| |October 20179CIOReviewIoT is certainly a game changer. Though it is at an initial adoption stage but has a huge potential across all businessespossibly every industry has a business case for it.The section to follow enlists the use cases across some of the industries where IoT has been adopted thus far. IoT ­ Adoption across IndustriesSmart CitiesThere are very large scale projects carried out using IoT to develop Smart cities across the world and in India. IoT technology is being wide-ly used in Smart Cities for Intelligent Toll Management Systems, High-way Traffic Management Systems, Command and Control centers for Emergency services like PCR vehicle dispatch and tracking, Ambulance, Fire etc.ManufacturingIoT has induced the next In-dustrial revolution known as Industry 4.0. The sensors installed at different stages of assembly lines measure, optimize and report the status of production in real-time to supervisors and top management sitting miles away from the shop-floor to take corrective measures. The data also helps in preventing any downtime in production line by providing the data for preven-tive maintenance of equipment in production lines.UtilitiesThe utility companies across the world have started adopting IoT for Smart-Metering, wherein the need for physical meter reading for utilities has been taken away. The data for preventive and re-active maintenance of distribution equipment like substations, distribu-tion lines etc. like the equipment noise levels, output degradation or failure is being collected in real time and the service levels are being improved for end customers. LogisticsLogistics companies have been using IoT based devices since a long time now. In combination with Geo-lo-cation and multiple sensors, the lo-gistics companies have optimized their vehicles' routes, monitored fuel consumption, performed preventive maintenance of their vehicles, moni-tored and rewarded drivers with good driving behavior and have automated Vendor Invoice verification through E-Log books thereby achieving sig-nificant cost savings. Media (AV) and Entertainment The entertainment industry has been quick to innovate and adopt new technologies and has not been behind in adopting IoT. Smart TVs, Mo-biles, Tablets have leveraged IoT to stream data from and to the internet. Media and Entertainment have been the biggest contributor to the volume of content consumed/produced by IoT devices.Internet enabled cameras like the Drone mounted ones have made it possible to record live events and broadcast in real time over the internet. IoT ­ Risks and ChallengesWhile IoT is steadily getting ad-opted across industries, there are a few risks and challenges which need to be addressed with time and are enlisted below:1. Lack of standardization: Though efforts are being made to-wards designing lightweight pro-tocols that can work on low power networks that are typically used for IoT; there are few manufactures who have adopted these protocols. This leads to the challenges of al-lowing the devices from different manufactures to communicate with each other as a first problem. Sec-ondly, there is a very high risk since in many of the IoT devices, the data transmission is not secured and there are sub-optimal authentica-tion techniques in use to identify the communicating device. 2. Network Reliability: Though most devices come with an offline data storage capability, the delay in transmitting the data due to unavail-ability of network is a big challenge for real-time communication. 3. Power: The real use case for IoT comes for devices which are not stationed and are mobile. For devices which are mobile, there is a strong need of power source which can keep the device running for long periods of time without having to recharge it every now and then. ConclusionIoT is certainly a game changer. Though it is at an initial adoption stage, it has a huge potential across all businesses. Leverage it for your busi-ness now, but do remember to under-stand and address the constraints that exist today.
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