July 23, 2015
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an initiative to integrate a wide variety of technical and commercial information-generating components to provide new business opportunities based upon device and system intelligence. This technology is the large-scale commercialization of technology that has been developed and proven by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the intelligence community (IC) over the past fifteen years. In much the same way that NASA and the early space program in the 1960s spurred innovations in chip technology, automation, propulsion, and miniaturization, solutions developed from the concept of network-centric operations (NCO) translate directly to the foundations of today's commercial IoT. Given that IoT concepts originated in the military/intelligence sector, does the commercialization of IoT provide new opportunities for this community itself? If so, how can vendors exploit these opportunities using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies?