Heavyweight companies are investing big in IoT, with plans to double their annual spending on devices, software and related services over the next four years to an annual total of $520 billion, according to an article posted today by our friends at Fortune Magazine.
The projection is based on figures from consulting company, Bain & Company, and exceeds the $450 billion estimate for 2020 that Bain foretold of in a previous 2016 survey.
Part of the boom may be due to the fact that newer connected products, instead of sending information to massive cloud data centers for analysis, will boast increased computing power and built-in AI apps.
There are caveats, however, to the expected extreme proliferation of IoT, according to Bain. For example, many companies had anticipated that, with IoT providers able to access extensive data about their equipment, they would also be able to handily predict when they needed servicing. Not so, according to Bain: “Insights have been harder to glean than first promised.”
One thing that hasn’t changed since Bain conducted its 2016 survey is the fact that security remains top of mind for business customers when it comes to IoT. The current survey also revealed that big customers are not looking for customized systems (and the time it takes to build them), but rather are looking for connected devices that are essentially plug and play.
Read the full article here.
