Smart cities, smart devices, applications and platforms could be jargons for many in India, but these are soon becoming realty and would grow exponentially in the near future.

Termed as Internet of things (IoT), such mode of connectivity would be part of our daily lives and are expected to grow faster than the personal computers or smartphones had grown over the last 10 years.

Though the current market size is not known, the IoT connectivity drive will create a global market worth up to $8.9 trillion by 2020 as per IDC, and would grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.9 per cent between now and 2020.

“From smart meters and operational and cost efficiencies to smart buildings and smart home systems, end users are able to see and feel the tangible benefits of IoT. This will spur increased demand for IoT solutions around the world,” said Carrie MacGillivray, Programme Vice-President, Mobile Services, IoT and Infrastructure, IDC.

According to industry veterans and companies involved in developing IoTs, India has already started adopting and it is not something entirely new and have existed in some shape or form over decades.

“With the penetration of broadband being high in the Indian Metros, there has been a shift from clichéd forms of consuming content to absorbing broadband-based applications and services,” Sandeep Arora, Regional Manager, Service Provider – Cisco India & SAARC, told Business Line .

Key factors He said the crucial factors that support the development of a healthy over-the-top value-added services (OTT VAS) ecosystem have all started to fall into place. And, as connected devices proliferate, there will be increasing opportunities to offer cloud-based time-shift TV and Internet-enabled connected home services to subscribers.

“These cloud-based services will enable the rapid rollout of new features and functionality, and we will see elastic scaling with the growth of subscribers and channels, together with improved energy efficiency and resource utilisation, Arora said.

For example, Tata Sky's 'Everywhere TV' touched one-lakh subscriber base within a few days of its launch and such shifts will be a part of our lives and certainly certainty of a ‘connected home’.

Not only the Ciscos or Freescales of the world are developing IoT, there are many Indian companies and start-ups are also working in specific domains of IoT.

“A few large IT houses have showcased complete IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) system integration gathering and processing data from field machines and there are few start-ups working on consumer gadgets for health and activity monitoring,” Somsubhra Pal Choudhury, Managing Director, Analog Devices India, said.

“In fact, we now have a special interest group of IoT in Bangalore, which many of the MNCs including Analog Devices are early members.”

According to Pal, as compared to the onset of the PC and smartphone revolution, the India eco-system has matured and a market for IoT exists as the skillset in India is vastly cross functional it is ready to catch the IoT wave.

Policies needed However, since IoT would lead to highly distributed data – from residing on sensors and in decentralised storage locations to backend data centres, there should be some policies also in place.

“Consistent and appropriate policies need to be applied to data based on location, type, age and sensitivity amongst other things. A logical framework should emerge to ensure an optimal lifecycle management for all of the data an enterprise owns across these boundaries,” said Santhosh D’Souza, Director - Systems Engineer, NetApp Marketing & Services India.

Data will also be distributed physically across private enterprise data centres, co-hosted and managed locations and public clouds, he said.

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