For almost all enterprises, the Internet of Things (IoT) is crucial to assisting digital transformation, a new report from Omdia asserts.
The analyst firm’s latest IoT Enterprise Survey suggests IoT deployments have matured within organizations, as almost three-quarters (73 percent) said they were either in full deployment, or trial/PoC stages (up four percent year-on-year).
The number of projects is also rising, as more than a third of firms now deploy at least five IoT projects, up 25 percent year-on-year. Just five percent of enterprises are now deploying single use-case projects.
Consequently, tech spend is also up. According to the same survey, almost two in five (38 percent) invested more than a million dollars this year, up from 21 percent last year. As a result, businesses are more confident. Almost half stated they were already seeing efficiency and productivity improvements, as well as improvements to worker and facility safety.
IoT seems to be playing a key role in enterprises’ sustainability targets, as energy efficiency was also improved.
Despite the positives, though, there are certain worries that persist, namely those surrounding data network and device security. Security concerns rose by 13 percent to 53 percent YoY, while data protection and governance concerns rose by almost a fifth, from 31 to 50 percent over the past year.
Lateral breaches, identity breaches, ransomware and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks were the four biggest worries for enterprises.
“While the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated almost half of all IoT projects, serious concerns around security, data privacy and governance still remain within many organizations,” said Josh Builta, Director of Research, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence at Omdia.
“Over the next year as more enterprises see first-hand the direct correlation between IoT deployment and business efficiencies we expect IoT deployments to continue to accelerate. However, it is up to the vendors to communicate how they are managing and alleviating concerns around privacy and data protection. Once the vendors manage to demonstrate this fully, we expect IoT deployments within enterprises will grow exponentially over the next few years.”
