IoT Adoption Drag

IoT Makes Slow Progress

Despite all the hype and general acceptance of its possibilities, IoT is making slow inroads into enterprises and can still be regarded as being in the early period of adoption in many businesses.

I have talked about CxO behaviour and culture in previous blogs as well as security and other issues, so what is holding IoT back?

Business Leader Perspective on IoT Adoption

A recent survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (sponsored by IBM and ARM) involving over 800 executives around the world looked into the issue. This suggested that fewer than 10% had extensive IoT implementations, although many had dipped their toes in the water.

More positively, around 25% stated that IoT adoption was sparking innovation within their organisations with 22% indicating that IoT offered new opportunities, 20% saying it was changing business models and 16% believing that it was enabling entry into new markets and initiatives. So the overall picture is quite positive about its transformational potential.

Only 15% believed that IoT would significantly reduce costs, suggesting that IoT adoption is more about re-imagining their businesses than old fashioned cost cutting.

Interestingly enough, few executives saw technical issues as blockers to adoption. The key constraints cited were the Size of Investment needed (29%), Security and Privacy concerns  (26%) and lack of CxO Knowledge and Commitment (23%). 

This points to a smoking gun around Cost and Executive Behaviour / Team Buy In.

IT Leader Perspectives

Interestingly enough the British Computer Society's (BCS's) survey on Digital Leadership shows some mismatches.

Over the last 4 years the principle concern of IT Leaders in the Digital Space has been Security (averaging 60% of responses, plus or minus 2% over this period). The second most important concern has been Cloud (at 50%). In the last 2 years, Governance has moved into third place at 35% followed by Agile and Big Data at around 25-30% each. IoT was only cited by respondents as a major interest by 18%. Although Cloud, Agile and to some extent Big Data are involved in IoT adoption.

This suggests 2 things. Business Executives are over confident about implementation issues and that IT Leaders have a mismatch in alignment and understanding with business aspirations.

IoT Success Factors

So it appears that CxOs need to get together and agree a common vision and set of priorities. IT Leaders need to build IoT into their plans and there is a need for education and collaboration to get a coherent approach in place.