A new survey by Current Analysis finds that security and value justification remain the biggest obstacles to IoT project deployment by enterprises. In a global survey of over 1,000 enterprises, “security concerns” ranked the #1 IoT deployment challenge, followed by proving the value of IoT projects to key stakeholders, privacy concerns and Return on Investment (RoI) justifications. While the results differed from region-to-region – the need to prove out an IoT project’s RoI, for example, was outsized in North America – the importance of security/privacy and IoT value justification versus technical or organizational issues generally held across all geographies. RoI: Are Expectations Unrealistic?
IoT project costs and RoI justification may trail security as an obstacle to deployment, but for enterprises who opted against moving forward with IoT projects, “costs” were the #1 reason, followed closely by lack of compelling use cases and security concerns. Where justifying a project will depend on RoI timescale goals, it’s telling that more than 50% of enterprises hope for a payoff in under a year. For many projects, this may well be overly optimistic or otherwise unrealistic. Encouragingly, however, nearly 70% of enterprises who had already implemented an IoT solution indicate that the project had already met their RoI expectations, regardless of the initial goals.
“The speed with which many organizations require IoT implementations to at least pay for themselves is eye-popping, but also a clear sign that IoT in the enterprise is well beyond hype and into the realm of the actual,” said Jerry Caron, Senior Vice President – Analysis. “Businesses have no patience for projects that don’t pull their weight, and clearly many believe that they are not just take a speculative gamble with their IoT plans,” added Caron.
