The Internet of Things has been a much-hyped technology for years, but the pandemic and its associated wave of remote working have pushed its actual use in enterprises into overdrive. What’s more, the Internet of Things is maturing as vendors start selling fully functional applications, rather than just the components businesses need to build their own.
The pandemic has fueled dramatic growth in the types of technologies for which IoT is already well-known, including predictive maintenance in industry and the automation of ports and other transportation facilities. In these areas, IoT limits the time workers spend in the field because remote monitoring systems do not require in-person maintenance as often as they would otherwise. Certain functions, including certain types of inspections and repairs, can be handled completely remotely, further reducing the time workers spend on site and in close proximity to each other.
Commercial IoT Applications
Al Velosa, vice president and analyst at Gartner, said the next big shift in IoT is away from plain old connectivity, where hardware vendors just sell a way to get data from on-site assets into the cloud, and toward Fully integrated application.
“What’s really going to be of interest in 2021 and what I think will be a major trend is more closed business applications,” he said. “We’ve seen a lot of companies roll out strategies that ban them from selling IoT platforms themselves. They’re now selling apps and IoT.”
Velosa said this is essentially a shift from selling components to finished products, a sign of the growing maturity of the IoT market. In the past, companies like Sigfox might have sold network connectivity to businesses that already had the endpoints to connect to and the cloud backend to use. Now, GE, Siemens and others are selling their operations technology as an integrated service. This isn’t the end of the world for independent vendors, it just means they may sell their products or services to other vendors rather than businesses.
Not only that, but integrated applications are being sold and deployed at scale, rather than in piecemeal and test cases as they were in the past, said Michele Pelino, principal analyst at Forrester. “These IoT initiatives are becoming more real in a broader sense,” she said. “The key now is that those initiatives that are important to your organization — security, scalability — have to be addressed as they become more diverse.”
Security Question
Velosa said the growing focus on IoT is reflected in spending. A recent Gartner survey of IT decision-makers on emerging technologies found that average funding for IoT will increase from approximately $400,000 per organization over the past 12 months to $600,000 in 2022.
Security remains a challenge, largely because IoT requires security at multiple levels—endpoint, network, and cloud. Attacks on devices continue to evolve rapidly in 2021 and show no signs of slowing down. Because these different types of security responsibilities fall on different stakeholders—network vendors are responsible for secure connectivity, device vendors are responsible for physical security, and cloud providers are responsible for the backend—there is a collective action problem.
“Organizations place a strong emphasis on enabling security at multiple levels,” Velosa said. “Unfortunately, we also see ongoing issues with how these organizations actively fund this effort.”
These concerns are likely to grow larger in the near future as wider IoT deployments—and deployments in more sensitive environments—take shape.
“When you start dismantling critical infrastructure that connects the world, you potentially impact millions of lives or critical resources and revenue,” Pellino said.
A sustainable IoT future
The Internet of Things also holds promise for the future, Pelino said. One of the key drivers of recent IoT spending is sustainability, thanks at least in part to increased regulatory requirements across many industries.
There are many ways IoT technology can do this, from building maintenance systems that ensure lights go out in unoccupied rooms to industrial facilities that monitor excessive electricity usage or toxic emissions.
“IoT… is about connecting these processes and leveraging insights in real time to contribute by ensuring sustainability is addressed in real time,” Pellino said.