It is all about VERY SMALL SENSORS (MEMS) capturing all kind of DATA and the TRANSMISSION over INTERNET
to a Computer or a Smart Phone

The Internet of Things (IoT) is in fact an environment in
which objects, animals or people are provided with unique
identifiers (like each phone number or car license are
unique) and the ability to transfer the data over a network
without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer
interaction. It is a machine-to-machine (M2M)
communication. M2M is a very popular terminology, if the
network used is the internet (more and more the case)
then IoT is more appropriate. IoT and M2M will coexist.
IoT has evolved from the convergence of wireless
technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)
and the Internet. It is also called the Internet of Everything
(IoE used by Cisco).

A thing, in the Internet of Things, can be a person with a
heart monitor implant, a farm animal with a biochip
transponder, an automobile that has built-in sensors to alert the driver when tire pressure is low, or any other natural or man-made object that can be assigned an IP address and provided with the ability to transfer data over a network.

IoT and M2M are already in your home or soon

Smart Meters for water, gas and electricity are in the field in millions and will be soon the majority.
Each time you take a liter of water it is automatically tracked in the computer of your distributor.

Benefits

Today computers and, therefore, the Internet, are almost wholly dependent on human beings for information. Nearly all of the roughly 50 petabytes (1 petabyte = 1,000 terabytes) of data available on the Internet were first captured and created by human beings by typing, pressing a record button, taking a digital picture or scanning a bar code.
The problem is, people have limited time, attention and accuracy, all of which means they are not very good at capturing data about things in the real world. If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things, using data they gathered without any help from us, we would be able to track and count everything and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling and whether they were fresh or past their best.

IoT New or Not? YES and NO

1980 - Intelligent Coke Distributor - Although the concept wasn't named until 1999, the Internet of Things has been in development for decades. The first Internet appliance, for example, was a Coke machine at Carnegie Melon University in the early 1980s. The programmers could connect to the machine over the Internet,
check the status of the machine and determine whether or not there would be a cold drink awaiting them, should they decide to make the trip down to the machine.

2002 - 30 million Smart Meters for electricity - In 2002 e2mos (1) was performing consultancy services for a large energy distributor who decided to deploy about
30 million Smart Meters. The project was very successful and 3 million were manufactured in Europe and the balance in China.

2013 Telefónica Signs €1.78bn UK Smart Meter M2M Deal - The 15 year agreement is the world's largest machine-to-machine (M2M) contract win to date
(23-Sep-2013). By 2020 53 million meters to be deployed, a €11bn programme. This was published in one of our other magazine « Telecom COTS World » of October 2013.

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