IoT adoption - how to make it faster and better
The Internet of Things has grown at a fast pace in 2016, and it shows no signs of slowing down in 2017. IDC forecasts that the worldwide market for IoT solutions will grow to over $7 trillion in the next 4 years. According to Cisco, as many as 50-billion IoT devices will be connected to the Internet in the same period. Customer adoption, however, seems to be fairly slow, as often times suffers from serious hiccups within the deployment phase. To speed adoption, some measures can be adopted:
1. A seamless ecosystem. It sounds simple enough, but it’s important to create an ecosystem that’s built on a complete and integrated platform. The platform needs to be able to support the various needs of the organization. If you have to have five or more different platforms to cover your needs, you waste time and money setting up the platform when you could have just been doing what you should be doing immediately. It’s equally important to construct a careful roadmap that takes into account regular (and frequent) maintenance of IoT needs in the present and in the future.
2. Scalability and Repetability The platform should be able to scale from the get-go. Oftentimes there are limits to range and number of devices. If the system isn’t scalable, your organization can be left with useless devices and lost money in the immediate future. Your roadmap should include a plan for the long-term: think about how you want to expand as the number of devices on the network continues to grow.
3. Proper ecosystem management. Careful examination of your network infrastructure and the components that ride on it is key. What do you need to manage? Is it your updates? Is it your configuration changes? What sort of testing and deployment workflow do you need to support? What are your auditing requirements? These are all questions you should consider when managing the ecosystem. One example: many smart devices do send alerts when there’s an issue, or reminders regarding service or updates. How quickly are these alerts actually getting to the right people in the right way?
4. Understand the data Understanding what business problems you are trying to solve with the available data. Is there too little data? Or too much? Can you trust it? Do you know how to read it, let alone use it? Data collection should be able to help you generate customized reports to track and measure success, and to identify any ‘friction’ points that may occur. The data is there to help you. Use it.
5. Never forget Security IoT requires more connected devices and more access from more people inside and outside an organization. Having a proper security protocol will help keep your organization and its customers from being up at night. Make sure that every device can leverage your existing security requirements and you can manage user access and be able to audit the changes that users make.
IoT enables users to merge the digital world with the physical to enable better user experiences. It also enables support staff to more easily manage a huge amount of equipment with the same number of people. It’s only going to continue growing and becoming more useful for our everyday lives. It’s important for organizations to ensure a thoughtful framework is in place when it comes to deployment. It’ll reap you and your organization benefits in the long-term.