Enterprise IoT to grow steadily in 2017

The study carried out by TechValidate on behalf of Red Hat follows A similar survey conducted in 2015, which found that the best way to describe enterprise IoT was “deliberate”.

The study reveals that 55% respondents tab IoT as important to their organisation, a 12% increase from 2015. While the importance of the technology is recognised, deployments among respondents remain in their early stages, with fewer than a quarter of respondents actually designing, prototyping or coding an IoT project.

In terms of the technology mix, survey respondents are overwhelmingly (89%) turning to open source for their IoT projects. Respondents also called out middleware (22%) as the most important part of the software mix in their implementations, showing just how critical these technologies are to integrating IoT with the broader business.

Beyond the technology, respondents also highlighted that partners are an important component of their IoT projects. Systems integrators (43%), IoT platform providers (43%) and communications specialists (31%) were all called out as important collaborators for successful deployments. Finally, the bulk of respondents (58%) are looking to IoT to deliver new business opportunities to their organisations, rather than improving existing processes or operations.

So what do these respondent trends potentially indicate about enterprise IoT in 2017? Red Hat believes that the predictions made in 2015 are coming true: Enterprises are deliberate in their approach to new technologies, and IoT is no different. Open source is well positioned to be the dominant technology and partners are going to be vital to project success. Finally, businesses are looking to IoT as a new revenue stream, not just as a way to cut costs or shore up their existing technologies.