Gartner: Internet of Things Has Reached Hype Peak 98
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.
Why did they pick such a bad buzzword? (Score:5, Funny)
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"?
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Re: Why did they pick such a bad buzzword? (Score:2)
The Many sings to us... ...even technically true with SmartTVs.
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Glory to the flesh, glory to the mass...
I can't help but think The Many are into fat chicks...
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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
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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"
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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 us
why buzzwords are bad (Score:4, Insightful)
"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
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An email? That's far too practical to be cool. This is the buzz age now. It'd have to tweet the message, or at least post it on facebook.
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lol totally showed my age there
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"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",
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Just because you don't like the name, doesn't mean it's not useful.
GP did not claim it was "not useful", he claimed it was dishonest. And it is dishonest.
"Cloud" implies a soft puffy safe thing where raindrops fall. It's precursor, "Grid", was a more accurate description, but it didn't have that soft puffy tone.
Looking at the amount of compromises of "Cloud" services anyone looking impartially should realize that it's not soft and puffy. Considering that some mega company now holds all of your applications and data, you can be at best observed and at worst ripped off by
Re: Why did they pick such a bad buzzword? (Score:2)
The smart fridge is a product we could totally do and make useful if it wasn't stupid. A grid of load cells under all the storage racks, look down cameras, laser barcode scanner. Face and height recognition to identify users.
You could build a fridge which automatically tracked contents, calorie removal, maybe some electronic noses keyed to food spoilage emissions? UV lamps to self-sterilize when closed....its a space where a lot could be accomplished.
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If you are speaking of a DIY project, that's a different analysis, and could be fun. Good luck if that is what you meant.
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Dunno about you. But mine must have skipped a bug fix or something. Because ever so often I go into the kitchen at night, open the fridge, look into it, wonder "what the hell am I doing here? I'm neither hungry nor thirsty at the moment, why did I have the urge to look into the fridge? Is it the old hunter-gatherer gene that prompts me to look at my food source location, to see if any interesting prey has shone up? This is madness!!!!", then I close it again and go back to bed.
if my mother-in-law had a smart fridge... (Score:2)
If my mother-in-law had a smart fridge...it would look at the expiration date on some of the containers and call for the paramedics instead of ordering replacement food.
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Are you my sister-in-law?
I've been trying for decades to get my mother to understand the difference between a kitchen freezer, and a cryostasis chamber...
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Wouldn't the simpler option be to educate people to not buy so much crap that they can't consume it in time? I'm always amazed to look in people's fridges and see how much stuff is just sitting there that hasn't been opened in a year. Making the fridge smarter is just masking the real issue.
comparing hypes (Score:3)
it's about whether you think "buzzword" is a good or bad thing
see, i'm with you completely on this:
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 & f
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Interesting indeed! It's almost like a puff piece for them, with an underlying message:
See how well Gartner pushed the "Internet of Things" meme! We took it from nothing to peak hype in only three years! Very efficient for your PR dollar, isn't it? You want to know the "new thing", don't you? Heck! You want to invent the "new thing"! In fact, you have a new thing you're inventing right now, don't you? Well, if we write enough reports for you, your category of new thing will be in the buzz and hype forefront
graph hacking (Score:2)
nice...sort of like 'P-hacking'
it would be great to be able to find the pattern then retroactively examine research data to see which (many probably) show evidence of graph hacking
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Actually the "Internet of Things" is a term coined in the 90s, by engineers. You know in the 90s the Internet was Kool! What begs the question, why is such an old term suddenly a buzzword.
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It's suddenly a buzzword because the start-up marketing shitheels needed a "next big thing" to peddle to the VC's.
As in, "Snowden and unreliability are killing my Cloud investments and...oh look! IoT squirrel!"
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The Chain is more appropriate.
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On another note, somewhat surprising is that Gartner says the "cloud computing" is not just hype anymore, but becoming a mainstream technology.
Wrong. It may be mainstream technology, but it's still mostly hype.
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"Why is any object we don't understand always called a thing?"
Gartner cynic here - enlighten me (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [gartner.com] 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 (Score:5, Informative)
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Gartner cynic here - enlighten me (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Agreed, they make their money evaluating how well people are doing in the overhyped buzzword sector, and making predictions which are of dubious value.
So if they have a section on overhyped buzzwords, it's pressy astounding.
To me, if Gartner is saying this, it's kind of like Bernie Madoff saying an investment is a little sketchy.
