IoT without ambiguity: Still a challenge for many businesses

Companies require the right approaches and tools to store, process, and analyze the masses of big data generated by sensors on industrial assets, products, and other items connected to the internet of things (IoT). Without those resources, they will find IoT a challenging struggle and may not be able to benefit from it.

What is IoT for?

In a ParStream survey whose main results were published in CIOInsight, business and technical leaders from more than 200 companies were asked about their perceptions of the value of IoT data capture and analysis. 53 percent of the respondents said the primary driver for their IoT projects was optimizing existing business activities, and 47 percent stated it was to improve business at a strategic level. IoT data can help you achieve your objectives in both of these areas. Some innius customers would find it difficult to keep them separate—while they achieve better uptimes and returns from their industrial assets and deliver a better customer experience today, they also typically consider these efforts strategically valuable and plan to extend them in continuous improvement programs or digital business initiatives.

Collecting IoT data is a first step. 17 percent of the survey participants said they gather data but did not analyze it, a number that seems low based on what we see when companies first experiment with the IoT. Close to 60 percent noted they performed some level of analysis, but wanted to do better.

Without direction and practical analytics, IoT big data remains silent

What is holding companies back from accomplishing more with their IoT big data? Maybe it’s not just that they are not using the right tools, but they also are unsure of the value of the data. 44 percent felt there was simply too much data overwhelming analytics, and 61 percent it was too hard to capture useful IoT data or do so reliably. When the questions dug deeper, 27 percent shared that they did not know how to approach IoT big data analysis and 26 percent said analysis took too long. What’s more, many companies do not know what they want to achieve by means of the IoT—only about a third said they had metrics to verify the success of their IoT efforts and almost a third noted that their stated goals were difficult to quantify. Even so, many business leaders still see the value of actionable insights. They said that if they had a way to store and analyze IoT data faster and more cost-effectively, 70 percent of the organizations would make better decisions and 53 percent would make them faster than today.

For companies involved with industrial assets, automatic data collection and secure cloud storage with innius bridges the gap between their business concerns and the big data coming from the assets in a structured approach that emphasizes outcomes. For example, the solution delivers a number of important KPIs for industrial assets, including OEE, right out-of-the-box. That means the answers to asset-related questions are always within reach and stakeholders can make informed decisions when they matter the most: now. Not all businesses take that approach, however. 47 percent of the survey respondents keep their IoT big data for longer than a year, in spite of the noted challenges with capture and analytics. Not that the data becomes worthless—you can still learn from it, but the value of taking action on your findings may never be as high as it is in the moment.

Overcoming security and user adoption hurdles

51 percent of the survey respondents noted that getting users to adopt new technology was a significant IoT challenge, and 58 percent said that accommodating policies and processes, including privacy, was difficult. In innius, we address the adoption challenge with solution design that is intuitive and easy, especially in the mobile app that is going to be on the Android phones of so many asset and maintenance managers. They can focus on their work instead of the technology that supports it. As regards the privacy concern, we built innius with strong data protection and security features that combine Amazon Web Services capabilities and our own data protection architecture. That kind of security would certainly provide a level of confidence to the 54 percent of survey respondents who said that other businesses, not their own company, were the primary participants in their IoT projects.

Low-risk IoT delivered

Our innius customers may well be ahead of the survey participants, 38 percent of whom said they were merely exploring their options and learning more about IoT for their business was a success in itself. Many of our customers have followed industrial asset strategies and tracked productivity and performance KPIs for many years. But now they can assess these KPIs in real time and take action when they can make a difference. Being in close touch with their assets at all times also helps them plan more effectively.

For companies considering the solution, we make the innius entry smooth and simple by keeping cost and risk at minimal levels. We connect your first industrial asset for you, and you can start small, scaling to more machines and equipment and additional workloads as you like. Even if your company does not have an asset strategy and is evaluating the possibilities, you can give the solution a safe try while you refine your goals for industrial assets.

If you would like to explore innius more practically, have questions, or want to provide feedback, please contact us.