A new survey by Machina Research shows acceleration in the pace of adoption of IoT by US companies, as they increasingly recognise the commercial benefits associated with implementation. This growing importance is also having a knock-on effect on budgets, with IoT increasingly setting the agenda for IT.
Machina Research, the world’s leading provider of IoT market research and advisory services, today announced the results of its latest enterprise survey, which focuses on adoption trends and dynamics for US companies implementing IoT solutions. The study, conducted in July 2016, reveals a growing and complex market for enterprise IoT solutions.
The results show that 38% of US companies are actively using IoT solutions today, predominantly for reasons of competitive advantage, and 81% of will have deployed by end 2018. As IoT projects gain strategic weight, spending on solutions will quickly grow, comprising 43% of IT budgets by 2020. The quick pace of enterprise IoT implementations coincides with a growing acceptance that data generated from connected things has strategic value in many aspects of the enterprise including product development, customer service, operations, and finance, among others.
IoT still broadly sits within the remit of IT, with all the associated issues. IT executives are typically those responsible for leading IoT strategy decisions (at 54% of companies) and implementation (at 61% of companies). As a result it is unsurprising that 70% of short-term IoT investment will address the complexities of integrating IoT solutions with legacy operational, resource management, and CRM systems.
While most companies report that IoT solution development is internally led, 48% of companies look to systems integrators and software platform companies as trusted partners in the design and execution of the projects. This underscores one of the key concerns that companies have about IoT projects: complexity of implementation. While security remains the top enterprise concern about adopting IoT solutions, the complexities of integration and implementation represent key challenges to the IoT adoption process, which is further complicated by a highly fragmented ecosystem of solution vendors and relevant technologies.
Despite the common challenges of IoT solution implementation, the survey confirms that enterprises increasingly view IoT solutions and the associated data as crucial tools to understand product performance, gain insights into customer usage behaviour, and provide both product development and customer service organizations with important, data-driven feedback that can drive further improvements in product design and customer engagement. While just 15% of companies currently leverage IoT data in this manner, a full 69% of participating companies report that they have plans to develop this kind of data reporting mechanisms for their products and systems, underscoring the value of IoT-generated data in their businesses.
The Machina Research Enterprise IoT Survey 2016 Report is based on interviews with 420 US-based business decision makers. It was designed to measure US companies’ use and planned use of the Internet of Things (IoT) to optimize their business operations or to build intelligent, Internet connected products. All of the survey participants are in top positions including C-suite level executives, vice presidents and directors. Using a detailed on-line survey methodology, the survey was conducted with programming and execution support from Market Knowledge Online. The survey included a wide range of companies and organizations from multiple vertical segments including manufacturing, technology, finance, retail, health and professional services, among others. Qualified respondents had to be director level or higher working in relevant business functions and be employed in companies with greater than USD10 million in annual revenue.
For further information on the report, including pricing information, please contact info@machinaresearch.com
