News flash – In USA today, a cop pulled over a driver-less car because it was driving too slow. The cop had to let it go as he did not know who or what to charge for.
Connected cars are already a reality, and in-vehicle wireless connectivity is rapidly expanding from luxury models and premium brands, to high-volume midmarket models. The increased consumption and creation of digital content within the vehicle will drive the need for more sophisticated infotainment systems, creating opportunities for application processors, graphics accelerators, displays and human-machine interface technologies. At the same time, new concepts of mobility and vehicle usage will lead to new business models and expansion of alternatives to car ownership, especially in urban environments.
Gartner forecasts that about one in five vehicles on the road worldwide will have some form of wireless network connection by 2020, amounting to more than 250 million connected vehicles.
Gartner predicts $482 billion spent on IoT services in 2020
Recently I saw an announcement of new forecast data from Gartner that predicts massive growth in the IoT world, with a hefty $482 billion being spent on IoT services in 2020. Now this growth and value is by no means unexpected, given the interest generated in both the IT and consumer technology world regarding IoT. But the challenges it can create are not always highlighted;potential threats to security and the need to handle vast amounts of data are just a few of them.
I believe that there are still too few examples of IoT being used to drive real business benefits, too many confusing and disparate technology standards, and a shortage of technical skills to work with the IoT, all of which discourages adoption and deployment.But they are being overcome gradually and in some cases ignored, as the whole momentum of IoT moves forward, taking us into this future scenario where we see IoT as being a key enabler of digital business transformation, generating tremendous value.
Gartner’s research suggests the consumer market will account for the bulk of IoT sales while the business and enterprise market will see more niche – but potentially highly lucrative – applications such as sensors to detect track trucks as an example.
You’ll tend to find most of the ‘things’ are in the consumer hands, most of the revenue opportunities are related to business and enterprises.
The research also points towards a future where the IoT matures from being low-cost technology and platforms that improve enterprise efficiency and revenue streams, into a usable ecosystem that enables businesses tap into it to become more digital and adopt service-centric models.
A significant part of this will also involve making use of the big data extracted from IoT networks, which Gartner said will need enterprises to create and consume algorithms to drive real benefits from it.
The Billion dollar question – How are business and enterprise going to handle the Tsunami known as IoT – do they have a strategy?
I believe, that the number one issue in the market today is that most businesses (small, medium, large and enterprise) have no clue of what is IoT because it is a new concept – they need to set out a clear Internet of Things (IoT) strategy before they leap into a technology trend set to hit 25-50 billion units in 2020.
Yesterday was a long day for us at MarkiTech with a webinar, panel discussion and initiating a peer group all on IoT at Techconnex. I predicted that most companies will need an IoT and Mobility Strategy to stay competitive or even survive in next 5 years – all this means that if you are business owner or decision maker is to have a clear business strategy in case you want to increase revenue, reduce cost and enhance productivity besides several other benefits that technology can bring to your door step.
Missed our webinar on IoT. No worries! You can download the pdf and recording here:
In order to overcome this significant gap in most businesses and enterprise, my key recommendation is to make IoT and Mobility a top priority in 2016 and make it real by putting together a team of people; a multi-disciplinary team made up of different people from different departments. If it’s a retail company you want someone from front and back store operations, someone from technology, somebody from accounting to bring it all together and make a SWAT IoT Strategy team.
I suggest that it should not be a big team, maybe 5-6 people, who are then tasked with identifying how the organization can use Internet of things (IoT). Now they may reach out to get advice from outside companies like MarkiTech or they can look at what other organizations are doing; they should look at totally different industries to get ideas from them as well, to eventually form a view of the different ways in which IoT could be used.
The discussions should involve whole organization, otherwise departments could go off and set up their own IoT systems that are not compatible with others in the enterprise. Having gone through that kind of a process as an operator, I know it is extremely essential to start to form a strategy for the purpose of the IoT.
Giving stories and examples of how IoT can be used, I explained how smart capabilities could be embedded into products to generate data that can then be used to deliver additional services. I gave the example of how Tesla was able to save billions of dollars with simple software upgrade over the air using IoT devices or sensors in the S series cars.
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