An Amazon Echo sits on a table in New York. An IHS survey estimates that there are 20 billion connected devices globally as of this year. Will 2018 be "The Year of IoT"? Not exactly, but the future looks promising and 2018 will show a promising trajectory. Despite the huge gains in connectivity, the truth is 2018 will be more of a steady (rather than explosive) growth period for the IoT, full of fits and spasms, and everything that goes along with them.

If you're tiring of the Echo Look's AI-powered style tips, we have good news. Now, you can submit your full-body selfies to the Amazon Spark hive for feedback from real-life humans. The e-retail giant launched the camera-equipped Echo Look in June as an invite-only purchase, following it up with its Instagram-style social shopping feed, Amazon Spark, in July. Here's how it works: You snap selfies in the outfits you're planning on wearing using the Echo Look and instead of just sharing them with Amazon's algorithms (or with friends and family), you can now upload them to Amazon Spark for advice from complete strangers. After all, what could be better for your self-esteem than a bunch of randoms judging and commenting on your clothes and body?

Smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home have proved useful -- but they tend not to sound very good. Sure, they're serviceable in a pinch, and are better than most cheap Bluetooth speakers, but they don't compare to options like the entire Sonos lineup, let alone a nice set of bookshelf speakers like the Audioengine A5 . That's slowly changing, though: The Alexa-powered Sonos One speaker performs well and is affordable, while Apple's forthcoming HomePod sounded excellent in a brief demo we saw earlier this year. Google's Home Max is the company's first attempt to join the HiFi audio space -- it does everything that the smaller Home speakers do, but with significantly larger and higher-caliber components. Of course, that higher quality comes at a significantly higher price. At $399, the Home Max is more comparable with dedicated, higher-quality speakers.

Ring founder and chief executive Jamie Siminoff holds a Ring Video Doorbell, left, that has a video camera so residents can see who's knocking with a smartphone app. Ring founder and chief executive Jamie Siminoff holds a Ring Video Doorbell, left, that has a video camera so residents can see who's knocking with a smartphone app. Before you buy any "smart" gadgets, make sure they're not dumb. This holiday season, a third of Americans plan to buy a smart home device, according to the Consumer Technology Assn. The trick is figuring out which ones are worth the cost, trouble and inevitable security risks.

Today's leading technology companies are weaving their ecosystems into our homes and our lives, placing their young AIs at the center of it all.

When Amazon unveiled the Echo Show earlier this year, we questioned if we really needed an Echo with a touchscreen. Surprisingly, the display turned out to be quite useful -- it was good for video, making calls or just displaying bite-sized information. But its peculiar mall-kiosk design left a lot to be desired, especially for people thinking of putting it in a central location in their home. A few months later, however, Amazon unveiled the Echo Show's smaller, more adorable sibling: the Echo Spot. It has all the same functionality as the Show, except it's wrapped in a much cuter package.

As good as devices like the Amazon Echo have become at relaying information verbally, there are still some tasks that are better accomplished using a touchscreen. That's perhaps why Amazon in June released the $229.99 Echo Show, which includes a 7-inch touchscreen placed above a speaker. But the convenience of having a tablet-sized screen also introduced trade-offs -- the Echo Show is bulkier, pricier, and generally less attractive compared to the $99.99 cylindrical Echo. Echo Spot, Amazon hopes to solve some of those issues.

Amazon Echo Spot with Alexa has a 2.5-inch display. Were Amazon's Echo Show and Echo Dot smart speakers to make a baby, the resulting offspring would likely resemble Echo Spot. From Echo Show, this softball-sized latest speaker inherits a screen. From the Dot, the Spot gets its small size and relative cuteness (sorry, Amazon, but I don't think the Echo Show is very cute.) Of course, the voice-activated cloud-based Alexa digital assistant inside Echo Spot is passed down from both parents.

Amazon.com Inc. has triggered a race to the bottom in smart speakers. Amazon slashed prices on its new lineup of six Echo devices as part of its Black Friday promotions last month. The price drop for its entry-level Dot, to $30 from $50, helped make it the No. 1-selling product on the online retail giant's website over the Thanksgiving weekend. The new version of Amazon's original Echo speaker now sells for $100, roughly half the price of the first-generation device when it launched three years ago. That has forced rivals to react.

As a result, there is a need to change the way they operate to succeed across processes, people and systems. A sign of any good business is the provision of excellent customer service; it is vital to listen and respond to the customer's direct needs. In the field of technology, this has meant a shift change in what is delivered. Enterprise technology has drastically transformed in the last five years and will continue to do so as we enter 2018. With an increasing number of organisations adopting the likes of bots, digital assistants, IoT, artificial intelligence and machine learning in order to boost productivity amongst staff, achieving exemplary customer service in a timely manner will be a must.