HPE's Aruba: More Industries Exploring IoT, Realizing Benefits

The Internet of Things (IoT) has real momentum with business adoption of IoT expected to reach 85 percent by 2019 – up from 57 percent currently.

That’s according to a global study released on Tuesday by Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) company. But that’s not all. “The Internet of Things: Today and Tomorrow” report delves into specifics such as IoT by industry, prevalent use cases and the benefits realized based on the use cases with industries.

The research is based on 3,100 line-of-business (LOB) and IT professional respondents from 20 countries. Company size was 500+ employees, or midsize to large enterprises. Industry sectors in the report include: health care, retail, industrial/manufacturing, smart building and smart city.

While companies across these industries aren’t timid about venturing into IoT and report better-than-expected benefits from IoT initiatives, or an average of 11 percent disparity between actual benefits gained (as per two key performance indicators: business efficiency and profitability) versus originally expectations globally, there’s also a good amount of fumbling around in the dark, or lack of understanding exactly what IoT means to their business, and a healthy amount of “security insecurity” — as 84 percent of respondents admitted to experiencing IoT-related security breaches.

Before delving into the report findings, it’s important to focus on what the Aruba study results mean to partners.

“I view this as that first step that a partner would take to see that IoT opportunity is real and that they need to understand which areas of opportunity are going to be most impactful to their business — looking at industries, solutions and use cases,” Chris Kozup, vice president marketing at Aruba, told us. “I think IoT is the next big opportunity for partners and they need to begin building a practice, but they need to do it wisely because the IoT domain is vast,” he added.{ad}

Here are some of the report findings on IoT initiatives by industry, use cases and benefits:

Enterprise: According to the survey, 72 percent of companies have introduced IoT devices and sensors – such as air conditioning and lighting systems (56 percent) to personal mobile devices (51 percent) – into the workplace.

The leading IoT use case in the enterprise is indoor location-based services — and also remote monitoring of utilities. More than 78 percent of organizations report that the introduction of IoT into the workplace has improved the effectiveness of their IT team, while 75 percent report increased profitability.

Industrial: With a 62 percent adoption rate, the industrial sector reports that IoT reduces risk and downtime. IoT devices are used as chemical sensors (62 percent) and picking systems (46 percent). IoT plays a big role in monitoring and maintaining operating infrastructure, according to 31 percent of respondents.

In the industrial sector, IoT adoption is tied to increases in business efficiency (83 percent), innovation (83 percent) and …

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… visibility across the organization (80 percent). Given the upside of IoT, 40 percent of respondents believe that IoT will help them expand into new markets.

Health care: IoT in health care is reaping big rewards with gains seen in innovation and reduced cost. The biggest benefit comes from the use of sensors to monitor and maintain medical devices, cited by 33 percent of respondents. The top IoT use case is remote asset tracking by location (22 percent).

Well over half, or 60 percent, of health-care organizations use IoT: 64 percent for patient monitoring and 41 percent for X-ray/imaging, among the main devices connected to the network.

These applications are tied to cost savings, according to 73 percent of respondents; and 80 percent reported an increase in innovation since using IoT.{ad}

Retail: IoT is helping retailers enhance the customer experience, as reported by 81 percent of respondents — while 88 percent said IoT boosts business efficiency.

Forty-nine percent of global retailers have deployed IoT technology and 56 percent of these retailers allow personal mobile devices to access the network to create new and engaging retail experiences.

Government: Although behind other sectors in the adoption of IoT, 42 percent of governments have adopted IoT. Sadly, though, more than 35 percent of IT decision makers within government reported that leadership had little understanding of IoT, which is twice the global average. Integration with legacy technology is one of the biggest obstacles to IoT adoption.

“So you have a lot of hype, a lot of promise about helping citizens through technology, but ultimately there certainly appears to be a big discrepancy between what policy makers truly understand and are implementing relative to what the technology folks within those environments are able to provide,” said Kozup.

Where government entities are adopting IoT: Fifty-seven percent are connecting building-security systems; 32 percent are connecting street lights; 20 percent are connecting vehicles … driving toward the “smart city” future. The most popular IoT application is the remote monitoring and control of devices within city boundaries, according to 27 percent of respondents.

Despite some struggles, the benefits are real: Cost savings are reported by 71 percent of survey respondents, and 70 percent said IoT had improved visibility across their organization.

Given that Aruba’s IoT study is global, it’s important to point out some key findings by geography. The report notes that countries with the greatest adoption of IoT are those that have invested in IoT education. So, four of the five top countries in IoT understanding – India, Spain, Italy and Brazil – are also the top IoT adopters, with one glaring exception: the U.S. The U.S. ranked second, behind India in IoT understanding, but ranks 10^th in adoption.

Again, where knowledge is power asserts itself: Of the 32 percent of companies globally that plan to …

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… invest in IoT over the next 24 months, Spain, India, Mexico, Italy and Brazil lead the charge. Mexico ranked seventh in IoT understanding.

“What’s really telling here is that the leaders in driving IoT adoption are not necessarily the ones you would have expected,” said Kozup.

Who would have expected countries like the U.K. and Japan to chart at the bottom of the barrel when it came to understanding of IoT and also be laggards in IoT adoption  they’re among the bottom five countries in IoT adoption out of 20 countries. “Definitely not what you would have expected,” he added.{ad}

These results point to developing nations leapfrogging the traditional incumbent technologies to take advantage of emerging technologies, like IoT, similar to the way that mobile technology, such as 3G, 4G networks and also wide-area microwave type networks, were adopted given the lack of existing cable or fiber physical infrastructure.

Key barriers and concerns when it comes to the adoption of IoT are security breaches, more specifically by type of IoT security breach experienced: malware, spyware; human error, phishing, DDoS attack, physical theft; skimming, ransomware, and spear phishing; as well as cost of implementation (50 percent); maintenance (44 percent); and integration with legacy technology (43 percent).