The McKinsey Quarterly's article The Internet of Things (registration required) does an excellent job of summarizing the topic. For those not familiar with the concepts around the Internet of Things, according to the article:
More objects are becoming embedded with sensors and gaining the ability to communicate. The resulting information networks promise to create new business models, improve business processes, and reduce costs and risks.
The term "The Internet of Things" was coined by Kevin Ashton in the late 1990s. Kevin was the Executive Director of MIT's Auto-ID Center, which was exploring smart objects and sensor technologies. The concepts go back - at least - to work done in the 1980s around ubiquitous computing. Like most technologies, smart objects have taken a long to develop.
As the McKinsey article points out, The Internet of Things is not new news for technology companies and early adopters of RFID, sensors and other smart object technology. But we are at the point where deployments are entering the mainstream and the technology is starting to impact industry in major ways.
McKinsey lays out 6 emerging application areas of greatest impact. They are broadly in the categories of information collection and analysis, and process automation and control. To avoid violating McKinsey's copyrights I'll stop here and suggest you go to the article for more detail.
The Intuit Future of Small Business research report on technology also covers smart objects in detail.
Good post! http://tastethecloud.com/series_topics is a link to a series of posts relating to this topic: the Internet of Things as well as the Information Shadow left behind.
Posted by: dave tribbett | March 17, 2010 at 09:37 AM
Great Post.
Check this link to view my thoughts on McKinsey article: http://precysetech.wordpress.com/
Posted by: Tal Eizenberg | March 29, 2010 at 03:04 AM
Hi!!
I understand that recession has ruined the jobs of many persons but keeping patience and using this time in increasing the qualifications is considered a good idea!!
http://www.buyonline-rx.com/ed.html
http://www.buyonline-rx.com/sitemap.html
Posted by: Impotence causes | October 01, 2010 at 01:28 PM
Like most technologies, smart objects have taken a long to develop.
Posted by: ClubPenguin | March 22, 2011 at 01:13 AM