• IoT to grab nearly half of US enterprise IT budgets
• IT professionals drive the process but tend to call in specialist help
• Integration with existing systems is the big challenge

IoT specialist, Machina Research, reckons the fast growing adoption of the IoT by US companies will gobble 43 per cent of enterprise IT budgets by 2020. That’s a serious impact and according to Machina it stems from companies recognising the commercial benefits of IoT implementation and investing accordingly.

Machina surveyed adoption trends at US companies in July 2016 and it says the results reveal a complex picture: 38 per cent of companies are already using IoT and say this is primarily for competitive advantage. Eighty one per cent say they they intend to be users by the end of 2018.

On top of this, Machina reckons there is a natural acceleration effect in that the quick pace of enterprise Iot implementation coincides with a growing realisation that the data generated from connected things has strategic value.

According to study author,  Andy Castonguay,  “US companies are swiftly embracing IoT solutions in many facets of their organisations and this trend just grows more dynamic with each year. With the vast majority of US companies expecting to have IoT solutions in place by  2018, the coming years will be a remarkable period of opportunity for the IoT vendor community to help companies integrate IoT into their operations and products. As one of the world’s leading IoT markets, the US remains an important indicator of global IoT adoption in developed economies, so the global ramifications of these results are highly encouraging.”

As IoT naturally sits in the IT department, 70% of short-term IoT investment is allocated to integrate the new  IoT solutions with legacy operational, resource management, and CRM systems. Nearly half of companies look to systems integrators and software platform companies as trusted partners to design and execute the projects, underscoring a key concern companies have -  that of implementation complexity with IoT is further complicated by a highly fragmented ecosystem of solution vendors and relevant technologies.

Overall the survey confirms that enterprises increasingly view IoT solutions and the associated data as crucial tools to understand product performance, gain insights into customer usage behavior, and provide both product development and customer service organizations with important, data-driven feedback that can drive further improvements in product design and customer engagement, says Machina.