IDC has predicted that the worldwide installed base of Internet of Things (IoT) endpoints will grow from 14.9 billion at the end of 2016 to more than 82 billion in 2025. But, despite the apparent forward momentum, a new study conducted by Cisco seems to indicate that 60 percent of IoT initiatives stall at the Proof of Concept (PoC) stage and only 26 percent of companies have had an IoT initiative that they considered a complete success. And in the worst-looking stat, a third of all completed projects were not considered a success.
“It's not for lack of trying,” said Rowan Trollope, SVP and GM, IoT and Applications, Cisco. “But there are plenty of things we can do to get more projects out of pilot and to complete success, and that's what we're here in London to do.”
Cisco released the findings at IoT World Forum (IoTWF), an event where Cisco convenes IoT industry leaders with the goal of accelerating IoT. The survey talked to 1,845 IT and business decision-makers in the United States, UK, and India across several industries. All respondents worked for organizations that are implementing and/or have completed IoT initiatives. All were involved in the overall strategy or direction of at least one of their organization's IoT initiatives. The goal was to gain insight into both the successes as well as the challenges that are impacting progress.
Key Findings:
1. In IoT, culture, organization, and leadership are critical factors, the study says. In fact, three of the four top reported factors behind successful IoT projects were: collaboration between IT and the business side, cited by 54 percent; a technology-focused culture, stemming from top-down leadership and executive sponsorship, called key by 49 percent; IoT expertise, whether internal or through external partnership, was selected by 48 percent.
In addition, organizations with the most successful IoT initiatives leveraged ecosystem partnerships most widely. They used partners at every phase, from strategic planning to data analytics after rollout.
2. Sixty percent of respondents said that IoT initiatives often look good on paper but prove much more difficult than anyone expected. Top five challenges across all stages of implementation: time to completion, limited internal expertise, quality of data, integration across teams, and budget overruns.
“We are seeing new IoT innovations almost every day,” said Inbar Lasser-Raab, VP, Enterprise Solutions Marketing, Cisco. “We are connecting things that we never thought would be connected, creating incredible new value to industries. But where we see most of the opportunity, is where we partner with other vendors and create solutions that are not only connected but also share data. That shared data is the basis of a network of industries – sharing of insights to make tremendous gains for business and society, because no one company can solve this alone.”
3. Seventy-three percent of all participants are using data from IoT completed projects to improve their business. Globally, the top three benefits of IoT include improved customer satisfaction, operational efficiencies, and improved product or service quality.
4. IoT projects led to unexpected benefits: 64 percent agreed that learning from stalled or failed IoT initiatives have helped accelerate their organization's investment in IoT.
Edited by
Alicia Young
