Internet Of Things (IOT)

The Internet of Things, or "IoT" for short, is about extending the power of the internet beyond computers and smartphones to a whole range of other things, processes, and environments. Here's everything you need to know.

We all know that IoT is changing industries across the board – from agriculture to healthcare to manufacturing and everything in between – but what is IoT, exactly? Working for an Internet of Things (IoT) company, I get asked that question all the time and, over that time, I’ve worked hard to boil it down to something anyone can understand. Here’s everything you need to know about the internet of things.

“The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.”

The Internet of Things (IoT) Explained: Simply and Non-Technically

How are you reading this post right now? It might be on desktop, on mobile, maybe a tablet, but whatever device you’re using, it’s most definitely connected to the internet.

An internet connection is a wonderful thing, it give us all sorts of benefits that just weren’t possible before. If you’re old enough, think of your cellphone before it was a smartphone. You could call and you could text sure, but now you can read any book, watch any movie, or listen to any song all in the palm of your hand. And that’s just to name a few of the incredible things your smartphone can do.

Connecting things to the internet yields many amazing benefits. We’ve all seen these benefits with our smartphones, laptops, and tablets, but this is true for everything else too. And yes, I do mean everything.

The Internet of Things is actually a pretty simple concept, it means taking all the things in the world and connecting them to the internet.

I think that confusion arises not because the concept is so narrow and tightly defined, but rather because it’s so broad and loosely defined. It can be hard to nail down the concept in your head when there are so many examples and possibilities in IoT.

To help clarify, I think it’s important to understand the benefits of connecting things to the internet. Why would we even want to connect everything to the internet?