Intelligent Decisions and Infinite Skyz just inked a partnership to offer federal agencies Internet of Things solutions. Intelligent Decisions, an Ashburn-based systems integrator, wants to get in front of what it sees as one of the hottest trends in the next 18 months. For Infinite Skyz, a startup launched in 2011, the partnership gets it in the federal space. The strategy is to first go after health care agencies. Infinite Skyz VP Elizabeth Drake says the VA would be an obvious target by being able to monitor patients in their homes. The Houston-based company developed a "black box" hardware that sits in a patient’s home and sends blood pressure and other health info to the health provider.

Intelligent Decisions sales VP Rhett Butler says the federal opportunities could include helping CDC monitor quarantined rooms, making GSA’s buildings more efficient by monitoring energy usage, and helping USPS and any agencies with vehicle fleets to cut costs by tracking mail trucks and their fuel use.  Elizabeth adds that RFID and GPS signals can be used for near field communications, so an RFID badge on a care provider could track their comings and goings, where they were in a patient’s house, and provide accountability and traceability. Cisco estimates the IoT market to hit $19T by 2020, with 50 billion objects connected to the Internet.