IoT – are you ‘getting it’?
In 2010, Ericsson famously predicted that
50 billion devices would be connected
by this year (2020), Cisco followed with
its own similarly impressive prediction in
2011. Fast forward to today and how close
did they get? Current estimates put the true
gure closer to 9 billion, most of which are
mobile phones.
Clearly successful IoT deployments are
much harder to achieve than previously
thought and substantial complexities can
be sticking points. Research from Cisco
Systems found that more than 75% of
IoT deployments fail. A lot of the damage
happens before the devices even go live,
however. Microsoft estimates that 30% of
IoT projects fail at the Proof of Concept
(PoC) stage, while eight out of ten IoT
projects fail before they are even launched,
says Gartner.
Is it doom and gloom for the Channel?
No, quite the opposite. Suppliers who push
their services through the Channel have
gone to great pains to ensure partners have
tried and tested solutions and packaged
them into resell solutions. Other suppliers
have gone about building a supportive
ecosystem to ensure partners can carve out a
place in the value chain.
The Opportunity
Businesses largely appear to be convinced
that a smart oce is something they should
be planning for: 90 per cent of decisionmakers
see a business reason for working in
one and 87 per cent say they’ll require smart
technology in their oce the next time they
move.
Respondents were also given a list of
possible smart oce features and asked
which of those they don’t already have would
appeal to them. e most popular were:
• Self-adjusting lighting and window
shades (53 per cent don’t have this but
think it would be helpful)
• e ability to personalise heat and light
settings for one’s immediate space, and
have those settings follow you around the
building (53 per cent)
• Circadian lighting systems that mimic
natural daylight (51 per cent)
• Heat and lighting systems that adjust
automatically according to weather and
occupancy (50 per cent)
• An app for booking desks and meeting
rooms (35 per cent)
• Meeting rooms where the screens work
seamlessly with your device (34 per cent)
• Desk or room sensors that track usage to
monitor eciency (34 per cent)
What do businesses really want?
When it comes to the perception of the IoT
opportunity at reseller level there are two
very dierent stories to tell.
Softcat recently surveyed over 1,600 of
its customers across 18 dierent industries
to reveal the biggest 2020 technology
priorities. Emerging technologies (Big Data,
IoT and AI) scored particularly poorly.
Craig Lodzinski, Chief Technologist –
Data and Emerging Technologies, Softcat
said “It’s surprising to see low interest
in Big Data, IoT and AI but for many
organisations, these aren’t ‘business as usual’
technologies yet. Instead, organisations
continue to prioritise ‘utility’ services which
are essential for day-to-day operations.”
On the ip side Pure Technology has
been enjoying great success with their
connected oerings, last year the business
growth has been fuelled by signicant
increases in cloud and managed services,
plus enhanced transactional business and
the introduction of nascent technologies,
including hyper-convergence, virtual reality
(VR) and Internet of ings (IoT).
I interviewed Cli Fox, COO Pure
Technology Group, last year who spoke
about Pure’s foray into IoT. He said, “It
has been a nine-month journey of nding
out that all the people that are saying
they are doing IoT in the Channel really
aren’t! ere is so much hype and smoke
and mirrors around IoT it can be dicult
to delve beneath. IoT itself can be a really
complex supply chain from the sensor right
the way through to the analytics engine.
For us it’s about taking it apart and working
out what we can do and what will work and
then putting that in a box.”
52 | Channel Profiles 2019 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
uk
M2M/IoT
The noise in the IoT market has been intense over the last five years. We have been waiting for our world to be
cascaded in connected devices and our business lives to be transformed by new data sources which provide
invaluable information. Has this really happened? The reality for the Channel might be slightly different, but the
opportunities to succeed are still prevalent for those willing to work for them.
MARKET OPPORTUNITIES
• Fleet/ vehicle management
• Managing drivers
• Managing individuals
• Managing assets
• Failover services
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