Why IoT Investment Is Up, Sharing of Enterprise Data Increasing

Internet of things investments are up, resistance to its adoption is down, and a high percentage of enterprises say information from their IoT solutions is shared with their employees in real or near-real time, a new edge-computing study released Oct. 31 reports.

Rugged industrial mobile device maker and enterprise software maker Zebra Technologies revealed to eWEEKthe results of its second annual Intelligent Enterprise Index, a global survey that measures where companies are on the way to becoming  so-called “intelligent enterprises”–one defined as connecting the physical and digital worlds to improve processes through real-time guidance, data-powered environments and collaborative mobile workflows.

Key findings included the following:

• Nearly 85 percent of respondents anticipate their company’s investment in IoT and mobility to increase over the next one to two years. IoT investment is up overall; for those companies surveyed, their average annual spend on IoT is up 4 percent year-over-year. Eighty-six percent of the companies surveyed expect that number to increase in the next one to two years, with nearly half anticipating investment growth of 11 to 20 percent. As employees become more receptive to new technologies, the number of companies that expect resistance to their IoT plans moving forward has dropped from 75 percent in 2017 to 64 percent this year.

• Security is a top priority, with 57 percent of respondents reporting that their companies are constantly–versus routinely–monitoring their IoT security to ensure privacy and integrity. Seventy-three percent of respondents say information from their IoT solutions is shared with employees in real or near-real time.

• Companies are demonstrating a greater reliance on a solution ecosystem, with nearly 80 percent of companies using one or more strategic partners or third-party vendors to manage their entire IoT solution. Forty percent of the companies surveyed report using a strategic partner to manage their entire IoT solution, up from 21 percent in 2017. This dependence on third-party expertise and management of IoT processes, similar to Zebra’s Savanna platform, is a key indicator that an enterprise is committed to accelerating data intelligence and adopting IoT.

By scoring more than 75 points on the overall Index, the number of companies defined as “intelligent enterprises” doubled to 10 percent in 2018. The Index measures to what extent companies today are meeting the criteria that define today’s Intelligent Enterprise. Overall, the index reveals year-over-year growth of IoT deployment and investment, highlighting new momentum as enterprises expect less resistance to adoption and increasingly acknowledge IoT solutions as a core component for driving future growth across their organizations.

“As new technologies continue to transform the front line of business, real-time data-driven signals at the edge of operations are empowering front-line workers with the right information to optimize actions and outcomes,” said Tom Bianculli, Zebra’s Chief Technology Officer. “Based on our second annual Index, it’s clear that more companies acknowledge the value of leveraging IoT strategies, and they will continue to propel adoption and investment in the future.”

The online survey was fielded from Aug. 6 to Sept. 14, 2018 across a wide range of segments, including health care, manufacturing, retail and transportation and logistics.

In total, 918 IT decision makers from nine countries were interviewed, including the U.S., U.K./Great Britain, France, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, China, India, and Japan.

The criteria were identified by executives, industry experts and policymakers across different industries at the 2018 Strategic Innovation Symposium: The Intelligent Enterprise, hosted by Zebra in collaboration with the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard.

Zebra, based in Lincolnshire, Ill., makes software and hardware for business in retail/ecommerce, manufacturing, transportation and logistics, health care and other industries. The $3 billion company has more than 10,000 partners across 100 countries. – E Week