Gartner: Internet of Things Has Reached Hype Peak

Brandon Butler writes In the annual battle of the buzzwords, the Internet of Things has won. Each year the research firm Gartner puts out a Hype Cycle of emerging technologies, a sort of report card for various trends and buzzwords. This year, IoT tops the list. On another note, somewhat surprising is that Gartner says the "cloud computing" is not just hype anymore, but becoming a mainstream technology.

Comments

Why did they pick such a bad buzzword?

[Cozminsky]

The internet of things sounds so stupid. In the spirit of stupid marketing phrases that mean nothing like "the cloud" wouldn't it be cooler to call it "the swarm"?

Re:Why did they pick such a bad buzzword?

[mwvdlee]

I don't mind "internet of things" so much; it's devices using the internet without human interaction. I think the hype maxed out on that back when we were all expecting internet-connected fridges. Nowadays we actually have a few of those and are a bit more sane about what they can and cannot do.

As for "cloud"; it's just an empty marketing phrase. It cannot have a regular hypecycle, because at the end of every hypecycle is a phase of normal, sane use of the technology. There simply isn't any technology to use (other than plain internet).

I'd combine them and call it the "cloud of things" for ultimate buzzwordiness; it can mean anything.

Re:Why did they pick such a bad buzzword?

[Anonymous Coward]

My shoes are things. So is my belt, and my wallet. The canvas that makes up my wallet? That's a thing, too.

The tyres on my cars?

Things.

The spider I just found on the wall in my bathroom? That's a thing.

Toothbrushes are things. Shoelaces, glasses, batteries, guitar picks, and highlighters. Those are all things, too.

The buckle on my watch strap, the standard sized potentiometers, and that male 3.5mm stereo headphone jack to male 3.5mm stereo headphone jack, those are all things, too.

Governments? Those are a thing.

It could as easily (and more accurately) be called "Internet of Appliances" or "Internet of a Marketer's Wet Dream." Hell, "Internet of the NSA's greatest opportunity yet."

So don't go getting all preachy and so anal you could make a diamond with every butt clench, because you just make a dick of yourself.

Re: Why did they pick such a bad buzzword?

[pslytely psycho]

Beautiful. It sounds like how the Elves would describe broadband coming to Rivendell!

Re:Why did they pick such a bad buzzword?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

You need to be careful with what you do with "things" . . . I have a patent titled:

"A Method and Process for Doing Stuff with Things"

Gartner cynic here - enlighten me

[bradley13]

Do Gartner reports actually have any use? I mean, they put a nice graphic to their "hype cycle", but this is surely stuff that any technical type over the age of 25 understands?

You can purchase their report on the Internet of Things for the low, low price of $1995. If it's like most Gartner reports that I have seen, it will contain nice references to certain companies - my suspicion is that these companies have recently given Gartner fat consulting contracts. If you watch the same report evolve year-to-year, recommended companies change randomly - from a technical perspective - so one presumes that the deciding factors are politics and/or money.

Anyone want to argue against my cynicism? Are Gartner reports actually useful to some people?

Re:Gartner cynic here - enlighten me

[sirlark]

PHB's love them, they feel like they've learned something important because PRETTY PICTURES.

Re:Gartner cynic here - enlighten me

[JaredOfEuropa]

I'm a cynic as well, though I do read their reports from time to time (our company has access to them).

The value of these reports is not insighful conclusions, but in the research that "proofs" those conclusions. Let's face it, everybody knows that cloud-based computing has gone mainstream: it's been around for a while now, there are various stable, standardized and cheap services available for it, and many large companies already have good experience in using cloud resources, even though they have some issues from time to time. What Gartner does is put some numbers to those common insights: how many services, how have cost and competition evolved, what standards have emerged, how many companies actually use it and for what % of their business, anyone using it for business critical stuff, what kind of issues have they experienced, etc.

You're not going to learn anything amazing from Gartner reports, but there is a reason that even smart managers look at these reports to judge market readiness or trends: they provide evidence to support what you probably already knew, and it's a lot better evidence than what Google punters can come up with.

Re:Gartner cynic here - enlighten me

[Rich0]

They can potentially be useful if you want some kind of independent survey of a boring topic that isn't of primary interest to you, but which you have to deal with.

Every company has its areas of expertise. If you're learning anything from Gartner in these areas you're probably doing something wrong.

