The Internet of Things (IoT) is a growing market that is bringing an ever increasing amount of connected devices and innovative solutions that mix compute power, sensors, and other hardware with the physical world to provide monitoring, predictive, and automation functionality across both consumer and industrial applications. On the face, IoT simply means Internet connecting compute devices to perform some kind of task, however, the modern world of IoT is much different than this original definition that is from the early 2000’s or even earlier in a time before the cloud.

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

Wikipedia

In the modern world of the cloud, the Internet of Things means a bit more than building a system comprised of interrelated computing devices with the ability to transfer data over a network. With the cloud, these devices are being connected to vast amounts of compute and storage capabilities in the cloud that are offering much greater analysis, prediction, and reporting features. This means that modern IoT solutions are capable of not just providing an automation layer that doesn’t require human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction, but they are also able to integrate Machine Learning (ML / AI), analytics, and real-time decision capabilities for building innovative solutions with a higher level of business value.

To learn more about the Internet of Things, I recommend you check out the following articles that dive deeper into Internet of Things concepts:

• Introduction to Azure IoT for Administrators
• IoT Security Architecture: Trust Zones and Boundaries
• Lambda Architecture
• Internet of Things Messaging Architecture
• IoT Messaging Protocols

Happy building connected devices and Internet of Things solutions!