According to new research from DevicePilot one of the reasons some of the more ambitious predictions for the IoT have not yet come to pass is the difficulty in managing the huge number of devices involved in a successful deployment.
For its Device Management survey 2016 DevicePilot spoke to 50 companies planning to deploy IoT at scale. Just 12 percent of respondents to the survey had deployed a million or more devices, but 82 precent had only deployed 1,000 or fewer devices.
The ambition to deploy IoT at scale is clearly present, though, with 20 percent of respondents predicting they will deploy billions of devices and 70 percent predicting a market size of millions of devices.
The survey looked at companies planning to deploy IoT applications in a range of industries including environmental and industrial monitoring, elderly care/wellness, smart homes and cities, energy management, refrigeration, retail and public services.
Risk to growth hits IoT
The survey, which will be available from www.devicepilot.com ranked ‘risk to growth’ as the most worrying consequence of failing to manage devices, followed by ‘risk to revenue’ and ‘risk to brand’. Key findings include:
- 61 percent of companies anticipate 10x growth over the coming year
- 70 percent estimate their addressable market to be in the millions of devices – and 9 percent in the billons
- The most common business model is a combination of up-front fee plus ongoing service fee
- Only 18 percent of companies describe their device management as “highly automated and slick”
- The biggest perceived risk of not managing devices well is risk to the growth of the company
- 86 percent of companies say that as far as managing devices is concerned, they’re either already in trouble, or expect to be within 12 months
In presenting the survey, Pilgrim Beart, CEO at DevicePilot (formerly known as 1248) said: “It is clear that most IoT companies are currently managing their connected products manually or by a mixture of manual and automatic processes, but as projects move from pilot to deployment at scale, the time and operational cost of manually logging-in to each device to perform an upgrade or check if it is working becomes a major barrier.
“Automatic asset management, monitoring and lifetime support are essential for the long term success of the IoT.”
Peter Veash, CEO and founder at The BIO Agency told Internet of Business, “IoT requires careful planning, testing and an iterative roll-out over a number of months, if not years. It’s not something you can decide on one day and have it fully up and running the next. It’s particularly concerning to read that many companies think they’ll be in trouble with device management soon – this is something they need to get a handle on, and I would suggest working more closely with a trusted technology partner to ensure they realise the potential IoT holds for their business.”