How relevant to your business is the Internet of Things? More than you might think

Computing Research reveals what IT leaders really think about the potential of IoT... and what needs to happen to enable wider adoption

It seems as if almost every enterprise IT vendor has an Internet of Things (IoT) solution in its product range now, with each firm looking to capitalise on what they see as the inevitable boom to come.

But do businesses even see the IoT as something that is relevant to them? And if they do, what are the requirements that need to be met before it really takes off?

Industries such as manufacturing and transport are currently at the vanguard of the IoT - with General Electric a major example of this - but five years down the line most analysts predict that the majority of industries will be working on projects in this area.

The vast majority of the data generated by the IoT will just be noise but businesses are beginning to grapple with how they isolate the useful data and turn it into knowledge and action, as an IT manager at a research firm told Computing.

"The IoT is going to produce a huge data explosion over the next couple of years. I think CIOs have had their say on where that's going and we are going to see more and more data from connected devices and there will be a requirement to analyse some of that," he said.

Computin g surveyed leaders about the relevance of the IoT to their industries. A striking finding was the 29 per cent stating that it was already making an impact - not bad for a concept at the top of the hype curve.

A further 38 per cent stated that IoT would affect the way that they worked but just not yet. Representatives from the distribution and transport, telecoms/IT and public sectors were most likely to state that they were already witnessing an impact on their organisations.

Survey respondents predicted that domestic/leisure industries would be the ones on which IoT would have the greatest impact followed by retail, health, logistics, transport/automotive and utilities. Our interviewees were excited about the possibilities offered by IoT.

"The potential around IoT is enormous. IoT to me means sensors and everything that is to do with the construction or maintenance of the railway should be included in the design," a data analytics manager for an infrastructure company told Computing.

The CIO of a local authority also suggested that the IoT is already having an impact on some council services.

"Parking bay sensors is another one that's happening in the public realm in some councils now. I think the difficulty with public authorities is we haven't quite cottoned on to the way in which the IoT can completely redefine the paradigm because we've tended to think about delivering services by automation of existing processes," he said.

Health is also regularly cited as an area in which the IoT could have tremendous benefits to both people and the wider healthcare sector.

"There are health benefits as more and more people wear wearables which will become more capable in terms of what they can measure and transmit. We will see a rise in GPs monitoring their patients through devices and being able to say ‘It's time you made an appointment for a check-up'," an IT manager in research told Computing.

However, there are a few challenges to resolve before the IoT takes a firm hold on the popular imagination and day-to-day life.

A huge 51 per cent said that privacy/data protection technology needed further development, and 48 per cent said the actual privacy/data protection legal framework gave them cause for concern.

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Certainly many individuals and organisations are imagining the possibilities of IoT - and some of those possibilities look decidedly dystopian. With FitBit evidence now admissible in courtrooms there is considerable concern that both security technology and data protection law simply hasn't caught up with a world in which sensors are proliferating at a lightning rate.

"There's been a lot of work in the health sector to ensure privacy. The biggest concern is who in the commercial sector gets access and this has been taken very seriously," the head of research information and intelligence at a government department told Computing.

Some concerns are perhaps a little overplayed but it doesn't require a huge leap to imagine personal medical data being used as a tool for some very aggressive marketing or the prospect of critical public infrastructure being used by those with nefarious intentions - particularly given the spectacular rise in targeted attacks that we have seen in the past 18 months.

Education was the second biggest area blocking further development of IoT, according to our respondents - both in terms of educating employees and clients. However, that education can only be effective if security concerns have been properly addressed. If they are not, misinformation will continue to circulate and effective education becomes infinitely more difficult.

Therefore, it could be some time before the vast majority of businesses benefit from the IoT. Because until we reach the point that both businesses and people become entirely aware of the security risks surrounding the IoT - and how to protect against them - it's going to be far too easy for things to go wrong.

This article is an edited extract from the "Computing Big Data Review 2015", which is now available for download.