IoT (Internet of Things) is emerging area now days. There is great excitement in Silicon Valley about this topic. Talks and meetups are springing everywhere on IoT.

What is IoT? To understand this First, look around the home appliances: TVs, stoves, Air Conditioners, refrigerators, and thermostats can all be connected. When they are Internet connected, they gather information and form a complete view of your need at home. They can then help you to experience home more pleasantly.

Outside homes, IoT can be installed everywhere. In a store, sensors on the shelves can monitor customer traffic and inventory in real time. Surveillance cameras on the streets and in public places are captured crime in action. Uber and OLA taxies send out data on their locations and their passengers. IoT will be very useful for hospitals where patient monitoring is required. In agriculture fields, sensors help to monitor water supply among crops. 

One of the most practical use of IoT is building sensors. Sensors on lightening fixtures control the light on and off by monitoring people. From such sensors, they can also discover building occupancy and provide a report of building utilization. Furthermore, they can provide meeting room occupancy report and dynamically re-allocate meeting rooms when no one shows up. This could be very useful for large companies when meetings rooms are in high demand. 

The most exciting application of IoT would be tracking location of each person’s Smart Phone. Imagine you walk into Starbucks, and your favorite drink will be ready right there waiting for you. This depends on data analysis of your daily consumption, your location (as you walk in), and predictive modeling.

The data generated from IoT devices are much larger than the Internet traffic data. Such kind of data is considered as Big Data. In addition, such data need to be processed in real time in order to get response immediately. From cloud-based data processing, to intelligent algorithms that drive the response from devices, we will see continuing need for data scientists and data engineers. We are living in an exciting age, where data mining plays an central role in the next industrial revolution.