10 Smart Ways IoT Gets Real for Customers
Partners have a big role advising customers on when the value of IoT implementation outweighs risk.
November 6, 2018
![IoT IoT](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blte0ae9a1c32946c3e/65245ce8c83e4167d9d8dbe2/IoT-2018.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
The complexity of planning, deploying, and managing IoT solutions is well-known. The consequences are serious — delayed time-to-market, missed revenue opportunities, competitive disadvantages, technology incompatibility, and issues surrounding customer loyalty. In fact, two-thirds of IoT initiatives never make it past proof of concept, with 60 percent of failures attributed to unforeseen issues, says Bill Kramer, executive vice president at KORE, a managed network services provider specializing in IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) learning.
Many organizations simply cannot address these challenges on their own.
In 2019, KORE expects to see “channel” become a synonym for “IoT ecosystem.” Through partnerships, businesses will derive maximum return on their IoT investments by leveraging relationships and expertise across the IoT ecosystem to bring solutions to market faster. Trusted IoT ecosystem partners will reduce friction by rapidly navigating relationships across technologies such as connectivity, devices and hardware, modules, data and application enablement to help businesses design, build, deploy and manage IoT solutions at an accelerated pace.
When it comes to IoT, no one goes it alone. In fact, partnerships are an essential resource to help propel a customer’s business forward.
“Know your strengths and then choose a partner that helps fill the gaps,” says Dell EMC’s Mullen.
IoT equals complexity, and for VARs and managed services providers (MSPs), complexity equals opportunity; in fact, expect IoT to become a services haven for MSPs.
Here’s a look at just a few areas of opportunity for VARs and MSPs, as outlined by Forrester’s Jay McBain, principal analyst, global channels:
Business consulting will be huge, as endless number of devices are connected generating mountains of disparate data. The opportunity will be twofold: within the lines of business – marketing, operations, supply chain and human resources, for example – and, with IT, who will own the security and performance of this new paradigm.
Procuring, provisioning and deploying hardware and software from more than 100,000 competing vendors, provisioning them with the right network and security protocols — and staging for deployment.
Premises monitoring or location services for businesses – banks, retailers, airlines, hotels and so on – that deploy sensors, cameras and other devices in areas where they do business with customers. Along with the location services, savvy partners will position themselves to offer sub-vertical expertise to solve line-of-business requirements.
Along the monitoring spectrum, other areas of service opportunities include product monitoring, supply chain monitoring and customer monitoring.
This is just a taste of what’s ahead for partners who are ready for this new connected world.
Many partners may have some roots in the broad scope of expertise necessary to seize the IoT opportunity — it’s probably not enough. Partners must understand the scope, specialization and depth IoT requires for the use cases headed their way. Forrester’s McBain outlines three key takeaways.
1. Analyze your own capabilities, capacity and will to change.
2. Focus marketing, sales and partner approach to the new business buyer.
3. Become more hyperspecialized, build intellectual property (IP) and your brand.
The fifth generation of wireless communications technology – 5G – will be the backbone of IoT. 5G is all about faster speeds and low-latency networks. What does this mean for businesses? According to AT&T, it’s about speed, low latency and more — it’s the ability to support the connection of many more devices, and an increase in energy efficiency of the network elements.
When talking about IoT, talking about 5G alone doesn’t go far enough — you also have to talk about low-power, narrow-band networks, also referred to as (LPWAN).
This year a number of carriers announced they’ll be launching their own LPWANs.
In June, AT&T, for example, said that next year it will launch NarrowBand Internet of Things (NB-IoT) to meet the growing needs of business customers for a wide range of IoT solutions. NB-IoT technology complements the carrier’s existing LTE-M network in the U.S. and Mexico.
AT&T’s investment in NB-IoT and LTE-M will be future-ready and is expected to become part of the industry’s massive IoT standards. Verizon also announced plans for a NB-IoT network while T-Mobile this year launched its US NB-IoT network. There are at least one-dozen carriers worldwide that also have NB-IoT on their agenda.
“There’s a part of this transformation [from currently LTE to future 5G] that’s not just about speed, but having these low power wide-area networks that are slower in speed,” said Mobeen Khan, AVP, IoT products, marketing and management, AT&T. “It’s because of the way they’re built, which allows devices that connect to the network to be able to last a long time on the battery charge, be able to communicate in harsher settings, be able to have a smaller device footprint, and be able to be lower cost than LTE devices.”
This opens the potential for a slew of use cases.
Dell Technologies Edge and IoT Solutions division was out of the gate in August with a bundled IoT announcement — IoT Solution for Surveillance. The vendor said that the bundled offer is built with best-of-breed technologies from its companies, such as VMware, Dell and Dell EMC, and also uses expertise from RSA and its open-source community.
The IoT Solution for Surveillance offer is one of the vendor’s IoT Connected Bundles. Others include:
ELM: compliance as a service for HVAC, refrigeration and power systems.
