The Internet of Things is gaining mindshare among enterprises, with 71% of them reporting that they’re gating data for IoT initiatives today.

June 8, 2017

3 Min Read
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By Lynn Haber

The Internet of Things is gaining mindshare among enterprises with 71% of them reporting that they’re gating data for IoT initiatives today. That’s according to the latest Voice of the Enterprise: Internet of Things (IoT) Organizational Dynamics survey by 451 Research.

The firm's latest IoT research surveyed about 1,000 IT buyers worldwide and was up 3% from 451 Group’s previous IoT survey — Voice of the Enterprise: IoT Workloads and Key Projects, conducted in the previous quarter.

Among enterprise IT survey respondents with IoT initiatives on their agenda, they expect their mean IoT-related spending to grow by 33% over the next 12 months.

“When it comes to IoT adoption, pragmatism rules,” said Laura DiDio, Research Director at 451 Research and lead author of the study. “The survey data indicates enterprises currently use IoT for practical technology purposes that have an immediate and tangible impact on daily operational business efficiencies, economies of scale and increasing the revenue stream.”

The study noted that IoT deployments and usage is expected to be strong in enterprise initiatives around data and transactional intensive workload categories, such as data analytics and security. IoT-specific projects include things like data collection and analysis of financial, healthcare or industrial functions, the uptime/reliability of mission-critical lines of business servers and applications, as well as monitoring the efficiency and costs related to a specific business operation or department such as a hospital emergency room.

Additionally, there’s also a significant portion of IoT transactions occurring organically as enterprises’ IT systems, networks and infrastructures naturally become IoT-enabled by intelligent sensors and predictive analytics capabilities embedded in IT equipment, such as semiconductors, motherboards, devices, servers, applications, smart phones, switches and routers.

Some other survey highlights include:

  • 90% of enterprises will increase IoT spending over the next 12 months and 40% of respondents will raise IoT-related investment by 25-50% compared to 2016.

  • Enterprises are split regarding a present IoT skills shortage: 54% of respondents said lack of trained IoT staff is not an issue for their organization, versus 46% who said they are having difficulty filling IoT-related positions. The latter group identified IoT security and data analytics as the areas with the greatest dearth of expertise.

  • 68% of corporations currently take advantage of IoT data to optimize operations, such as performing preventative maintenance, reducing downtime in factory equipment and fleet management.
    42% of enterprises use IoT data to develop new products or enhance existing products and services.

  • Moving forward with IoT brought up some major concerns for businesses — namely, security and return on investment (ROI), the study revealed. According to the survey, 50% of respondents cited security as a top impediment to IoT deployments, followed by 41% of respondents who cited IoT’s lack of perceived ROI and benefits.

The study focuses on enterprise end-user adoption and the business and technology drivers associated with IoT and related data analytics adoption and challenges.

Based on research conducted in August through October 2016 with nearly 1,000 enterprise IT professionals worldwide, the quarterly study combines 451 Research’s analysis with survey responses and in-depth interviews from a panel of more than 48,000 senior IT buyers and enterprise technology executives.

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