In the business world, seldom do you find widespread agreement on any topic. However, everyone seems to know that the Internet of Things is important and getting more so - especially in the ways that organizations handle transportation and logistics.

Today's supply chains form the arteries and veins that keep global trade alive, connecting a largely borderless, always-on world economy. New innovations offer disruptive possibilities for the future of global trade. It's easy to hypothesize that Star Trek-style teleportation, drones, 3-D printing, and space logistics, will change trading. But the biggest shift to the supply chain will see it digitally connected and becoming part of the Internet of Things.

Worldwide public Wi-Fi hotspot deployments reached a total of 5.69 million in 2014, and will grow at a CAGR of 11.2 percent between 2015 and 2020. This includes public Wi-Fi hotspots deployed by mobile and fixed-line carriers as well as third-party Wi-Fi service providers. ABI Research expects the number of worldwide carrier Wi-Fi hotspots will reach 13.3 million in 2020.

The share of stand-alone Bluetooth ICs will be about 40 percent by the end of 2014, down from 42 percent in 2013, and by the end of 2019 that share will remain at 40 percent.

Are we to add the Internet of Things to the pantheon of top strategic technology priorities for the decade? That's the question increasingly in front of IT decision makers these days as tech vendors add the buzzphrase to their marketing and practitioners evaluate the rapidly growing array of related tools and technologies.

ABI Research forecasts that revenues from maintenance analytics will total $9.1bn this year. Following a CAGR of 22 percent, the market’s size will reach $24.7bn in 2019, driven largely by adoption of predictive analytics and M2M connectivity.