Guest editorial

摘要

The IoT is a disruptive technology increasingly influencing the daily life, the business world and even the global economy. In a nutshell, the IoT can be considered a family of technologies whose purpose is to make any type of object, even without a digital "nature", a device connected to the internet, likely to take advantage of all the features owned by the objects born to use the network, like the functionality for monitoring and control. Then, monitoring means that the objects can behave as sensors, likely to produce information about themselves or the surrounding environment. Control, means that the objects can be controlled remotely without particular technologies but simply through the internet. In the industrial field, the IoT is generally associated with the concept of Industry 4.0, which sees the IoT application in a context of intelligent machines, interconnected devices and people. Within this development, modern enterprises become progressively more intelligent as the components of the production lines grow more interconnected, thus opening the way to new forms of business. The development of IoT, likely to generate higher economic value, goes actually through two types of opportunities: first, the opportunities related to the transformation processes, such as the use of resources or predictive maintenance; and then, the opportunities related to new business models or services, such as the use of goods or services on consumption, rather than their acquisition as fixed capital. The value of these opportunities can be easily estimated at over ten billion euros in 2015. The contexts of application of IoT technologies are currently various. Those who conceivably generate greater economic activity and value are the so-called "places for repetitive tasks", such as cities and logistics. Other fields, can be recognized in the health and safety sectors, areas that become a domain of major economic and social interest. Beyond the attention the IoT applications are receiving for consumers and end users (such as the monitoring of personal health, fitness devices or automation), it is reasonable to expect that most of the value materializes in B2B, especially in the manufacture, distribution, infrastructure management and resources. Finally it results in new consumer products and services available to citizens, but the justification of investment in IoT are found mainly in the industrial environment.