Call Recording Software Featured Article

VoIP Software, Internet of Things Expected to See Explosive Growth in 2014

By Christopher Mohr, TMCnet Contributing Writer

The Internet of Things (IoT) is in a position to have a breakthrough in 2014, according to many sources following the IT industry. Advances in technology that have made high-speed Internet and sensors more affordable will combine with more everyday appliances and products being connected to the Web. As a result, there will be nearly 10 times as many devices connected to the Internet than people in the world. Cloud computing will also play a major part in the IoT boom.

All of this spells positive growth for the VoIP software market, including call recording software, as well. As Telappliant points out, the “IoT consists of various networked and wirelessly accessible devices, such as the rising numbers of one word and tablets, which makes a potential market for VoIP software.”

According to estimates by Cisco (News - Alert), 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020. Another report by Morgan Stanley places this number as high as 75 billion. With an estimated world population of nearly eight billion by 2020, there will be more than nine devices connected to the Internet for every person.

Obviously, this won’t come from everyone going to Best Buy (News - Alert) or Fry’s and loading up on smartphones and tablets. It’s going to come from an expansion of various types of sensors that are going to be connected to the Internet. Sensors in your car can text you for any number of conditions that would indicate the vehicle needs maintenance. Vibration sensors in plants can alert when a critical cooling fan is going out. Refrigerators, ovens and water heaters can also send alerts of imminent failures.

In short, anything that has normally been measured in the past by humans using instruments will instead be measured by sensors and transmitted to other machines, allowing human intervention when needed.

And on the flipside, software that communicates between devices in the contact center realm will play a role in the IoT boom. For instance, the calls received on one device can be recorded automatically by another device, on a routine basis or if triggered by certain key words or phrases. Data can be collected from calls and processed by software communicating will all of the individual phones in a contact center to glean useful and powerful knowledge about a center’s productivity, weaknesses, strong suits, demographic outreach, and more.

The growth of IoT combined with the market shifting away from desktop and laptop PCs that have their own storage will also help the cloud market grow. Information gathered from recording software, for example, can be stored in a centralized location in the cloud, making it accessible to all appropriate parties, from anywhere. The spike in IoT devices will lead to a similar spike in data being accumulated. Many IT departments will find that managing this data will be better handled through a cloud service than with housing it on their own servers.

The trend in IT has shifted so much over the years that it is hard to guess what follows the IoT revolution. It used to be that we sought better ways to network PCs and servers; now the market is moving on to more mobile devices. But the future will be more than people using mobile devices the same way they did with PCs 10 years ago. In fact, it will have less to do with people and more to do with devices that tell each other and us what’s going on out there.