The top story for the 2014 Newsmakers list well could have been last year’s.
The channel and all of society cannot deny the overwhelming momentum of the Internet of Things.
If you believe Cisco’s financial logic to IoT (and many do) this market grew in nine months from a $14.5 trillion worldwide profit and economic savings opportunity in the next decade to a $19 trillion one.
Lending more credibility to the vast market potential of the Internet of Things is Microsoft Corp. who is signing up with the AllSeen Alliance this year, a wide-ranging open-source Internet of Everything project.
The AllSeen Alliance is a non-profit consortium based in San Francisco that is dedicated to driving the widespread adoption of products, systems and services that support the Internet of Everything with an open, universal development framework that is supported by a vibrant ecosystem and thriving technical community.
But for the channel the challenge comes in how to capture any portion of those trillions of dollars. Most solution providers acknowledge there is a lot of money to be made developing solutions for people, processes, data and things but how do you specifically put a price on these elements of the Internet of Everything. Secondly how does a solution provider work with customers and cities/communities to find budgets for the Internet of Everything or exploit the budgets that maybe flat?