Red Hat IoT Predictions for Enterprise IoT in 2017

In 2015, Red Hat IoT conducted a survey around the Internet-of-Things (IoT) at the enterprise level and, from that study, Red Hat determined that enterprise IoT was proceeding in a deliberate manner. The new January 2017 Red Hat survey on enterprise IoT seems to indicate that not much has changed in terms of pace and strategy. It was conducted by TechValidate on behalf of Red Hat, and polled more than 200 IT decision makers and professionals from a variety of large organizations. It showed that interest in IoT is picking up, but actual roll-outs are being handled cautiously and carefully.

Fifty-five percent of the survey respondents said IoT is important to their organization, which is a 12 percent increase from 2015. Deployments among respondents remain in early stages, with fewer than a quarter reporting actually designing, prototyping or coding an IoT project. The survey said that almost 90 percent of respondents are using open source for IoT projects. Almost a quarter identified middleware as the most important part of the software mix in their implementations.

Beyond the technology, respondents also reported that partners are an important component of their IoT projects. Systems integrators, IoT platform providers and communications specialists were all called out as important collaborators for successful deployments. Finally, nearly a third of respondents said they are exploring IoT in order to deliver new business opportunities to their organizations.

Red Hat said that its analysts think that the predictions from 2015 are coming true: enterprises are deliberate in their approach to new technologies, and IoT is no different. Open source seems to be well positioned to be a dominant technology and partners are vital to project success. Finally, businesses are looking to IoT as a new revenue stream, not just as a way to cut costs or shore up their existing technologies.