V5 Systems: self-contained and powered surveillance for safety and security in outdoor spaces.
IMS Evolve: energy savings for grocery retailers while improving food quality and safety.
Modius: advanced Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM).
Pelco: video surveillance tailored for the requirements of K-12 education.
Pixel Velocity: efficient remote monitoring of field assets in oil and gas operations.
ActionPoint: predictive maintenance in midmarket manufacturing.
Software AG: digital manufacturing intelligence suite for larger-scale operations.
Why bundled?
Engineered, or turnkey systems, remove a lot of the complex integration work while allowing partners to easily deploy and manage a hyperconverged, software-defined solution, Dell said.
IoT platforms are everywhere — literally hundreds of them. In a nutshell, an IoT platform is what allows you to connect “things” to applications.
IDC defines an IoT platform as a commercial software product that offers some combination of the following capabilities: management of IoT endpoints and connectivity; access, ingestion and processing of IoT data; visualization and analysis of IoT data; and IoT application development and integration tools.
Whether you’re an IT channel partner or a 5G or cellular channel partner, whether you’re selling telco or connectivity of any type, at some point, the end nodes have to connect to the application, Stephen DiFranco, principal, IoT Advisory Group, told attendees at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo earlier this year.
“From the platform perspective, there are tools in the data-management and device-management arenas that we can bring to bear,” said Michael Jordan, vice president national accounts at Clarify360, a digital services solution provider. “These tools allow a client to collect data, orchestrate between devices and perhaps send that data to cloud.” This is one of three areas of IoT the company assists customer with IoT challenges; the other two are connectivity and applications.
AT&T’s Mobeen Khan, AVP IoT products, marketing and management, says there are two major types of platforms: those that look down into the network and devices; the others look up to the applications.
“The southbound platforms that look down into the network, it’s about service management. The northbound platforms that look up to the applications make it easy to connect to devices and distribute data to the clouds in a more open fashion,” he explained.
In the recently published “AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) Trends Report,” an IoT exploit, or attack that takes advantage of a vulnerability, has emerged among the most-seen exploits. In a recent Gartner survey, almost 20 percent of organizations observed at least one IoT-based attack in the past three years.
No surprise that the research company predicts that IoT security spending is poised to reach $1.5 billion in 2018, up 28 percent from 2017 spending of $1.2 billion, and by 2021 security spending is forecast to reach $3.1 billion, including endpoint security, gateway security and professional services.
IoT security threats and risks are a very big deal.
“In security today, we utilize firewalls and we utilize endpoint software — we’re protecting every endpoint because that’s the logical thing to do,” said Rick Beckers, president and CEO of CloudTech1. “In reality, what we need to do, in general, for the public internet and private networks, is to protect it holistically and at multiple intervals and make it so that it’s not something that we have to install, and therefore maintain at every point of attack.”
Beckers’ contends that AI is the next wave to help solve challenges and will do it at the protocol level.
“Also, cloud security, which is also out there as a whisper in the channel,” he said, referring to the cloud having its own defense built into it.
Blockchain to rescue IoT?
The mission of the Trusted IoT Alliance, founded in 2017, is to leverage blockchain infrastructure to secure and scale IoT ecosystems.
As an early member, Cisco and others are asking just what role blockchain plays in IoT security.
“What this group is looking at is defining the solution, or at least getting some standards around, how you deliver integrity in the IoT space,” said Anoop Nannra, technology strategist at Cisco.
In a recent joint study by The Boston Consulting Group and Cisco, the findings show that IoT and blockchain use cases – of which only a small number of firms are experimenting – prove substantial advantages can be achieved in certain application areas: High trust and transparency is needed across devices managed by multiple parties; reliance by multiple stakeholders is required on a single version of the truth; device authenticity is critical to prevent the tampering of devices; and autonomous decision-making is need in a decentralized fashion.
Microsoft talks about augmented reality/mixed reality (AR/MR) changing the face of manufacturing on the plant floor, in the field and in design departments. With real-time IoT data, for example, plant workers can identify issues with a machine or process on the plant floor or help a service technician fix a piece of equipment.
Microsoft Azure IoT for manufacturing helps companies monitor manufacturing equipment, customer experience and improve field service.
Rick Beckers, president and CEO of CloudTech1, says he’s seeing use cases of VR and IoT in educational or training type scenarios.
“I’m seeing instances of virtual reality and IoT connecting to get at a piece of equipment that’s way out in the wilderness, for example. The person in the field is looking at it with a pair of goggles, and a subject-matter expert not in the field – maybe back at central headquarters – can see what’s happening with that piece equipment and advise on how to repair it,” he said.
Three key findings from an updated PTC white paper — The State of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT): There’s significant opportunity for companies looking to build IIoT capabilities into their physical products or to provide IIoT solutions to their end customers; larger companies are primarily focused on internal use of IIoT technology as they recognize the opportunity for efficiency and to optimize processes across complex value chains; and the “service” use case tends to be the primary beneficiary of a company’s IIoT offering.
