IoT Needs Greater Adoption Beyond The Industrial World To Realise Its Potential

The answer is that while we have the technology to enable all this IoT nirvana, albeit with some rather significant security and privacy caveats, beyond a few startup companies, pilot programmes and public initiatives, the IoT has yet to reach the stage where it is widely adopted and forms an ecosystem of smart devices, software and services.

Get IoT involved

Back in Barcelona, I was wandering the IoT Solutions World Forum show floor and was stuck by how little there were in real-world showcases or customers of tech companies advocating how they have set up an IoT network to change their business operations.

Yes, there were a few videos with some firms champion their use of smart connected systems, but still not nearly as many as you’d expect given the clamouring that echoed across the auditorium on how the IoT can change the world.

At the same time the voices uttering the power of the IoT highlighted surveys than many organisations had yet to consider themselves in a positon to adopt IoT tech.

I can appreciate that rating massive interconnected IoT networks requires more than a little tinkering to produce something that’s more than just a gimmick. However, I don’t accept enterprises should be dragging their feet when it comes to this unshakable tech trend.

For more companies to buy in to the IoT there needs to be tangible example of it delivering real business or society benefiting results. And sadly, these are few and far between, leaving the IoT in the tech equivalent of the chicken and the egg.

To breakout of this I want to encourage more companies to take a considered yet bold punt with their use of IoT.

By all means, keep your critical systems protected and separated from an open IoT network, but don’t be afraid to allocate some budget for footfall sensors in your department stores or iBeacons to ping notifications to willing shoppers. If these systems fail then at least you’ve tried and have tale to tell, but if they succeed you could make more money and have a real story to recount.

And that’s what I want to see and hear. I am done hearing about the potential of the IoT and seeing a few isolated systems in action; I want to glimpse the proper promises of the IoT, and see networks of smart tech making a difference, whether that’s boosting business, improving the environment, or simply saving humanity from its inevitable self-destruction.

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