I look at 90% of what comes out
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your cynicism is justified however their raw data can be useful...esp the free raw data...it's worth a look if you think Gartner is at all influential (i couldn't say myself re: Gartner)
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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
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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 m
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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.
This is exactly the value add of Gartner. Besides their vendor ratings, hype cycles, magic quadrants, they provide a large knowledge base of best practices, studies. methodologies et cetera. Sure, Google and friends can provide tons of links, but using Gartner for specific types of queries can be more efficient.
logical inference? (Score:2)
No. Cloud computing has not gone mainstream. Cloud computing was always hype. Hosted services have been around since the beginnings of the internet. Taking the brute force approach of using VMs to make the entire "machine" highly available, as opposed to elegantly building such capability directly into ones applications, was an evolutionary change, not a revolutionary one. Calling it "the cloud" was nothing more than a way to make it sound more amazing and awesome than the same thing that was already being offered.
Hmmmmmm. So,
A. Hosted services have been around since forever. Ergo they are mainstream.
B. "The Cloud" is just another name for said services.
Ergo: "The Cloud" is mainstream.
Taking the brute force approach of using VMs to make the entire "machine" highly available, as opposed to elegantly building such capability directly into ones applications, was an evolutionary change, not a revolutionary one.
This is true, but completely irrelevant to the question of whether "The Cloud" or whatever we want to call it is mainstream or not. That is, this statement, while true, it deals solely with the process by which hosted services (or more broadly speaking, hosted capabilities) came into being. By itself, this statement does not deal wi
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Anyone want to argue against my cynicism? Are Gartner reports actually useful to some people?
Cynicism yes. But healthy skepticism is always good!
In my experience Gartner have some good people - recognised subject matter experts - and if they are working in topic areas important to you then the reports are worth it. As mentioned by others, the reports carry weight with PHBs and if you can show that Gartner agrees with what you are proposing it can be a huge help. Of course, not everybody is at that level. YMMV.
For the same reason, the Hype Cycle is useful for positioning new technologies. It's i
Re: Cloud Computing! (Score:3)
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.
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Does your cloud support push technology?
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No, it's just the name for client/server architecture, usually for bad one implemented hastily.
Gartner ain't seen nothing yet (Score:1)
It's not peak hype until it has caused a world-wide stock market crash.
No one asked the most important question! (Score:4, Insightful)
(another word that desperately needs to die.)
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Probably.
But does it blend?
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Is it immersive?
Not only immersive, but collaborative, synergistic and inherently interoperative by design, including cross platform enabling fluidity.
A truly paradigm shifting, maximal earned value, ubiquitous niche expanding concept that will allow management to independently conceptualize, initialize, and then bring to fruition - action items.
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But otherwise, very well done sir.
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Is it immersive? (another word that desperately needs to die.)
Try immersing it in water.
Whe already had words for all that (Score:1)
Cloud = thin air
IoT = thin air
Social networks = thin air
Smartphone = thin air
Tablets = thin air
Apple = thin air
Applications = thin air
At the end of the day i still use a PC behind a series of tubes and all that thin air stuff is trying to inoculate me with cancer+aids.
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Peak Hype (Score:2, Funny)
If anyone can be said to be experts on Peak Hype, Gartner certainly would be the ones.
Just like smartwatches (Score:3)
A solution looking for a problem being sold to people who don't have extra money to spend.
In other news... (Score:1)
Needs more "Magic Quadrant", or "heat map" (Score:2)
It is on a graph so it must be true!
Could you make a heat map or a spider graph to show me more??
Good, now let it die (Score:3)
Internet of Things Has Reached Hype Peak
If it reached peak hype, then it can finally start dying. Good riddance.
Where does it keep its brain? (Score:2)
The Cloud = software as a service (SaaS) = hosted services = "the network is the computer" = blah blah blah..
..it's all more or less the same decades-old idea:
"you just click buttons and pay us all the money, nevermind what's behind the curtain."
...where you trade huge amounts of control for incremental savings
"we're not sure where your data lives, so you'll just have to trust our vague compliance statement"
...with the same bad security implications:
"software vulns and compromise stats
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"Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain."
IOW, only trust people after witnessing them under brain surgery.
(Or vasectomy / cardiac surgery etc. depending on the person.)
Security (Score:2)
I *** LOVE *** connected devices. Connected to MY network and under MY control. I love to tinker and connect in and do things just to be doing things. But stuff like the NEST thermostat that cannot be controlled directly, but require me to ask PERMISSION from a central authority at Nest to control my device can stuff it. I'd love the technology but if it is in my house, no one else will have access to it.
Internet of bad ideas (Score:1)