Companies in Australia and New Zealand struggling with IoT

ALTHOUGH business leaders understand that the internet of things (IoT) is an exciting technology, they’re beginning to realize that benefiting from it might not be as easy as advertised.

According to IDC, almost half of Australia’s large commercial enterprises have deployed IoT systems but are now facing expansion challenges around security and infrastructure, while New Zealand’s ability to deploy commercial IoT solutions is being hampered by cost barriers.

Based on the results of a survey recently conducted by IDC, it seems as though Australian companies are trying to use IoT data to generate insights about new product development and to improve customer service but are struggling to find useful insights within the data collected.

Australian companies also said they face issues with data integration and have problems capturing enough data for the analytics to be meaningful.

In New Zealand, on the other hand, the cost barriers aren’t just the direct costs related to IoT devices, connectivity, and implementation.

Companies are finding that their proof-of-concept projects are uncovering wider issues around security and infrastructure that must be addressed before they can deploy commercial IoT systems.

According to IDC’s ANZ Practice Research Manager Monica Collier, New Zealand enterprises have told IDC that they want IoT vendors to improve their security offerings and expertise, while Australian enterprises said they want IoT vendors to improve their analytics and data visualization offerings, so that the systems provide greater value ‘out of the box’.

Despite the concerns, it’s interesting to note that 46.5 percent of Australian enterprises and one-third of New Zealand enterprises already have at least one IoT solution.

From the study, it seems as though IoT security is a concern for both nations, and although Australia is pushing on with implementations, New Zealand seems to be more cautious.

“Across the IoT ecosystem industry, it is becoming plain that security is a complex topic with many layers across applications, network, data, and devices,” said Collier.

“Interestingly, while companies said they are concerned about security at the application and data level, there is little or no concern about device security. Endpoints can be quite vulnerable and organizations should not overlook this potential weakness.

“We need more IoT platforms that do a good job of IoT endpoint device management.”

According to another recent survey of those companies having the most difficulty securing their IoT environments found that 25 percent of them reported losing at least US$34 million over the last two years due to security-related issues.

Obviously, the race to implement IoT has begun in the ANZ (Australia and New Zealand), but companies must be cautious about security and ensure they’re able to use the data they collect as a result of their IoT solutions in order to achieve the ROIs promised.

---

---

---

---