The billions of connected devices and sensors that make up the Internet of Things have transformed the technology landscape and revolutionized our day-to-day lives in the process. The impact of this mega-trend on the American consumer was brought into the limelight at this week’s HP Discover event.

According to an infographic that went out on the second day of the conference, one in two Americans would rather use communications technology to interact with peers than have a face-to-face conversation. 75 percent bring their phones to the bathroom, and 57 percent encounter at least one mobile ad every day.

The same chart shows that one third of Americans use at least three devices for work-related purposes, and 91 percent of recruiters use social media to find potential candidates. Surprisingly, only 27 percent of companies block Facebook, 18 percent prevent employees from watching videos on YouTube, and a mere 17 percent deny their workers access to Twitter.

The Internet of Things has become a reality for both consumers and enterprises. Today, CIOs are in hot pursuit of technologies that can help their organizations transform growing quantities of sensory data into tangible business value. Nick Illyadis, the Chief Technology Officer of Broadcom, shared his insights into this trend in a recent interview with SiliconAngle founder John Furrier and Wikibon’s Jeff Kelly. He explained that software-defined networking and analytics are what make it all possible:
“You have this wireless infrastructure that can reach out and pull this information in, but then you need the network fabric behind it to be able to bring it to where it needs to go to be processed,” Illyadis said. “There’s also an angle that says, we want to filter how much of that data gets to the core, because a lot of it is redundant. So you want to have [an] intelligence engine.”

Click on the infographic below for full details.