>> 2014 RECAP - WHAT A YEAR IT HAS BEEN

2014 was definitely the year that placed IoT as a hot-spot on the technology map.

On August 11, Gartner identified the Internet of Things had reached the peak of the hype cycle of emerging technology landscape that resonated within the technology industry with a number of new startups, standards, security concerns and early adopter consumer products - set to approach the maturity plateau within the next five to ten years.

The year has seen a number of great products introduced to the market, covering wearable technology, home automation, education, monitoring, smart cities and lifestyle - the majority via crowd funding campaigns while others compliment existing technologies on the market.

It hasn't been all positive news however - the most talked about issues in the IoT landscape have been around the lack of standards and rampant security concerns that simply have been overlooked and put in the "fix later" basket by many product manufacturers; something we know is more difficult to fix once products have already been released on the market.

We have also seen an explosion in the micro-controller and accessories market; smaller, powerful and energy efficient to fuel innovation within the space - it is no longer a hobbyist landscape where one much know how to solder electronics together; ease of programming and putting things together has been high on the list of innovation to get people on board.

2015 will be a critical year for IoT where companies will need to stop being self focused and fight each other to make "land grabs" within specific vertical markets; instead, it needs to be a year where they work together in a non-biased way to standardize how the market will evolve in the next few years - consolidation is key, but the chances of it happening are slim.

Another critical area will be security - just throwing more processing power and resources isn't going to be the solution; there is more to security than encryption and guidelines will need to be developed to deal with confidentiality, authentication, integrity and non-repudiation. In September; I participated in an online chat about IoT security hosted by Cisco on twitter.

In addition; there will need to be a mechanism in place to retrofit any existing products that will quickly become vulnerable end points to future deployments - or simply phase them into being obsolete and ready for the garbage tip as being too early, too soon; this includes the likes of successful Nest (purchased by Google) and many wearable technologies.

I am looking forward to seeing where this space moves and how it matures over time - there will be more focus on integrating technologies with end users; where the development of mobile applications will be high on the list for IoT; something the team and I at Evothings have already been developing a solution for - which has seen substantial growth in use recently.

Stay tuned for reporting on more cool things in the new year as it happens.