IoT And The 5 Main Industries It’s Impacting

IoT is one of the big things in the IT industry at the moment. An Aruba-sponsored study called “The Internet of Things: Today and Tomorrow” surveyed 3,100 businesses/IT decision makers from across 20 countries and the findings are interesting. For a comprehensive read, you can find the full study here.

IoT as defined by Kevin Ashton, who coined the name, defines it like this: “The Internet of Things means sensors connected to the Internet and behaving in an Internet-like way: making open, ad-hoc connections, sharing data freely, allowing unexpected applications, and creating a nervous system for the planet that enables computers to understand the things in the world around them.”

With more and more businesses jumping aboard the IoT train, the survey found that only 16% of leaders predicted a large profit gain from IoT, however after adoption, 32% of business leaders saw the increases.

The issue is that a lot of IT decision makers and leaders don’t fully comprehend IoT and the impact it could have on their business; what the ROI could be, how they can benefit, how their business can be transformed, and the risks.

As with any new technology, early expectations always look to far more than what’s achievable, however the study found that currently, the Internet of Things is having a massive impact on these five industries:

Healthcare

Six in ten healthcare organisations are already using IoT. For this industry, the biggest benefit comes from using sensors to monitor and maintain medical devices. Out of all the healthcare organisations surveyed, 73% said that there were significant cost saving due to IoT and 80% said that there has been an increase in innovation since using IoT.

Enterprise

72% have introduced IoT devices and sensors into the workplace (56% air conditioning and lighting, 51% personal mobile devices). The main reasons for this were remote monitoring of utilities and energy usage. This is helping enterprise organisations build smart workplaces, with 78% saying that introducing IoT at work has improved effectiveness, while 75% said it brought forth an increase in profitability.

Industrial

The main aim of the industrial sector is reducing risk and downtime with IoT. It’s got a 62% adoption rate and leaders in the industry said that they use devices such as chemical sensors (62%) and picking systems (46%) to achieve this. Those who’ve adopted IoT said that they’ve seen a tangible increase in efficiency (83%), innovation (83%) and visibility (80%). Out of everyone surveyed, 40% predict that IoT will help them expand into new markets and 34% are hoping for industry growth.

Retail

For retailers, the main focus is enhancing the customer experience. 49% of global retailers have deployed IoT technology and 56% are allowing personal mobiles to access the network in order to create an even more engaging experience. 30% use IoT to create store location services that allow for personalised offers and product information, while 18% use IoT remotely to control factors such as lighting and heating. 81% say that IoT have improved the overall customer experience and 88% say it has boosted efficiency.

Government

Governments are using IoT to save costs and create smart cities, but at 42% they’re further behind in the adoption of IoT. 35% of IT decision makers have said that leaders have almost no understanding of it (double that of the global average). However, 57% are connecting building security systems, 32% street lights, 20% vehicles to build a coherent environment for the smart city of the future. One of the main issues encountered is integrating older technology into systems (49%). Although there are lower IoT adoption rates in this area, 71% of those who have are reporting cost savings and another 70% said that it improved visibility across the organisation.

While it’s clear that the Internet of Things is gaining more ground across several industries and with 98% of organisations that have adopted IoT claiming to be able analyse data, there’s another statistic that shows there’s a lot of room for improvement. 97% of the same organisations stated that they don’t extract and analyse data in their corporate networks in order to use them to improve business insights and decisions. A further 84% also talked of an IoT security breach.

There’s still a long way to go with the Internet of Things, however it is the new frontier in technology in both risks and opportunity. It’s clear that those who will step up their game and take advantage of this new technology will be at a substantial competitive advantage!

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