After IT boom, India's next big thing will be IoT: Jim Morrish, Machina Research

New Delhi: By 2020, the world will see more than 34 billion devices connected to the Internet, of which, 24 billion will account for IoT-connected devices. This will herald the next industrial revolution.

In an interview with ETtech's Aritra Sarkhel and Vikas SN at the sidelines of the IoT Congress held recently, founder of Machina Research and member of the Global Advisory Body of IET IoT, Jim Morrish talks about the opportunities with IoT in India, its security ramifications and how the concept of 'fog computing' will impact IoT.

Will IoT, like any other industry buzzword, fizzle out soon?

IoT is about opening ways of combining data from multiple sources. It's the next industrial revolution and depends significantly on devices. One of the drivers for IoT is the falling costs of devices. The cost of computing capabilities in end devices and the processing needed to analyse data -which comes from a sensor and mechanical probes -are becoming a lot cheaper. This will actually help in the rise of an interconnected environment.

Internet-of-things technology will give rise to a lot of automation. How is it likely to impact jobs?

IoT is a huge opportunity for India. According to our research done on American firms, 43% of the IT budgets will be spent on IoT projects and solutions by 2020. For example, in the BPO industry in India, some of the lower-skilled jobs will become automated in the coming days, but the trick for India is to remain at the forefront of it so that they can deliver those solutions. It's about upskilling because that is how economies progress.India Inc should look at retaining these people and training them.

This opens up the scope of personal progression within industries as people will move from lower to higher-skilled jobs that are more rewarding.

How is the industry looking at inter- operatability standard issues?

I think IoT needs to be conceived within the context of traditional societal boundaries and corporate governance. There will be some success in establishing those standards, but I think it will always be a game of catch-up. There is a long way to go before all levels of connected devices respect a single uniform standard.

The industry will get standardisations supporting a level of interconnectedness across industries.

There will be a level of de facto standards and beyond that, many levels of free fragmented standards across individual companies. But some of those standards will be definitely inconsistent at the same time.

Why open source matters to the IoT market?

A lot of the internet is based on the open source software, but customising it are supported by distributers, so it's not completely a naked code. It is pretty much synonymous with the emergence of standards. So, there is going to be that underlying core of open source code that will emerge in the same way it does in the internet today.

With the number of IoT devices increasing and a huge amount of data being collected, do you think privacy will be an issue?

It is an issue. There are various countries, which are establishing guidelines on privacy.

But it's a difficult concept to prescribe in regulations because it depends on the context of the information. The only way of effectively managing it is to bring in a trusted third party. We will need a more complex mechanism that pushes the concept of privacy into a commercial and competitive context than something regulated.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.