The past week saw eight acquisitions in the IoT area, something of a record, but this looks less like a bubble, and more the sign that the era of hype is over. The pot has been taken off the boil and is now simmering away, with the largest enterprises looking at ways to improve their existing portfolios via partnership and acquisitions, rather than looking to launch into new areas from scratch. After all the hype and over-promising, investors are now asking for results – they want to know that a system can provide its promised benefit. Increasingly, this means AI-based analytics is receiving the lion’s share of attention, which ties into the traditional VC desire of a low sunk-cost software…