2017 will continue to bring more complexity into the internet of things market, but companies will start to find their uniqueness.
Editor’s Note: With 2017 now upon us, RCR Wireless News has gathered predictions from across the mobile telecommunications space on what they expect to see in the new year.
The internet of things continues to prove its relevance in organizations’ digital transformation strategy. Organizations big and small invested in IoT in 2016, and are realizing opportunities by extending IoT into the field to improve operational efficiencies, enhance customer relationships and drive business growth. In the second half of 2016, big players started to recognize they don’t need to “own” every piece of an IoT solution to add value. The industry is beginning to understand that alignment is vital to relieve fragmentation.
2017 will continue to bring more complexity into the internet of things market, but companies will start to find their uniqueness. Below are five predictions for what 2017 holds for the IoT.
Measuring business impact/ROI and security fears will be the greatest inhibitors of IoT projects and solutions
Customers and end users need to see the meat behind the stated return on investment for IoT projects – moving beyond maker projects and proof-of-concepts to true business impact. Without understanding business value and potential ROI, IoT adoption will continue to be slow and uneven. Once customers understand business value from IoT, the next biggest inhibitor becomes security fears.
In 2016, we saw the largest distributed denial of service attack ever delivered by a botnet made up of IoT devices, which shut down 1,600 websites in the U.S. A month later, a major attack on Dyn lead to a massive internet outage across the U.S. and parts of Western Europe. According to analysts and industry experts, this is just the beginning.
Throughout 2017, hackers will continue to exploit IoT device vulnerabilities to launch other attacks, not just compromise devices. To help fight this battle the fractured IoT market needs to come together to develop security practices that make devices less vulnerable to attack. Enterprises need to expect enterprise grade security for their IoT networks just as they expect security for their IT networks. IT leaders need to extend their expertise to the non-IT devices found in the IoT and ensure they have the tools to continuously update and monitor security wrinkles and address vulnerabilities. Otherwise, 2017 could be known as the year of the IoT hacks.
Increased focus on use cases within verticals
A lot of the hype of the IoT comes from the consumer segments – connected baby monitors, refrigerators and toilets. Our focus has been on the enterprise and industrial applications for IoT and others are beginning to recognize that is where real value can be delivered. In 2017, the industry will continue having conversations more focused on use case development within verticals. Good examples of this approach include predictive maintenance for manufacturing equipment, energy efficiency with building automation, cold chain monitoring for transportation and connected vehicles for transportation management. By creating blueprints and solutions architectures for common use cases, we can learn from others and make progress quicker.
Open-source access and consolidation of IoT platforms
The IoT market is fractured. Currently, there are hundreds of IoT platforms, which confuses the market and slows down the process of solution development. Market consolidation is inevitable as developers and companies work through the noise and find value in those solutions that help them scale to value quickly and securely. Next year platform companies have to find their uniqueness – they will have gotten out of their system that they “own” everything and realize in order to stay relevant as the industry moves forward, they need to make progress in being different where it matters to be different.
Another factor that will further support solution development is open source efforts. Open source platforms are now at the point where they are being used in used in industrial, smart city and utility industry projects. Traditional conservative industries will continue to get more comfortable with open source throughout 2017. As open source efforts continue to mature, they will become a vital part of the IoT development process.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning will increasingly be used to mine the data coming from IoT devices
According to Forrester, there will be a greater than 300% increase in investment in artificial intelligence in 2017 compared with 2016. As IoT gets distributed across the edge and cloud, the insights will be boosted by the use of AI and containers. AI has already been making a mark through aiding real-time decision-making.
In AI’s future, developing more natural language capabilities will help to further realize the potential of a connected IoT world, as natural language-based data descriptions will provide a universal way to understand data among various types of devices. This approach will help break down the data silos among IoT types, and can be expanded to allow humans to communicate with the IoT directly through voice or text.
The expansion of AI will come with its challenges, especially culturally in the workforce. In countries where traditional industries like manufacturing dominate, like Brazil, our “Future Workforce Study” found that 41% of workers in Brazil said they worried a robot might take their job. Some companies are using the opportunity to retrain employees and teach them new skill sets. For example, data scientists will start training machines go beyond reviewing large data pools for insights and answers – helping machines to develop the knowledge to read between the layers.
Through the ability to communicate via spoken languages, the AI will be able to interpret the data differently, as it will be able to break it down more succinctly, identify and share nuances that wouldn’t otherwise be seen within a large swath of information.
IoT will drive NFV and SDN for telcos
As IoT moves from pilots into widespread deployment, telecom operators will accelerate their investment of edge computing assets to enable network functions virtualization to extend applications and analytics to the edge of the networks. This move allows service providers to interact with edge devices and previous islands of automation to offer value to enterprises with widely distributed assets. By continuing the march of software-defined networks beyond their core networks, service providers will find new sources of value to offer customers from connectivity to analytics to even full service offerings.
Do you agree with these? What other predictions do you have for the IoT in the new year?
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