Intelligent connected machines and services that surround us, effectively known as the “Internet of Things”, will become a $309 billion business by 2020, new research from Gartner shows.

The Internet of Things (IoT) — or machine-to-machine (M2M) technology, as it is also known — is set to boom over this decade and will form a $300bn industry by 2020, if the analysts Gartner are to be believed.