Understanding the benefits and threats when building an IoT strategy
The Internet of Things, or simply IoT as commonly known, has introduces to the market a large range of benefits to consumers, and industries besides the potential to completely change the ways that consumers and technology interact in every fundamental way. In a close future, IoT is very likely to converge both virtual and physical worlds in many different ways that are currently hard to understand. The year of 2017 will mark a great inflection point for the development and adoption of IoT Technology, once it has presented a significant move over the past 12 months. On August 2015, there was too much hype surrounding the technology, even though many speculated that the public adoption of IoT devices would still take years to happen. The chart below shows the 2015 Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, in which IoT appeared on the top peak of inflated expectations:
That same situation didn’t happen in the 2016 Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, in which, surprisingly, IoT wasn’t even mentioned. However, according to a recent research conducted by Morgan Stanley Research, around 95 percent of the industry is already preparing for a wide manufacture and introduction of IoT devices and related hardware to the market in 2017. Moreover, this same research has surveyed 117 key executive designers responsible for the engines of IoT growth in 2016 and has found that 90 percent of them are incorporating connectivity features in their new product designs. The average lead time for a new product to be released is from 12 to 18 months so, based on this data, the inflection point for IoT devices can be forecast to be on the second semester of 2017, experiencing a significant growth acceleration in early 2018, and that is not unexpected given the benefits that IoT can offer to companies. According to a study conducted by Cisco in 2016, the business benefits global executives believe IoT will positively impact within their companies include many different topics, such as operations efficiency, customer service improvement, enhance collaboration among others as shown on the chart below: Read more…
