BUSAN ― Robert Pepper, vice president of U.S. networking firm Cisco’s global technology policy team, urged companies to stay vigilant so as not to get left behind in the Internet of Everything era.

“You have to challenge and disrupt yourself, as the technology market moves very fast and the customers are always looking for the next thing (in the IoE era),” he said. “If you don’t disrupt yourself, somebody else will disrupt you.”

He forecast that the total value of the Internet of Things would reach $19 trillion worldwide by 2020, with the private sector accounting for $14.5 trillion and the rest by the public sector.

“We are at the next big market transition, which is the IoE. We believe that over the next five years, the IoE will have a greater impact than the Internet has had,” said the vice president at a press meeting held Monday in Busan.

The number of sensors installed in digital devices across the world increased more than fivefold to 23 billion, and that of connected devices grew from 8.7 billion to 14.4 billion, according to the U.S. networking giant.

Different from ubiquitous computing, a buzzword in the tech industry around 10 years ago, the IoE is not just about things, but also about people, process, data and the things, he said.

Regarding questions about the most urgent challenges facing the IoE industry, Pepper noted that “the industry as it develops technologies has to make sure that security is built into the design at the beginning, and gives consumers the ability to control their information,”

The Cisco vice president participated in the Global ICT Premiere Forum held on the sidelines of the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference on the same day where he talked about IoE and the creative economy.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)