Any IoT solution consists of the same basic building blocks.

• Applications, Analytics & Systems that provide the user experience for the connected products
• Operational Applications to remotely monitor, maintain and update deployed products
• Cloud Data Platform to securely collect, store, organize and analyze the data making it easy to build value added applications
• Connectivity allowing the deployed products secure, global network access so data can be transmitted and the product can be remotely managed
• Connected Device to collect that data from attached or nearby sensors, or other connected elements

Every IoT project should follow a set of four key best practices to achieve a successful data-driven transformation. These include:

• Build applications, not infrastructure: Businesses should stay focused on doing what they do best: building best-in-class applications and services.
• Be ready for millions of things: The IoT is growing at a rapid pace and is bringing with it more connection points every day. To be successful, an IoT platform must be capable of scaling to enable millions of points of connection.
• Select one platform for either cloud or edge: Businesses should select one platform that can distribute data processing at either the cloud level or at the edge.
• Pricing simplicity: To keep IoT costs transparent and under control, businesses should gravitate towards platforms that offer pricing models that are both simplified and predictable.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabling companies to digitalize their services, connect their products and improve their operational efficiency, but implementing IoT is very complex and has the potential to introduce new challenges:

• Unclear ROI -Difficulties in assessing deployment and maintenance costs make it hard to predict economic benefits.
• Complicated development -The cost and complexity of IoT developments can be difficult to predict and can escalate with unforeseen challenges.
• Interoperability – IoT networks often involve thousands of devices that must work together, and engineering this can be complex.
• Costly international deployment- Deploying IoT networks across different geographic regions means dealing with different connectivity service providers, which can be expensive and complex.
• Ensuring security- Companies worry about the risk of data loss, but not all IoT deployments have robust end-to-end security.
• Data privacy -If the data is sensitive and violates individuals’ privacy, companies that suffer a breach could be subject to stiff penalties.
• Unreliable service availability- Incomplete network coverage that may be acceptable for human users could lead to unsatisfactory service availability in IoT networks, because machines aren’t always in the same place as humans.
• Battery drainage -Devices must operate in the field for years at a time, making power considerations important.
• Labor intensive maintenance -Sending maintenance staff out to repair hundreds to thousands of devices in remote locations is expensive

The key-value of 5G is that it is enabling advances in increased speed (10-100X Data Rates), lower latency, higher capacity (1000X more capacity) and it is delivering real-time communication.
The initial  5G applications include automotive, mobile computing and networking, and Industrial IoT. Fleet management, freight, video surveillance, and tracking, are now using the 5G advances. As 5G solves more problems, more use cases unfold. But 5G is not a hard cut-over and is designed to coexist with 4G. Many industries will take time for technology maturity while others will utilize the new advances that 5G offers.