Looking ahead: perspectives on Industrial IoT in 2019 |
Posted: December 30, 2018 |
It’s the time of year when we look at some of the things that we can expect in the coming year. For IoT, many of the trends that we have seen this last year will continue: considerable growth that any almost any other sector would look at and envy; sales and turnover that reach new records; a range of new devices and tools that bring IoT into new spheres of daily life; and the continued emergence of new firms to keep some of the corporate giants on their toes. But the year ahead could well be the year where the attention on IoT really shifts from the consumer applications to the industrial and business uses. To be fair, this is a perspective shift rather than a financial or resource one. As a 2017 report from Bain & Company made clear, the B2B market for IoT was considerably larger than the consumer one and was predicted to be worth more than $330 billion annually by 2020 – more than twice as much as the consumer/personal/household market. Within this, some $85 billion would be within the industrial sector. Unseen by the general public or many in the consumer world, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will continue to enable firms to cut costs and increase competitiveness. Examples of this have come through loud and clear in the last year – Harley Davidson and Rolls Royce being two of the more eye-catching examples – and expect more to do so in the year ahead. But which other areas will be clearly in focus for the IIoT in 2019? Security, security, security There is no way that security will not be in focus in the year ahead. With state-sponsored industrial espionage back in the headlines at one end of the scale to personal privacy complaints and data breaches at the other, security will be front and centre for IoT software development services and the wider IIoT. Ensuring privacy and protection will remain critical for firms given how competitive the environment is for tools, applications and platforms. While in previous years the incentives for firms to increase the levels of security on devices have been problematic in the consumer market due to increased cost to consumers, we can expect to see increasing focus given by regulators and governments to forcing firms to take adequate steps to ensure security. The EU is likely to continue to be in the headlines in this regard, with high profile cases against some of the large technology companies. Within IIoT, the incentive for firms to ensure high levels of security will continue to be robust, given the impact that a single data breach alone can have on reputation and the cost-impact, especially where platforms and company-data is involved. IIoT going from big to medium and small The pressure for firms to remain competitive is not going to ease and with the reducing costs associated with IoT and IIoT, we could realistically expect more and more medium and small sized firms to start moving into using IIoT devices, applications and tools that had previously been the preserve of larger firms. Small and medium size enterprises can often be either the most nimble and quick to adapt, or conversely, some of the more conservative in the marketplace. But the changes in performance that IIoT enables will force some of the conservative end of the spectrum to review their approaches or face uncomfortable times ahead. Smart firms pushing smart cities Smart home solutions have been coming to stores for some time now. Smart cities have been proposed, put into city plans and slowly begun to feed through into public construction works. Yet the speed with which public construction often operates – ‘slow’ would be generous in many cases – are not ones that industry and business can wait for. Given the size of the areas over which IIoT operate, we may well start to see IIoTlilypads or inkblots occupying larger parts of city maps. And this will not just be in the usual-suspect cities (think parts of California). The use of piggy-backed-IIoT to effectively operate large areas of cities in a more efficient manner may well see innovative partnerships develop between key firms and city authorities to get the benefits of smart cities out to the public and businessesand to do so in ways that can be done in a much speedier timeframe than if the public sector did it on its own.
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