Imagine coming home on a freezing cold evening, your hands are frozen and you’ve got icicles growing in your hair. Then imagine walking into your home and the lights are set to an ambient glow, your heating is blasting, and your oven is pre-heating, ready for you to put your dinner in.

You’ve done all this from your mobile, sending simple instructions through it to your appliances at home. This is the Internet of Things.

For those unfamiliar with the term, the Internet of Things refers to an expanding network of interconnected internet-enabled devices.

Cisco predicted back in 2011 that there will be 50 billion internet connected devices by the year 2020, all talking with one another on a constant basis. Right now, it seems that this figure will become a reality.

The Internet of Things will be great for consumers; however, business and government will also be greatly improved by the Internet of Things.

The main areas we will start to see the Internet of Things begin to take hold will be in buildings, the energy sector, consumer goods and services, retail, security and of course, IT networks.

Like any groundbreaking new technology, the Internet of Things has the potential to drastically improve our personal lives, our work places and our industrial efficiencies and capabilities.

At Wildfire, we can see the excitement around the endless possibilities of smart devices, and have provided PR services to companies who have already joined the smart device market. We have also heard about concerns, such as security, as more data is made available to companies.

Can your business achieve the potential of the Internet of Things? Technology is the future, after all.

“In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations.” – Neil Gross, Sociologist, 1999