by Conall Laverty, Founder & CEO, Wia
It’s 2022 and we’re only now starting to unlock the true potential of the Internet of Things. The entry to market and accessibility of the required components has been a deterrent to many businesses who whilst keen to embrace new technologies, are overwhelmed by the mammoth task that is required when deploying a new sensor based product or solution.
The IoT can be defined as a constellation of atomic sensors (“things” that do one thing very well such as monitor temperature, power, location, etc.) that are integrated and controlled over the Internet to help make lives and businesses more efficient, generate new revenue streams and to reach sustainability goals. It can be thought of as a collection of neurons that when connected together create a brain that is capable of producing datasets that can solve many of the world’s biggest challenges across any industry such as healthcare, insurance, agriculture and environment.
There are obstacles when transforming a business to utilise the IoT with key decisions having to be considered at both technical and commercial levels. Many of these issues are at the platform level, some of which include:
1. Long time-to-market
Typically it takes months, in most cases years, for an enterprise to produce a commercially ready IoT solution that they can extract value from — many don’t even reach that point. This impact on launch time puts companies at a disadvantage if a competitor is able to get its solutions out there more quickly.
2. Insufficient in-house experience
When considering to embrace the IoT, company’s have to determine their ability to design, develop, test, deploy and maintain a platform. If it’s not part of its core offering, finding the required talent and achieving a comprehensive product roadmap can be daunting.
3. Hard to secure
Meeting regulatory compliance and security requirements costs a lot of time, money and resources. Audit trails, access control, DDoS prevention and secure provisioning of devices are the fundamentals of any enterprise IoT platform — but are just the tip of the iceberg.
4. Difficult to scale
Each company adopting the IoT has to determine their willingness to provide on- going support and maintenance for the platform, meeting always changing expanding customer expectations. It’s hard to ensure a reliable, secure, scalable service with zero downtime.
In 2025, the number of IoT devices is estimated to be 75 billion (Statista) with 75% anticipated to be connected to an IoT platform (IDC). Key industries including healthcare, insurance, education, environmental and agriculture. 63% of organisations that made IoT investments think that they would obtain the expected financial returns in 3 years. (Gartner). According to an IoT Survey carried out by PwC, the biggest benefits of IoT for businesses have gained new capabilities (35%) and efficiency.
It is inevitable that every business in the world will be embracing the Internet of Things in the future. A key part of this is open eco-systems and partnerships to ensure ease of entry, reliability and flows of information through key stake holders.
To find out more about how Wia, IBM, Interxion and Sure Skills are partnering to solve this, register for the webinar on 16th June 2022 here.