Vodafone has released its IoT Barometer for 2019, its sixth. The Barometer is full of good news about IoT, but it’s hard to believe that the “1,430 qualified respondents involved in shaping their company’s IoT strategy,” surveyed did not face a few hurdles.
The Barometer is certainly a useful and valuable document that will likely boost the confidence of any organisation contemplating an IoT deployment, but I can’t help feeling it would have been more valuable if it had included some bad news highlighting the challenges faced by anyone deploying IoT at a scale sufficient to have a major impact on their business operations.
The good news
Here are some examples of the good news.
“Companies are seeing the benefits of IoT and choosing to do more with it. Almost every adopter says their projects are delivering results, and over half say that the benefits are significant. These benefits range from cost reductions to improved safety; from increased responsiveness to entirely new revenue streams.”
“…we’ve already passed the tipping point and IoT has entered the mainstream. Seventy four percent of adopters believe that within five years companies that haven’t adopted IoT will have fallen behind. For many companies, it’s no longer a case of whether or not to implement IoT, but how.”
“Thirty four percent of companies are using IoT, with over three-quarters (76 percent) of those saying that it’s mission-critical to them.”
“Ninety five percent of adopters have already seen measurable benefits from IoT. And over half say those benefits are significant.”
“Eighty four percent of adopters say their confidence in IoT has grown in the last 12 months. That’s encouraging them to do more — 83 percent of adopters say the scale of their IoT projects has grown, 80 percent have more live IoT projects, and 79 percent say they’re investing more.”
There’s plenty more, and there’s good news on even the bad news about IoT. Take security for example.
“Security isn’t seen as a major barrier by adopters — most (65 percent) say their security concerns about IoT are no worse than with other new technologies. And 75 percent believe they have adequate skills to manage IoT security. … Ninety six percent of the ‘most sophisticated’ companies are confident that their suppliers have the skills to manage IoT security risks effectively.”
The bad news
That’s not the picture you get from other sources. Here’s the first one I found from a quick search, from ZDNet.
“IoT security fears continue to grow. Tackling the problem will be the challenge across the tech industry.”
And another one, from ARN.
“Security and infrastructure delay Aussie IoT deployments.”
No hint of these hurdles in the Barometer.
And while security might be the highest profile challenge to IoT it certainly is not the only one. a recent Raconteur article identifies cost and implementation time as two major IoT challenges and says IoT challenges are numerous because of its business transformation potential.
“What binds all these different IoT challenges together is the scale of transformation IoT can have on business operations. It’s complex, costly and long term, and so requires a sometimes decades-long strategy and much expertise to make it successful. That’s where proof of concepts, trials, standards and case studies come in.”
Proceed with caution
The Barometer is a useful document, but might inspire a false sense of confidence in organisations not across all the many issues and challenges facing IoT implementations.
It closes by exhorting organisations to “Act Now”, saying:
“The impact of IoT is only going to get bigger. Organisations that don’t act soon could be left behind. But the good news is that it’s easier than ever to get started and there are benefits all along the sophistication journey. … And the latest IoT platforms are making it easier to develop new solutions and manage them from a single pane of glass. Plus, there’s a growing range of off-the-shelf IoT solutions that don’t need huge amounts of technical expertise to implement. This is giving even small organisations the confidence to get started.”
Maybe, but advice to ‘proceed with caution’ is warranted.
