Lack of the right skills in IT departments could stymie uptake of IoT by Australian enterprises, IT performance management company, SolarWinds, concludes after surveying 200 Australian IT decision makers.
“The survey … highlights concern over a lack of IT skills, security issues and growing network complexity as the key challenges for organisations looking to adopt IoT technology in the next three to five years,” SolarWinds said. “While nearly 60 percent of respondents said that more or different IT skills would be required as devices and robots become more intelligent, 73 percent feel the workforce is currently ill-equipped.”
A shortage of skills was also named as the top barrier to the uptake of IoT technologies (30 percent), with 44 percent of respondents saying that staying current with technology was the number one challenge impacting their work in the next three to five years.
Respondents also cited maintaining security (42 percent) and growing network complexity (38 percent) among the challenges that would most impact their work in the next three to five years. Nearly 80 percent of respondents from organisations with 200 or more employees feel that IoT will make their network management more complex.
Respondents also named network performance to support a growing number of clients and faster internet speeds among their top concerns around IoT. “With nearly half of Australian IT departments already spending more than 10 hours a month on managing IP addresses (47 percent), the findings suggest more needs to be done to prepare the Australian IT workforce to meet the demands on the IT department accelerated by the IoT,” SolarWinds said.
IoT opportunities identified
On a more positive note, IT decision makers also highlighted several opportunities driven by the IoT including, improved capabilities for remote maintenance (39 percent), security management (32 percent) and the ability to offer high-margin personalised services (27 percent) to stakeholders.
SolarWinds’ CIO/CTO, Joel Dolisy, said: “While there is widespread consensus about the transformative potential of the IoT, most organisations are not doing enough to prepare. Businesses need to be ready for more acceleration in additional users and Internet-enabled devices connected to the network as well as the resulting deluge of data and increased demands on bandwidth, security systems, storage, and application performance. By ensuring their IT departments are ready to meet these demands, organisations can usher in new levels of efficiency, productivity and convenience for employees and customers.”
