News

IoT Survey Finds Adoption Slower Than Hype Might Indicate

• By Richard Seeley
• 11/26/2018

Perhaps it's a case of reality versus hype, but not every organization appears to be on the IoT bandwagon, according to survey data published in 2018 IoT Intelligence Market Study by Dresner Advisory Services LLC, based in Nashua, N.H.

While there is a lot of hype around IoT, the Dresner survey report was not so bullish.
"We expect that overall adoption will grow slowly until more widely applicable use cases and services for IoT become apparent," said Jim Ericson, vice president and research director at Dresner, in a press release for the report published in October.

It found the trend somewhat less than hot, in the survey that Dresner says is designed to "provide a complete view of realities, plans, and perceptions of the market."

"Although current usage remains at lower levels, we see a slight warming toward IoT adoption up from 2017," according to Ericson.

"Year over year, we observe a slight warming of sentiment compared to 2017 with improved scores for most levels of importance and fewer 'not important' scores," the study notes. The Dresner survey found "only about 15 percent of the total sample reports that IoT is 'critical' or 'very important' in 2018, and more than one-third say IoT is 'not important.'"

In the past four years the Dresner's IoT studies based on surveys of "users in all roles and throughout all industries," found "respondents report relatively weak interest in Internet of Things technologies and initiatives (compared to more mainstream technologies, e.g., reporting, dashboards, visualization). On the positive side, a majority (53 percent) say IoT is, at minimum, 'somewhat important.'"

Somewhat important doesn't seem like a hype cycle peak.

One problem with adoption may be lack of practical and revenue generating use cases for IoT.

"We expect that overall adoption will grow as more widely applicable use cases and services for IoT become apparent," according to Ericson.

The report found that advocates of IoT, the early adopters who responded that IoT is critical or very important are focused on Business Intelligence (BI) applications.  

"Advocates are more likely to seek revenue benefits through IoT, though their best achievements come in operational efficiencies," the report stated. "IoT advocates are more likely current or future users of advanced and predictive analytics and related technologies."

The Dresner study found that early adopters of IoT are more enthusiastic about cloud-based advanced and predictive analytics than the balance of those surveyed. Location intelligence and the big data potential of IoT were two areas of interest cited in the survey by those most interested in the technology.

The survey found that 32 percent of the respondents are investing in IoT today. Another 48 percent are planning investments between now and 2020 with IoT data analysis getting the most attention when compared to IoT infrastructure and IoT data supply chain.

"While the market is still in an early stage, we believe that IoT Intelligence, the means to understand and leverage IoT data, will continue to expand as organizations mature in their collection and leverage of sensor level data," according to a statement by Howard Dresner, founder and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services.