IoT comes of age as adoption rates explode

A rapid acceleration in the adoption rate of IoT has been noted, with the past year alone showing a doubling of companies using over 50,000 connected devices.

Placing an even more acute focus on the past year, 84 per cent of connected device adopters have said that their use of connected devices has increased in that short time-frame.

These statistics have been presented by Vodafone in its 5^th Annual IoT Barometer Report, also revealing excitement surrounded the adoption of connected devices, with 51 per cent of the respondents saying the technology is either increasing revenue or opening up new streams.

Not only is IoT drawing excitement in regard to its ability to enhance revenues, but it is also being viewed as essential, with 66 per cent of the respondents believing that digital transformation is impossible without the technology.

Vodafone director of IoT Erik Brenneis said, “Over the five years of this report we have seen the number of companies that have adopted IoT double, and projects have grown from small pilots to global rollouts of tens of thousands of connected devices.”

The Vodafone report findings were obtained by surveying 1,278 respondents from across 13 countries, these included the UK, the U.S., Germany and China.

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“IoT is clearly here to stay and the future looks exciting as 79% of adopters are saying that IoT will have an enormous impact on the whole economy in the next five years.  I believe we can now say that IoT has come of age and is proving itself across all industries and geographies,” said Brenneis.

While this reveals excitement surrounding the potential of adoption, it may also be presenting a massive cybersecurity risk, growing as the vast number of devices in operation continues to increase. If the security is not up to a robust standard, crippling cyberattacks akin to the Mirai Botnet could bring organisations to their knees. The explosion of industrial IoT devices is widely regarded by security professionals as one of the greatest cyber threats we are facing in the future.