Enterprise IoT solutions platform PLAT.ONE has released results of a European Internet of Things industry survey.
The company, based in Palo Alto, California, conducted an Internet of Things industry survey across the continent in Q2 2016 to learn about the challenges IT and business professionals are facing with their IoT projects. Key areas of investigation included IT infrastructure, technology requirements, business challenges and state of deployment.
Some of the key findings concern IoT project type, where projects tend to be in the development process, the use of partners and the biggest challenges involved.
Connected products, transport and logistics
PLAT.ONE’s survey results highlighted that 2016/2017 will be the year many companies apply IoT technologies in new products and efforts to streamline inefficiencies. This was reflected by the fact that over half of all projects in planning are in just two sectors, ‘connected products’ and ‘transport/logistics’.
In terms of technical challenges, half of respondents across Europe claimed that dealing with connectivity issues and protocols was the single biggest obstruction. Analysis of IoT data was the second largest challenge, with 21.4 percent of the votes.
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Doubts are holding IoT projects back
Perhaps disappointingly, the vast majority of IoT projects remain in the planning stages, with funding having been committed in a small number of cases. 72% are planned, 9.1% are funded, with the rest a combination of the two. This state of affairs is reflected in the answer to the question “What is your biggest business challenge in planning and developing IoT projects?” Proving return on investment was the single biggest obstacle, as voted by 52.2% of respondents. Convincing internal stakeholders that the timing is right was ranked second with 26.1%.
Dr. John Bates, CEO of PLAT.ONE said, “We are fascinated to see that Connectivity and Protocols came out as the top technical challenge. This comes up with customers when choosing an IoT platform. The concern is here is around future proofing and support to interoperate across the myriad of legacy, new and unknown machine protocols.”
The solution, according to Bates, is “being able to ingest, combine and correlate data from any device that comes along is critical. This is not something that traditional integration vendors know how to do and requires a completely new approach for the IoT era.”
Later this month PLAT.ONE is hosting a webinar discussing “The Internet of Things and the impact of Thinganomics”. You can register you interest in attending here.