Next year, 5.5 million devices will be connected to the internet every day. To take full advantage of this, CIOs will need a good work basis to extend their capabilities to perform accurate and strategic decisions to drive business growth.
CBR lists ten wishes that CIOs dream off for next year.
1. More partnerships
The IoT is an ecosystem that needs many different components to actually work. In order to tap into these components – which span from software to hardware – companies have to partner and to come together under the same flag.
Businesses that fail to do so and think that going solo is the way will not survive. Just look at the bigger players like IBM, Cisco, Samsung or Intel, they all have entered into partnerships with other companies and are now part of consortiums and alliances.
In 2016, partnering with others should not just be a wish, but a priority to businesses, with CIOs playing an imperative role in convincing their companies to get other players under their umbrella. After all, there is only one internet, and this is always described as the Internet of something – things, people, everything, you choose.
2. Edge analytics
Data, Big Data, small Data: it does not matter the size of it. We need to understand what we are harvesting from devices, and that analysis needs to happen as fast as possible. It is about deciding what data is important to keep and making real-time decisions in the shortest time possible.
Take smart cars for example: a latency of seconds – while data travels to a central data centre – could result in the death of someone, because while a car is moving at 80mhp. Between something going wrong and the final impact, it might just be a fraction of a second.
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Edge computing will help reduce analytics time and deliver the real IoT, where things can actually communicate responsively in real-time.
3. Common standards
Whether we are talking IoT, iIoT or M2M, interoperability is key for the success of the smart ecosystem. CIOs are faced with challenges when it comes to devices or smart services not being able to work with other manufacturer/provider’s products.
The wish for common standards has come a long way, and the industry has always seemed to manage to pull it out. However, with the IoT is all about adaptability and quick response, and the industry as a whole needs to agree on common guidelines.
Ultimately, this will be strategic to win consumers’ interest.
4. A smaller skills gap
As analysts predict billions of devices to get their own IP over the next few years, CIOs are increasingly finding it harder to find the right people to do the job.
Computer programming, user interface, business intelligence, hardware engineering and artificial intelligence are five of the key areas where it is becoming increasingly hard to employ staff.
On CIOs wishes for 2016 is the creation of more university degrees along these lines, and also the optimisation of the STEM curriculum in schools.
5. IPv6 testing
Internet is about connectivity and with IPv4 pretty totally used, the internet is in need to adopt IPv6. If the industry fails to do so, it can set back IoT.
CIOs will be wishing that connectivity will get a boost with the wide adoption of IPv6 next year to wider the opportunities carried by IoT. Independently of the industry you work in, IPv6 will be an enabler for new products and services.
6. A supportive board
CIOs are faced with several challenges, however sometimes it is not a technology problem or a consumer problem: it is a board dispute. CIOs are generally those with the vision to look into the future and anticipate how the business will survive. That message is sometimes hard to get across, including to the CEO. This happens for different reasons: it might just be the board is not open minded enough, or that a use case has not been created yet.
For 2016, CIOs are wishing that the board and especially the CEO, listen to them, and despite questioning his/her ideas – which they should do -, take on board their vision and back them up with support.
CIOs hope that the board intake of new trends becomes more responsive to the real-time events htey are faced with. This is a time of ‘learning-as-you-go’ and no longer a time to plan too much ahead.
7. End-user education
One example of a fail end-user experience, is the commercial drone market. The devices were put out to the market to fast, with no end-user education and that resulted in several issues leading to governments to get involved. These situations cannot happen in an IoT world.
CIOs wish that next year, marketing teams pay more attention when introducing new products to the market. Getting people to trial products before buying, collecting feedback before launching at scale or running educational content on apps could be ways to tackle this issue.
8. A strong M2M strategy
Having the ability to gather real time information of devices talking to each others will help businesses save money and time, and even speed up business processes.
By having a strong M2M strategy in place – with the board’s consent – CIOs will be properly informed to make strategic decisions that will benefit the company.
The way this strategy will work depends on the industry the business is in, however, all industries can benefit from M2M.
9. Let the government stay away
The industry is at a point where it either reaches consent on different issues – such as standards and security -, or faces governments getting involved and setting back all the potential IoT has to offer.
There will always be small things where governments will have to step in, like LTE governance, however, it is important that the industry comes together as much as it can on as many topics as it can to avoid legislation to be created and hold business back.
10. A strong security budget
As ever, it all comes down to security. No business or consumer will buy a product or a service that is not secure. And in a time where things will just be transmitting data and will be connected to other devices, including personal and private objects, assuring data protection is crucial.
CIOs expect security spending to be a priority for all members of the board. Nevertheless, security must not get in the way of innovation. The IoT, is more than anything or any other time in history, an era where risk takers will be winners.
