Intel hails the possibilities of the Internet of Things

Intel claims the Internet of Things (IoT) is already transforming the business models of companies across the globe, and has urged end users not to be put off by the hype around the trend.

The chipmaker announced the creation of a new business division earlier this week to tap into the burgeoning IoT market, and fleshed out its plans at an event in central London today.

From a hardware standpoint, the firm said its IoT strategy largely centres on the release of its Atom processor E3800 and Quark SoC X1000 processor families, which will be used in "gateway" devices between IoT sensors and data analysis systems.

Speaking at the event, Kumar Balasubramanian, general manager of Intel's new Internet of Things Solutions Group, told attendees the IoT trend has been around for nearly a decade.

"Most of the interesting evolutions that happen in the industry generally proceed with a lot of hype and the reality follows. But...when you look at IoT, I feel there is a lot of actual reality that's coming along at some very good pace...so it's not just hype," said Balasurbramanian.

"If you look at some of the interesting innovations and usages...these are actually things that are happening today in the real world where people are coming up with smart innovative usages. These are real deployments happening as we speak."

To back up this point, several examples of IoT in action were trotted out by the presenters during the event, including Costa Coffee's "five senses" vending machine.

The device uses sensors to determine the age and sex of the person buying a hot drink and combines this data with their choice of beverage to ascertain demand for certain products.

Rod O'Shea, director of the Intelligent Systems Group at Intel, said the setup can help the company figure out it if would be worthwhile to open a store in certain locations in a lower cost way.

"There are telematics that connect this back into a cloud service, so every transaction is logged and a real-time replenishment [takes place]... and Intel analytics capabilities enable the offer to be changed at any time depending on who is standing in front of the machine," he explained.

"This is a great example of the way internet of things starts to change business models because the challenge the Whitbread group was facing was, where do I start expanding my stores?'

"This can be 100,000 of pounds or Euros to set up, so you can put an intelligent vending machine in place to start gathering consumer data and really understand the dynamics of the market," O'Shea added.

Other examples lauded at the event include the addition of internet-enabled technologies in BMW cars, and the use of outside temperature sensors to regulate the output of air conditioning units.