The Internet of Things is the practice of giving physical objects a digital presence: a sensor or actuator, a small computer, and a link to a network. Once connected, a pump, a parcel or a thermostat can report its state, receive commands and take part in software workflows that used to stop at the screen.
The value is rarely in a single device. It comes from the pipeline around it: data collected at the edge, moved through a gateway or directly to a platform, stored, analyzed and turned into an action such as an alert or a maintenance ticket. A vineyard that irrigates based on soil-moisture readings is a small IoT system; a utility reading millions of meters every day is a large one. For a longer introduction, read What is the Internet of Things?.
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