More Customers Are Looking To Adopt IoT, With Partner Help

Channel partners are beginning to "warm up" to the Internet of the Things market as more customers adopt experimental pilot projects and formal initiatives around the IOT, according to CompTIA report.

Lisa Person, Community Director at CompTIA, told The Channel Company's NextGen Cloud Conference & Expo solution providers that the channel is realizing the benefits and opportunities surrounding massive amounts of data from connected devices.


"Customers need help connecting the different parts of the IoT," she said on Tuesday. "As the devices become more connected, they want to know: how do you handle all this and what do you do with all the data? This is where partners can come into play with analytics and BI tools.

Although the market is still new, customers are starting to take an interest in the Internet because they benefit from IoT solutions, including better customer experience, better asset visibility, more accurate tracking, cost savings and better decision-making data.

According to CompTIA, 33 percent of organizations have an experimental project or pilot project underway and 27 percent have already adopted a formal IOT initiative. Meanwhile, 23 percent of organizations are planning an IoT initiative underway in a year, and only 15 percent have no plan around IoT.

Despite the increasing interest in the Internet of objects, customers and channel partners still face obstacles that they must overcome to adopt IOT strategies. For example, according to CompTIA's research, up to 55 percent of channels view the development of expertise around the IOT as a major challenge.

"The partners are worried about putting in-house expertise and talent around the Internet objects, and then starting up costs," said Person.

Channel partners have also listed the initial costs of the IoT project, educating customers and choosing business models the other challenges they face in the Internet space of things.

For example, the South African system integrator, Dimension Data, has proposed a revolutionary solution to connect the Tour de France to a range of IoT applications. In 2015, Dimension Data launched a four-month project to link bicycles, create personalized networks, capture real-time data, and provide high-tech security for the race so that mobile users can see the status of Participants.

Nathan Phinney, President of Bright Bear Technology Solutions, a managed service provider based in Irvine, Calif., Said solution providers are interested in IoT but are still looking for successful use to better the monetize the market.

"I think a lot of MSPs continue to take the temperature ... there is a level of interest that is quite high in the development of IoT practices in partner managed services companies," he said. "But it's still a green market, people are still to understand, similar to cloud when it was young - what is it, how to monetize it, and what are the possibilities in space.