to begin their career in 2020, will be out of tune with the transformed world, if one has no hands-on education on IoT. Smart Campus Cloud Network-SCCN of TERRE Policy Centre is the tool to ensure that todays' student remains relevant in future. See sccnhub.com