Deployment failures are often experienced by enterprises when they are exploring and implementing Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. This phenomenon has been experienced in various industries from healthcare, automotive to industrial equipment manufacturers. We try to point out some key issues that cause it.
Most of the failures experienced in the implementation of IoT solutions are due to shortcomings in project management, architectural development, rollout out of the project or key building block technologies.
Security
There are some security risks to IoT devices. This issue of poor cybersecurity implementation in applications, networks, data and equipment have made IoT projects more challenging. Several projects face inconsistencies in planning, design, implementation and operations, which ultimately results in problems with access, data protection and communication.
IoT has brought together two worlds, digital and physical. The digital world is dominated by data confidentiality, integrity and availability while the physical world is dominated by engineering reliability and safety. As IoT involves the convergence of these two worlds, a new approach is required to address the mentioned concerns of both these worlds.
IoT Infrastructure Accumulation
There are multiple IoT implementations in many large enterprises. As a result, there are multiple IoT architectures and systems across the enterprise. Multiple architectures and systems require consolidation or integration with other resources. This ultimately raises the overall costs and introduces a number of complexity and integration issues. Scheduled auditing should be done by enterprises to identify the multiple IoT systems and form an integration plan.
Startup Vendors
As the market is still in its adolescent phase, most of the leading edge IoT vendors are small-scaled. The technology and use cases they provide can be interesting, but they always pose some future risks. There is a possibility that they could go bankrupt or be acquired by a larger technology company, which might eventually eliminate the new division. An enterprise that is employing small IoT vendors for critical systems should always plan to protect itself by obtaining rights to use their intellectual property over a period of time or having a backup vendor with similar functionality.
Communications
The foundation of any IoT solution is connectivity. According to the type of connectivity that is chosen, it can either become significant to reach the end goal or inhibit productivity. The most important, and also the easiest, determinant is identifying the bandwidth requirement of the devices being used. The requirement depends on the frequency of two-way interactions. An enterprise should also consider the relative merits of personal-area, local-area and wide-area networks and the costs, performance and availability of those networks before making a decision.
Analytics and Visualization
Data, in large volumes, is the main output of IoT systems. If not properly integrated into a business unit’s existing work, it will be practically useless. To integrate the data properly, IT organization and business unit representatives need to collaborate to find better ways of adding visibility and visualization capabilities to the IoT data. This will help employees absorb the data better and ultimately transform it into actionable information, which will help in making appropriate decisions.
Incomplete Mapping
Missing or misunderstanding which corporate systems are affected can be common occurrence in many IoT projects. It can either be because of the failure in fully mapping relevant systems to IoT deployment or failure to understand the systems that are already installed. This can be avoided by ensuring audits of systems, hardware and sensor nodes.
Key strategies to overcome IoT failure points
It will be some time before all the shortcomings in IoT deployment are rectified. IoT is still a relatively new technology and enterprises just have started to get a hold of it. It is now more than necessary for them to invest in IoT so that future prospects turn out to be bright.
