The implications of large IoT ecosystems

The Internet of Things genie is out of the bottle and growing at an accelerating pace. According to Gartner, 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30 percent from 2015. This number will soar to more than 20 billion by 2020. Others present even higher estimates. The opportunities in improved utility, energy-saving, efficiency and safety lying in the data gathered by such immense numbers of connected sensors and smart devices are huge and without precedent.