Is IoT finally here? (CES 2015)

DSR has been a regular attendee and a recent exhibitor at CES. Every year there is a little bit of a familiar and a lot of new. With 170,000 attendees and thousands of innovative products in every possible market segment now or soon to be available for end user consumption, CES draws consumers and customers from around the globe. The world continues to evolve and CES highlights creative implementation of technology.

The general CES highlights included innovations in a variety of areas, from curved TVs to personal transporters to innovative wearables, CES was a sight to behold and spoke to every interest and gadget category imaginable. Check out Mashable's Best of CES 2015 picks for additional highlights.

DSR was representing in the Sands Expo and it was all about IoT (Internet of Things). IoT market has been steadily growing every year and each year promising to be bigger than its predecessors. This year, the IoT (Internet of Things) market was very much on display. Lowes and Bosch were two companies with large full home automation solutions demonstrating the many advantages of the automated home.

Other IoT solution providers, including DSR, were showi ng the wide range of device (Gateway and Sensor) interoperability. DSR is a ZigBee Alliance member and had our demo set up at the ZigBee booth along with other alliance members.

Traffic was heavy and constant in the ZigBee area all four days of the show and we feel that ZigBee is continuing to pique interest and gain traction amongst wireless protocols and overall HA industry.

We observed the following general trends in the IoT area that will shape the market for the next several years:

• There is a general consensus that IoT is finally mature enough to truly “take off.” The trend that was long time coming and brewing may finally be here and it is noticeable by the expanded interest from both the consumer and business sides.
• There were more parties interested in commercial applications (lighting and elevators) than previous years, which is another indicator of the market growing up quickly.
• In contrast to commercial applications that tend to be larger complex deployments, home owners are looking for small, easy to use full featured solutions. The emphasis in this area is really on the ease of use. This will be the deciding factor of why some solutions succeed and others fail.
• With people really getting serious about deploying solutions, security is now a common question to address.
• There is still concern and confusion related to the various IoT standards (ZWave, AllJoin, Home Kit and ZigBee).   People stated it was like the old VHS vs. Beta debate from the past.
• Some of the common questions that we received at our booth were around the size of the ZigBee stack, number of devices (sensors) and their connectivity range both indoors and outdoors, cost and scalability of DSR IoT cloud, and consumer-facing mobile apps.

Overall, the show reinforced the decision made five years ago by DSR to be part of the IoT market and we are excited about IoT market growth and the opportunity to bring innovative products to market and put the control at homeowner’s fingertips.

DSR is truly a one-stop-shop in the IoT area with solutions for operators/service providers, for access point set-top-box manufacturers, IoT cloud platform vendors, or anyone looking for a complete IoT solution including hardware and software components. Contact us to learn more!