On the other hand, maybe your company wants to deploy proximity ID badges in 14 offices in 10 countries, and you want to know who makes systems that are compatible/compliant/etc across all of them. Unless you make/sell badge readers as your primary business, you probably don't know much about them. If you were securing one office with one door, maybe you wouldn't care and would just pick a random vendor with a cheap price. However, even a high-level overview of the field could save you a lot of money, and trying to figure out what info online is good/bad would probably be tough.

Just a random example. Just look at any of the 4700 things a company has to do to stay in business which aren't cool enough to get coverage in newspapers or other free semi-unbiased sources of info, but which can cost a company money if they don't pick at least a reasonable solution for.

Re: Cloud Computing!

[LordLucless]

No, it's really not. It's the name for a cluster running a virtualisation environment that lets you spin up virtual server instances quickly and easily.

It's an abstraction layer that sits between your clustered hardware, and your virtual machines.

Gartner cynic here - enlighten me

[Darinbob]

Gartner is useless. However you can pay them money and they'll increase your company's rating and this will fool people who trust Gartner's opinions.

comparing hypes

[globaljustin]

Why did they pick such a bad buzzword?

it's about whether you think "buzzword" is a good or bad thing

see, i'm with you completely on this:

The internet of things sounds so stupid. In the spirit of stupid marketing phrases that mean nothing like "the cloud"

TFA comes from a different angle...and more importantly the Gartner report it references, take a critical approach, but not the same one as you and I

the Gartner report examines the words on a function of **expectations**

we are judging it on accuracy & functionality

the problem is, the Gartner people are limiting their analysis to a factor that is not consistent..."expectations" are too variable to use as an experimental variable

it's all soft science, but Gartner is analyzing hype with more hype which made for the confusion...interesting though

why buzzwords are bad

[globaljustin]

"internet of things" is a redundant concept...same as "the cloud"

it's all just "the internet"

the fact that you hook up your bike tire to a sensor so you get an email when your air is low isn't a new "thing" that should be given a "name"

it's just a further application of an existing technology...

big brother and his capitalist cousin want "the internet of things" to control our behavior..."the cloud" is a way to get you to put all your data with one "carrier" be it google, apple, or another...they want to have as much of your behavior on their system as possible

so there's a component of dishonesty..."the cloud" and "the internet of things" were phrases chosen to obscure and confuse meaning not communicate it

Re:why buzzwords are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

"internet of things" is a redundant concept...same as "the cloud"

it's all just "the internet"

Just because you don't like the name, doesn't mean it's not useful. Or just because it's not useful to you, doesn't mean that it's not useful for others.
Concepts like the "internet of things" and the "cloud" may be somewhat vague and therefore sometimes misused, but they still have enough meaning in them that they can be useful in speech.

For example, "cloud storage", or "cloud server" are terms which are quite useful for me and most people here.
Sure, you could replace them by "internet-accessible storage", or "distributed virtual servers in internet-accessible shared hardware" but why would you do that when there are perfectly good accepted terms to describe those?

it's just a further application of an existing technology...

That's irrelevant. You can argue that a smartphone is just a standard mobile phone + PDA functionality, and you'd be right. Doesn't mean the word "smartphone" is useless though, does it?

big brother and his capitalist cousin want "the internet of things" to control our behavior

Oh shit, you're one of those!

so there's a component of dishonesty..."the cloud" and "the internet of things" were phrases chosen to obscure and confuse meaning not communicate it

There's no dishonesty. The "internet of things" term was born in academia and is meant to represent the notion of connecting devices which traditionally aren't, e.g. light switches, water taps or even more complex devices like washing machines.
Yeah it's a stupid term, but that's what you get when you have computer science PhDs naming stuff. If the concept were named nowadays, it'd probably be called "smart devices" or something similar.

No one asked the most important question!

[pslytely psycho]

Is it immersive?

(another word that desperately needs to die.)

Re:No one asked the most important question!

[Bearhouse]

Probably.

But does it blend?

Peak Hype

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone can be said to be experts on Peak Hype, Gartner certainly would be the ones.

Just like smartwatches

[GameboyRMH]

A solution looking for a problem being sold to people who don't have extra money to spend.

Good, now let it die

[penguinoid]

Internet of Things Has Reached Hype Peak

If it reached peak hype, then it can finally start dying. Good riddance.