Enterprise's Approach to the Internet of Things

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Enterprises are subscribing to a slow-and-steady strategy when it comes to incorporating Internet of Things IoT technologies into their environments, finds a new study from open-source software maker Red Hat.

Conducted by TechValidate, the report found that only 12 percent of organizations – the companies polled 565 enterprise IT decision makers in total – were currently rolling out an IoT solution. It might not seem like much, given the hype surrounding IoT and its related technologies, but Red Hat believes that it’s an encouraging sign.

“Far from being a negative, this mirrors the typical enterprise adoption of new technologies, with project roll-outs often taking far longer than they may in smaller organizations or in the consumer world,” wrote Red Hat’s IoT Team in the company’s official blog. “This timeline can sometimes be sped up with the right technology, as IT decision-makers and buyers will often hold on project implementations until they know for sure that a given product will meet their needs, both for the short term and the future; IoT is no different.”

Essentially, as history has proven with other game-changing technologies, low adoption at this early stage is par for the course. “So much like every other significant technology decision, enterprises are being deliberate when it comes to implementing IoT solutions,” stated Red Hat.

Things may be simmering now, but the IoT market is expected to boil over during the next few years. IDC recently forecast that the IoT solutions and services market would balloon to $1.7 trillion by 2020, compared to the $655.8 billion the IT industry raked in last year.

Although IoT adoption among businesses may seem tepid at the moment, interest is relatively high.

Forty-three percent of respondents said IoT was “immediately important” to their organizations. Another 46 percent reported evaluating, prototyping or otherwise exploring how to integrate IoT technologies into their environments.

IT departments are particularly bullish about adding IoT solutions to their work day. Sixty-five percent of those surveyed said they expect operations improvements while 51 percent expect the tech to help optimize their processes.

Of course, the open source community is expected to help guide the IoT’s evolution.

“As for technology drivers behind IoT, it’s no surprise that open source is the workhorse of choice among survey respondents,” stated the company. “[Eighty-six] percent of respondents pointed out that open source would play a role in their IoT projects, falling in line with open source’s history of being a catalyst for enterprise innovation, from cloud computing to containers.”

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

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