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Report: Data Management is Key to a Successful IoT Initiative

Businesses are looking for edge and cloud capabilities and pattern-recognition analytics.

Written By

Feb 27, 2017

Enterprise companies are making more and more room for Internet of Things infrastructure spending in their IT budgets, according to a new survey by IDC. The company’s IoT IT Infrastructure Survey also found that IoT data management, the creation of new networking elements, and improved business offerings are key to a successful IoT initiative.

The IoT IT Infrastructure Survey polled more than 500 enterprises across 15 industry verticals and examined their current and future plans for IT end users in relation to IoT infrastructure. It also provides analysis on their IoT knowledge, deployment strategy over the next 24 months, and which vendors are the most suitable to influence their initiatives.

“Given the strong uptake in IoT based technology solutions, enterprise IT buyers are looking for vendors who can add IoT capabilities to the current networking and edge IT infrastructure,” said Sathya Atreyam, an IDC research manager. “Further, success of IoT initiatives will also depend on how IT buyers can effectively leverage newer frameworks of low power connectivity mechanisms, network virtualization, data analytics at the edge, and cloud-based platforms.”

Other key findings from the report include:

The three top verticals actively deploying IoT solutions and infrastructure are construction, manufacturing and high tech. IoT projects tend to focus on automation, which companies are using to increase productivity and reduce downtime.
The creation of new networking elements that can address the requirements of IoT traffic behavior is expected to rise in demand as the IoT becomes more and more ingrained in the enterprise. WiFi and Bluetooth are the most preferred connectivity tools but narrow-band IoT and long-range, wide-area networks are gearing up to be tough competition.
Key factors in the vendor selection process include pattern-recognition capabilities at the point of data creation and data analytics. The survey predicts that there will be a notable shift toward edge server deployments and increased adoption of public cloud-based IoT services.

“The survey revealed that IoT will have significant impact on end users’ decisions and strategies related to IT infrastructure across all three major technology domains: networking, software, and storage,” said Natalya Yezhkova, an IDC research director. “Increase in budgets, broader adoption of public cloud, and open source solutions are the most anticipated results of IoT initiatives.”