The year 2014 is when Malaysians started to Google the term “IoT” and ever since, the hype has been ups and downs. Many were very fascinated with the idea of having some form of IoT inside their organization or using in their daily lives. However, it was shortlived when the deployment of IoT is not at the fast pace as what many predicted. It has own challenges and the journey is not as easy as one would expect.

But on the positive side, we are seeing many companies, universities and individuals are now giving training and consultancies. Check out what’s happening to Malaysia in 2018.

What are we going to expect in the year 2019? Here’re my predictions:

• IoT Talents will be mushrooming. This is expected and a good sign for the industry. We will see the young generation that enters the job market will have some experience with IoT, especially during their final year projects. This brings a higher value to their potential employers.
• Enterprise IoT vs Consumer IoT. Most of the consumer IoT devices and solutions will be from overseas but there will be a lot more requests about building enterprise ioT solutions for companies.
• IoT data to the Cloud. Many will realize that there’s no use to build their own IoT platform and will be more ready to push their data the Cloud. This is a better and more cost-effective way to deploy IoT when it is on a small scale.
• Choices of IoT Middlewares. This is the main IoT component missing in the Universities when they learn IoT because most of their final year projects are stand-alone Raspberry Pi and Arduino with some sensors. When they are the industry, they will have a hard time to choose which middleware to choose.
• LPWAN Rollout. We have seen the 1st IoT network based on SigFox this year and probably see NB-IoT in 2019. It will no longer about technology but also how attractive are the price, large coverage and the matured device ecosystem.
• Top IoT applications remained unpredictable. It’s difficult to see which IoT solution will be the most popular. Although smart cities are seen to be a key enabler, we have not seen any big deployment of IoT in such initiatives yet. Government’s IoT deployment still lacking. Due to the budget constraint, many projects will be KIV unless it’s industry-driven or PPP-based. Industry 4wrd policy to drive the manufacturing sector.

Thus, we need to revisit and revive the National IoT Strategic Framework developed in 2014 to move forward. We can’t limit the growth of IoT in manufacturing only.

Malaysia can become a powerhouse again if we are able to execute all the plans that we have laid out for many years. We need to have Champions that can drive the Digital Transformation.