At the heart of IoT is the generation of data — tons of it. This rich trove of data is both an opportunity; companies can gain tremendous insights using data analytics, and potentially a big risk factor.
IBM’s Watson IoT platform is all about delivering intelligence to maximize the data collected from IoT devices. The company refers technologies such as cloud, AI, Watson and machine learning collectively as “Putting Smart to Work.”
AWS IoT Analytics is another platform and managed service designed to operationalize analytics on massive volumes of IoT data.
In a 2017 Aberdeen Group report, “Analytics in the age of IoT: Today’s Data-Driven Competitive Edge,” the authors offered three takeaways:
1 Don’t fear your IoT data; rather, hook into IoT streams and extract valuable data insights.
2. Top companies are building maturity into the data environment, such as putting in efforts to share and socialize data across the organization in a well-governed fashion and using the right tools to integrate, normalize, prepare and model their data to better fuel analytical processes and produce actionable insights.
3. IoT-generated insights drive operational performance.
At the heart of IoT is the generation of data — tons of it. This rich trove of data is both an opportunity; companies can gain tremendous insights using data analytics, and potentially a big risk factor.
IBM’s Watson IoT platform is all about delivering intelligence to maximize the data collected from IoT devices. The company refers technologies such as cloud, AI, Watson and machine learning collectively as “Putting Smart to Work.”
AWS IoT Analytics is another platform and managed service designed to operationalize analytics on massive volumes of IoT data.
In a 2017 Aberdeen Group report, “Analytics in the age of IoT: Today’s Data-Driven Competitive Edge,” the authors offered three takeaways:
1 Don’t fear your IoT data; rather, hook into IoT streams and extract valuable data insights.
2. Top companies are building maturity into the data environment, such as putting in efforts to share and socialize data across the organization in a well-governed fashion and using the right tools to integrate, normalize, prepare and model their data to better fuel analytical processes and produce actionable insights.
3. IoT-generated insights drive operational performance.
**Editor’s Note: Throughout the fourth quarter of 2018, as part of our “In Focus” series, we will feature a series of galleries designed to help partners grow their businesses in 2019 and beyond.**
Back in 2014, the internet of things (IoT) was at the peak of inflated expectations in Gartner’s hype cycle for emerging technologies. Today, it’s the No. 1 emerging technology poised to have the greatest potential to make near-term impacts on businesses, as ranked by CompTIA’s Emerging Technology Community.
IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Internet of Things Spending Guide forecasts IoT spending to reach $1.2 trillion in 2022, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 14 percent from 2017-2022.
“The IoT market is at a turning point — projects are moving from proof of concept into commercial deployments,” said Carrie MacGillivray, group vice president, Internet of Things and mobility at IDC. “Organizations are looking to extend their investment as they scale their projects, driving spending for the hardware, software, services and connectivity required to enable IoT solutions.”
If you’re not entirely familiar with the ins and outs of IoT, for starters, it is building blocks. IoT is the internetworking of physical devices, vehicles, buildings, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity which enable these objects to collect and exchange data.
IoT has a lot of moving parts, not to mention data management and security.
What IoT is not, is a business outcome or use case — that takes innovation. IoT innovation is plentiful and is growing by leaps and bounds. IoT deployments span across industry sectors — cities and communities, manufacturing, energy, transportation, retail, education, health care, oil and gas, and agriculture.
According to IDC, the consumer sector leads IoT spending growth, followed by insurance and health-care provider industries.
Bain expects the combined markets for IoT, including hardware, software, systems integration, and data and telecom services, to reach $520 billion by 2021, more than double the $235 billion spent last year. Most of that will be captured by the enterprise and industrial segment. Every channel partner should get up to speed on IoT and the business opportunity it presents.
Even though IoT is headed toward the mainstream, it’s not without its challenges. There are still standards to be formalized — just take a look at the dizzying list in Gartner’s 2017 Hype Cycle for IoT Standards and Protocols; there are more IoT platforms than anyone knows what to do with; security risks abound at multiple levels; integration, interoperability and testing is still an issue; and what about all that data?
None of these challenges will stop IoT in its tracks; they will, however, give business decision-makers pause for thought. Channel partners have a big role to play in educating and advising their customers on IoT use cases and when the value of implementation outweighs the risks.
“IoT projects have too many moving parts and may require shifts in organizational culture and mindset and, of course, there are technical challenges as well,” said Joyce Mullen, president, global channel, OEM and IoT at Dell EMC. “Customers need a deliberate and manageable project to start with in order to succeed.”
Her advice is to start small and evolve in the interim, celebrate the incremental milestones and use those as a foundation to impact bigger change in the future. And, partners can improve their chances of success by choosing a use case with a solid ROI.
Take a stroll through our slide show for 10 smart ways IoT gets real for customers.
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