By now, most people have heard about the internet of things (IoT). While the term was first coined in 1999, the modern interpretation really took shape within the last decade when we began to see the promise of a world of connected “things” working together to make business and leisure more efficient, convenient, and affordable. But that’s not really what ended up happening ... yet.
The reality turned out to be far less rosy. Fragmented markets, ecosystems and organizations, security breaches and data losses, lack of skills, process and integration challenges -- all of these factors made adoption of the IoT more complex, costlier and riskier. It also took all of us significantly longer than anticipated to develop a firm understanding of these new environments, markets, technologies, what our place would be in emerging ecosystems, and how to develop repeatable models and return on investment (ROIs).
Let’s take a look at some of the key predictions we initially had for a fully connected world, the reality we are dealing with today and how businesses can best prepare for the IoT’s continued evolution.
Prediction No. 1: The IoT would be an overnight sensation
In 2011, my own company predicted that there would be 50 billion connected devices in play by 2020. Even though the IoT appeared twice on top of Gartner’s hype curve in 2014 and 2018, we still believed that the technology would move straight from the peak of inflated expectations to productivity and scale. As we get closer to the 2020 milestone, we know this prediction has fallen short. In fact, experts now suspect there will only be closer to 20 billion connected devices by that time.
Reality: Complexity and cost slowed adoption
A survey we conducted (via Gigabit) of over 1,800 business and IT leaders showed that cost and implementation duration were the main barriers preventing IoT adoption. Sales cycles for IoT devices are also taking much longer than anticipated. The addition of so many new sensors means more false positives, which require constant recalibration. And the integration into legacy infrastructures has turned out to be much more complex and time-consuming. Additionally, many of us were hopeful that simpler use cases -- like remote asset management and remote monitoring -- would be easily transferable across industries and scenarios. But in reality, the path to IoT value still requires heavy customization, even across sites and implementations within a single organization.
Prediction No. 2: Vendors thought they could go it alone
Many horizontal and vertical vendors believed they could build horizontal and vertical platforms to capture key value points from the cloud to the edge and from sensors to visualization software. I remember when vendors presented my own slides back to me espousing how they would offer end-to-end IoT capabilities singlehandedly.
Reality: The IoT requires collaboration
A decade later, the visions of generic IoT platforms have crumbled. Vendors have refocused on core capabilities and customers became the driving factor behind why and how we should develop and implement IoT solutions. Across industries, customers are pushing vertical, horizontal and regional specialists to work together. The deliverable is about the solution, and no single company can do it alone. Still, as external ecosystems expand and converge rapidly, the internal silos (e.g., IT and operational technology) remain difficult to bridge.
Prediction No. 3: IoT technology would be seamlessly interconnected
We envisioned the IoT would bring us a world where billions of devices could connect and communicate seamlessly. But bridging the gap between the digital and physical proved harder than expected. Most deployments were brownfield and required technological, architectural, and organizational integration with legacy solutions. Too many consortia were created on top of too many standards bodies already in existence, which ultimately slowed down the emergence of cross-market standards.
Reality: We need shared standards and interoperability
Customers continue driving vendor communities to coalesce on joint standards. In the industrial market, OPC/UA is emerging as a common ground to develop one set of standards. Vertical specialists started opening their architectures, too, though they’re not quite yet interoperable. But as we take two steps forward in some areas, we are also taking one step backward in others. In the cloud space, for example, incompatible silos continue to be an issue.
Prediction No. 4: Traditional security solutions would be enough
As we dreamed of a completely connected, data-centric world, we thought that we’d be able to operate and secure new IoT technology with existing OT security practices and generic IT tools with just a few customizations and tweaks.
Reality: Security needs to be the top priority
Security has turned out to be one of the greatest obstacles to widespread IoT adoption. The good news is that we’ve come to recognize an integrated architectural approach as the only viable security option. Customers want one security architecture for their enterprise: an architecture that is multi-vendor, developed jointly by the customers, horizontal security experts and vertical specialists. Leaders in this industry also need to recognize that such architectures must be flexible. For example, in some cases, malware on a robot may be benign enough to remove after scheduled maintenance, whereas in other cases, it may need to be immediately removed even if such an action causes a short line stoppage.
Great expectations elicit great challenges
Mass development, deployment and adoption of paradigm-shifting movements like the IoT are sure to continue to have growing pains. Solutions built on data collected and analyzed through IoT devices are dramatically improving operations of many companies while enabling others to create new value propositions, new services, new revenue streams and new business models. Although some of the predictions of the IoT didn’t quite pan out the way we had envisioned, businesses must take note of the realities and adjust expectations and approaches accordingly.
It’s been said that we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate its effect in the long run. This could not be truer in describing the evolution of IoT technologies, yet I remain steadfast that the future will be incredibly bright.
