Better than Christmas Day? Probably not, but World IoT Day is still going strong, as Steve Rogerson found out.

Do you know what day it is? I suspect some of you are shrugging their shoulders, muttering “Thursday” or whatever, but if you are in the IoT industry, you should know that April 9 is World IoT Day.

OK, this really shrinks into insignificance compared with all the other named days we have, and it follows a trend where just about every day has a number of claimants, but World IoT Day is a thing and has been around since 2010, according to the World IoT Day web site; yes, it has a web site, so it must be true. It’s at iotday.org.

The purpose of IoT Day has changed from letting everyone know what IoT is to looking at what we can do with the technology, and that has moved forward a lot in the past 14 years. I caught up on World IoT Eve, that was yesterday, with Tom Woodbury from MachineQ (www.machineq.com) to see what exactly has changed and whether we still need, or ever did need, a special day.

“It is pretty exciting that IoT has its own day,” he told me. “Everything else has a day. If baloney sandwiches have a day, IoT should. I made that up by the way.”

I checked with Google, and well baloney, or bologna as it should be called, does have a day – 24 October. Gosh!

Anyway, back to today. This is the day that we should celebrate everything that IoT can do for the world. But what is IoT?

“At its base level, it is when two machines talk with each other without involving a human,” said Tom. ‘But even though IoT is now everywhere, there are still a lot of people not taking advantage of the efficiencies it can bring.”

One of Tom’s main involvements at MachineQ is dealing with the food industry and he still sees restaurants and the like manually checking fridge temperatures, something that can be easily automated using IoT technology.

But what about the phrase IoT – internet of things – is that still relevant? Yes, believes Tom, but its meaning, he said, had evolved over time.

“When IoT first arrived on the scene, the concept of machines speaking with each other without human intervention was seen as really revolutionary,” he said. “Now, it’s table stakes. Today, it is less about the nature of the technology but more about how you can use it. Nobody puts in IoT for IoT’s sake. Years ago, early adopters did it because it was cool, but now they do it because it solves a problem.”

One big change in recent years has been the arrival of much more powerful AI.

“AI has made IoT more necessary,” said Tom. “For AI to be successful, it requires data streams that let it know what is happening. IoT provides a high level of confidence that what you think is happening is really happening. Getting AI and IoT working in tandem drives better results.”

Another big change has been adding more of the intelligence at the edge, but Tom sees the edge versus cloud debate as a swinging pendulum with pros and cons at both ends.

“The pendulum has swung from cloud-based everything to moving some things to the edge,” he said, “but in many cases there is a lot of benefit from keeping and processing data in the cloud. At lot of models that are run can’t happen at the edge. There are benefits from the cloud that you can’t get at the edge.”

Another change has been in the number of different ways of connecting the things that make up the IoT, with satellite communications being a big growth area in the past couple of years.

“The ability to manage all data across a common platform is where it has to go,” said Tom. “We see LoRaWan, wifi, cellular and so on all gathering data. To extract the most value from those data, you need a converged platform.”

So that is where IoT is now. Let’s use this special day to celebrate how far the industry has come and talk about where it can go.

“IoT is not a fad anymore,” said Tom. “If you want to be competitive, you need an IoT strategy. It has become essential.”

Happy World IoT Day!