Sarah Cooper has been working to advance IoT, and the world of machine-to-machine (M2M) that preceded it, for at least 13 years and she thinks the namesake for this technology is facing an imminent demise.

“I believe IoT will disappear as a term. The Internet of Things is really a snapshot in time because fundamentally everything will be connected,” Cooper, the GM of Outcome Driven Engineering at Amazon Web Services (AWS), told SDxCentral in a phone interview.

This evolution is being driven by the benefits that users and businesses enjoy from the digitization of things and the ability to reason on top of the data that these devices capture and generate, she explained.

“We don’t talk about just needing to connect things anymore,” but rather how a connected product or piece of equipment is contributing to business value, Cooper said. That is shifting the focus of conversations with enterprises to the outcomes they hope to achieve, how a suite of technologies should be packaged to facilitate that, and where those capabilities need to live, she added. 

For AWS that means determining if an enterprise’s resources for IoT should be housed in an availability zone, on site in an AWS Outpost, or on a 5G network paired with Wavelength, the cloud giant’s burgeoning edge compute service. 

“The telcos for the last couple of years saw IoT as another utility for them to sell, another kind of dial tone to a device,” Cooper said. “What we have learned is that the enabling technology, in and of itself, is a key gatekeeper but not the total solution.”

5G and mobile edge computing help to reduce the complexity and friction of the bountiful layers of technology that were previously baked into IoT, she said, adding that connectivity, device management, and security are now wrapped into a set of services that operate as features instead of separate products.

While 5G changes the dynamic for IoT by further standardizing and simplifying the experience and flow of data, it doesn’t singlehandedly overcome its foundational challenges. Mobile network operators, vendors, and device makers have been targeting the opportunity to connect anything anywhere for at least 15 years to varying levels of success. 

Many of the largest industries that are fueling growth in IoT have also tightened spending and face short-term declines amid the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic, ABI Research warned earlier this year. 

One of many roles for AWS is to synthesize data across a fragmented environment like the supply chain so it can fundamentally change the way data flows and allow logistic companies and suppliers to do predictions and recommendations based on that data, according to Cooper. 

“We bring a massive technology base and foundation into those projects. The methodology around how Amazon innovates at a product level is also helping companies who haven’t sometimes traditionally been product companies,” she said. 

“I don’t think they would disagree with me, but most of our telco partners aren’t really product companies, but that’s where they’re going with these new digital service capabilities,” Cooper added. “Now they’ve got to think holistically about product lifecycle, and their product lifecycle as it relates to their customers’ product lifecycle.”

It’s not necessarily AWS’ goal or desire to change a company’s perspective or convince it of the IoT opportunity. “We’re looking for partners who are able to see the future, the kind of ideal future and aren’t afraid to go after it. That’s a big piece of our working-backwards process,” she said. “That’s not in every company’s DNA so that’s how we focus our efforts on those first co-development pieces.”

Every industry and business, of course, has different requirements and skillsets. Some enterprises, for example, don’t need a fully packaged service, but rather a set of tools and flexibility to bring their own imagination and expertise to the project, Cooper explained. 

In some cases, this requires AWS to create specialized products or custom services through its professional services unit at AWS. “We always focus on undifferentiated heavy lifting, but there’s a recognition that that undifferentiated heavy lifting is different in different industries,” she said. 

“There’s big opportunities in nearly every industry,” Cooper said. “Digital transformation hasn’t really delivered the promise that it’s supposed to, which means there’s latent as well as new opportunities in all of these industries. I think there is a certain amount of urgency in some areas more than others,” she added, pointing to supply chains, automotive, and shared transportation services as some areas poised for near-term growth.