Thought Leadership

The next Big Thing

Way back when I first started this blog, I wrote about the way that embedded development is subject to fads and fashions. Even though embedded developers are conservative and only adopt new technologies and ideas when they address real problems, when such adoption does occur it is always seen as a Big Thing. Every couple of years, something comes along that fits this category.

I have found it interesting to observe the arrival, the brief reign, and the descent into some level of obscurity [or normality] of numerous such technologies. What is hard [and risky] is to try to see them coming …

Crystal ball gazing is probably never wise, but I am going to put my head on the line and predict what everyone will be talking about next year at Embedded World and DESIGN West [or ESC or whatever they call it now there is no DESIGN East]. That topic is the use of the Internet by non-humans. It used to be called M2M [machine to machine], but is now normally referred to as the Internet of Things [IoT] and it also encompasses the whole Smart Energy space.

I am not saying this because of my own involvement – I recently chaired an online panel on Smart Energy – but because of what I see in the news. Here is what I picked up [from just embedded.com] over the last month alone:

Now, if that is all in the space of one month, how much more will be see before 2014 dawns?

Clearly I am not the only one who takes this view, as I observe that the media group UBM have set up a dedicated website IoT World, sponsored by Freescale.

Colin Walls

I have over thirty years experience in the electronics industry, largely dedicated to embedded software. A frequent presenter at conferences and seminars and author of numerous technical articles and two books on embedded software, I am a member of the marketing team of the Mentor Graphics Embedded Systems Division, and am based in the UK. Away from work, I have a wide range of interests including photography and trying to point my two daughters in the right direction in life. Learn more about Colin, including his go-to karaoke song and the best parts of being British: http://go.mentor.com/3_acv

More from this author

Leave a Reply

This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.stage.sw.siemens.com/embedded-software/2013/10/07/the-next-big-thing/