The Internet of things (IoT) is not just a trend being embraced by businesses, but also a crucial way to get things done, according to a survey from Aeris.
The survey, conducted in partnership with research firm Vanson Bourne, polled 300 enterprise IT decision makers from the United States and the United Kingdom in order to examine IoT’s perceived impact on the business in the year ahead.
According to the survey, nearly three-quarters of respondents (72 percent) find it difficult to analyze sensor and connectivity data to obtain useful insights, and 73 percent noted collecting, managing and storing device sensor data as a major worry.
When developing IoT applications, the survey revealed that 65 percent are building IoT and M2M apps in-house, with the U.S. (70 percent) proving more likely to take in-house, versus 55 percent of the respondents in the U.K.
“The IoT industry brings together people, process, data and machines to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before. The IoT industry is expected to reach over $10 trillion by 2022, driven by the 50+ billion devices that will be connected,” Janet Jaiswal, vice president of enterprise marketing at Aeris, told eWEEK.
She explained it would bring significant improvements in how businesses operate.
“It’s also clear that the industry hype is backed up by hard evidence of major IoT deployments across a wide range of industries, reaching into our homes, cars, offices, factories and even into our clothing and health care,” Jaiswal said.
However, businesses are experiencing some headwinds when it comes to IoT adoption. The survey revealed big data and application development are among the most significant concerns within the enterprise.
In addition, Aeris discovered 72 percent of respondents find managing connectivity to reduce costs is a major priority, and 78 percent feel connectivity, provisioning, and device management will be a challenge.
Just under three-quarters (74 percent) of respondents indicated they feel IoT provides their organizations with the opportunity to better meet key business objectives, and 71 percent agree IoT will help them achieve a competitive edge.
However, despite the consensus, U.S. executives (86 percent) were found to be more optimistic than their U.K. counterparts (51 percent), in regard to how IoT would enable them to better meet their objectives.
“In general, at present, considering that the IoT end-to-end application is in its early phases, businesses are using commercial components including connectivity platform, IoT data management platform, application development platform, analytics platform and then integrate those with their own in-house expertise or leveraging system integrators to create a complete end-to-end solution,” Jaiswal said.