According to a report recently released by British telecommunications provider Vodafone, 8 in 10 businesses are betting on the Internet of Things for future success. In fact, as Computer Business Review notes, half of those (4 in 10) are already fully up and running with some sort of IoT strategy.
Things only get more interesting from there; 63% of the 1,096 respondents from 17 countries said they’ve seen significant ROI on their IoT efforts, and 24% of the IT budget at those same companies is now directed exclusively towards IoT. For a technology that hasn’t even reached maturity, that’s remarkable.
The big takeaway from the report is that many companies around the world are betting on IoT to be an integral part of their success moving forward into the future. Vodafone Group IoT Director Erik Brenneis even went so far as to say that “2016 is the year the Internet of Things entered the mainstream.”
We’ll let you and your business decide if you think 2016 is the year of IoT. We’re here to say that if you’re betting on IoT for future success, you’d better not be doing it without an enterprise mobility program already in place.
IoT and enterprise mobility are two separate enterprise technologies, but they have more in common than you might think. From our perspective, trying to implement a company-wide IoT initiative without already having an EMM strategy in place would be like trying to run before you learn to walk. Even if you can make it happen, there’s going to be lots of stumbling along the way.
A well-executed EMM strategy can teach you a lot about the foundation of a great IoT strategy, too. How will you manage all the devices on your network? What picture is painted by all the data received from your users? How are those who utilize the technology actually using it? How will you keep devices and data secure? Though there are many more devices at play in IoT than there are in a typical EMM setup, the principles of sound enterprise mobility management also apply to IoT.
We’re big proponents of cutting-edge technology, but we’re also proponents of planning and preparation. We’ve yet to determine if we really think IoT is “the next big thing,” but we certainly think that companies betting on IoT would be wise to sit down and review their EMM strategies before making any big moves.
