New Independent Study Reveals Current State of Internet of Things (IoT) Deployment & Future Expansion across Global Fortune 2...
October 09 2018 - 8:22AM
Business Wire
New VansonBourne Survey, Sponsored by Software
AG, Finds 25% of Respondents Rank IoT as Their Most Important
Initiative But 90% Experience Barriers to Effective Implementation
and Expansion Due to Lack of Expertise, Skills
A new independent survey from VansonBourne sponsored by Software
AG (Frankfurt TecDAX: SOW) found that one in four Global Fortune
2000 enterprises rank Internet of Things (IoT) deployment as the
most important initiative in their organization yet 90% experience
barriers to effective implementation and expansion due to lack of
IoT expertise and skills in-house. The survey queried 800 senior IT
and business decision makers at organizations with a global annual
revenue of $500M and higher across 13 different countries in North
America, Europe and Asia Pacific. The respondents came from
organizations that were deploying IoT platforms and the respondents
themselves had some level of involvement and responsibility for
selecting and maintaining those solutions. Full survey results can
be found here.
98% of respondents stated that they are already generating some
level of return from their IoT investments yet 89% still believe
that they must improve their approach to IoT to further improve
ROI. Most respondents report achieving specific business benefits
from their early IoT implementations with 39% citing production
capacity increases and higher customer satisfaction and 38% making
better informed business decisions. Respondents with the highest
rate of satisfaction with their IoT deployments used a hybrid
implementation approach – namely buying an IoT platform from an
external vendor and then building upon it with customization done
in-house, giving them the flexibility, they require within the
framework of a reliable platform.
According to the survey, the biggest barrier to effective IoT
implementation is lack of internal expertise and skills according
to 31% of respondents. Other barriers include the inability to
manage and process large volumes of data (29%), integration issues
(28%), too many legacy systems (28%), inability to scale the
network to meet IoT demands (26%) and cybersecurity challenges
(25%).
The majority of respondents (93%) employed some level of hybrid
approach to IoT implementation – both buying an IoT platform from
an external vendor and then adding customization internally. When
evaluating IoT platform vendors, respondents stated that they are
looking for an innovative partner (46%), with a solution that an be
easily integrated across an entire organization (40%), with
customization that suits their specific needs (39%).
“Organizations know they cannot deliver IoT with off-the-shelf
packaged applications or with ground-up in-house builds,” said Raj
Datta, President and Chief Operating Officer, Software AG North
America. “They need to rapidly deploy IoT in way that is easy to
customize, open enough to seamlessly integrate with their existing
landscape while remaining proven, secure and robust. This points to
the need for a platform with rich functionality out-of-the-box that
still gives customers the ability to quickly create business
solutions to suit their unique needs.”
According to Datta, Global Fortune 2000 customers are on the
road to realizing this goal with IoT platforms but still need
greater collaboration with their vendor partners to really achieve
it.
Datta pointed out that 72% of survey respondents feel that their
IoT platform vendor could and should be doing more to help them.
And, they want to realize better IoT platform functionality with
49% seeing high reliability and 48% seeking enhanced security as
two key attributes they want from their external vendor IoT
platforms. Furthermore, as more organizations seek carrier-grade
IoT platforms, they will continue to depend on external vendors to
achieve that level of stealth functionality and reliability.
Most organizations are still in the early stages of their IoT
implementations which explains why 89% of survey respondents
believe that their organization needs to improve its plans for IoT.
At the same time, there is tremendous optimism and confidence
regarding how their IoT implementations can transform their
organizations and make them more competitive in the future. 98% of
respondents stated that all business processes and functions within
their organizations have been or expect to be positively impacted
by IoT. Those functions include customer service/relationships,
product/service delivery, supply chain management, marketing/sales,
product/service development, employee/HR processes, infrastructure
management, contact center/support, accounting/finance and
administration.
Regarding IoT deployment in 2019 and beyond, most organizations
are looking to deploy IoT on the edge but are struggling to do so
-- 80% of respondents want to deploy IoT on the edge but only 8%
are actually doing that today. By combining IoT and edge computing,
organizations can shift the workload of processing IoT data closer
to, or in some cases on the device itself. For example, instead of
sending all the data from a wind turbine to the cloud and
processing the data centrally, users can process data and analytics
locally and then send the results to the cloud. This reduces
network load, cloud processing and storage requirements while
making IoT in areas without reliable networks possible.
According to market research firm IDC, the IT spend on edge
infrastructure will reach up to 18% of the total spend on IoT
infrastructure by 2020. That spend is driven by the deployment of
converged IT and OT systems which reduces the time to value of data
collected from their connected devices.
The VansonBourne survey analyzes how each geography is
progressing with deploying IoT on the edge and the full report can
be found here (add link). The survey also covers the following:
- How the approach to IoT implementation
differs in each region (U.S, Canada, Germany, UK, France,
Netherlands, Nordics, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia)
- How the approach to IoT differs in key
industries (process manufacturing, discrete manufacturing,
transportation and logistics, utilities, energy and natural
resources)
- Key drivers for IoT investment
- How organizations measure ROI from
IoT
- IoT barriers and benefits
- IoT platform purchasing versus
building
- Decision making responsibility for
IoT
- Performance improvements by country and
industry sectors
- How organizations will deploy IoT in
the future
- Future plans for deploying IoT on the
edge
About Software AG
Software AG (Frankfurt TecDAX: SOW) helps companies with their
digital transformation. With Software AG’s Digital Business
Platform, companies can better interact with their customers and
bring them on new ‘digital’ journeys, promote unique value
propositions, and create new business opportunities. In the
Internet of Things (IoT) market, Software AG enables enterprises to
integrate, connect and manage IoT components as well as analyze
data and predict future events based on Artificial Intelligence
(AI). The Digital Business Platform is built on decades of
uncompromising software development, IT experience and
technological leadership. Software AG has more than 4,500
employees, is active in 70 countries and had revenues of €879
million in 2017.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181009005649/en/
Software AGLisa Coulouris,
617-413-7062Lisa.Coulouris@softwareag.comorfama PRGail Scibelli,
617-986-5019sag@famapr.com