IoT Potential, Video Conferencing Concerns in the Channel Spotlight

A pair of new research reports are catching our eye this week. The first concerns a growing partner opportunity: the Internet of Things.

Embarcadero Technologies’ “Software for the Internet of Things Developer Survey,” conducted by Dimensional Research, found that 2015 is setting up to be a big year for business solutions that integrate with IoT technologies such as industrial sensors and health monitors.

In fact, the lion’s share of software developers (84 percent) surveyed are building IoT programs that target businesses, while only 16 percent exclusively target consumers. More than three-quarters (77 percent) of development teams have seen their IoT offerings deployed – and about half (49 percent) of those expect their products to generate business impact by the end of this year. That’s up from only 12 percent a year ago.

“These survey results confirm that IoT is crossing over from consumer gadgets to business productivity and customer engagement,” said Michael Swindell, senior VP of products at Embarcadero. “In the consumer space, individuals connect to IoT typically through a single personal mobile device, with the IoT experience encircling the user; however, with business solutions, IoT includes users and encircles the business and enterprise assets. The IoT-connected applications developers build for the enterprise are essential to connect the disparate parts of a distributed IoT business solution – from mobile devices, to wearables and sensors, to cloud and on-premises enterprise back-ends.”

The Internet of Things is expected to permeate multiple systems: think mobile apps, desktops, cloud services, enterprise applications, databases and more. It could be the next-generation of technology for partners looking to broaden their portfolio; in fact, like the cloud, it might turn into almost a “must have” for their portfolios in the coming years.

More than 1,000 people across several countries were polled for the Embarcadero survey.

Also on our radar is an Infonetics report that bemoans what could be a reduced opportunity in the video-conferencing equipment market.

Enterprise video conferencing and telepresence equipment revenue was up 11 percent globally from the third quarter to the fourth quarter in 2014, but was still flat compared to the fourth quarter of 2013. The big reason? — less expensive systems seem to be all the rage.

“For room-based systems, preferences continue to shift away from high-priced telepresence systems to multipurpose room systems,” said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics. He notes the overall “decline in infrastructure sales, taking a hit due to the rise of cloud multipoint conferencing unit sales adoption.”

And while hardware sales for personal video conferencing is peaking, it, too, is seeing a shift to software. Videophones have been the fastest growing part of the conferencing hardware market, but growth there has been slowing as well.

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