The Doppler Quarterly Fall 2018 | Page 51

IoT, the Internet of Things, is the network of computing devices embedded in everyday objects that enables them to send and receive data. These devices are extremely diverse, depending on the use cases. For example, Amazon’s Echo device takes as input a human voice command “Alexa, play Hawaiian music,” sends it to Amazon Cloud, brings back Hawaiian music and plays it from the device. An industrial IoT device might be a GE engine that has 2,000 sensors in it sending maintenance data to the back end. Besides IoT, we are seeing a number of technological sea changes in cloud computing, high-speed Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wireless communication networks and artificial intelligence (AI). All these cutting-edge technologies are converging — a major trend that enterprises need to understand when they create IoT strategies. FALL 2018 | THE DOPPLER | 49