News

IoT Adoption Survey: Hybrid Clouds Lead the Way

• By David Ramel
• 03/19/2020

Open source champion Eclipse Foundation published its first Internet of Things (IoT) commercial adoption survey, finding that the movement may well live up to its considerable hype, furthered by hybrid cloud implementations.

"Hybrid clouds lead the way for IoT deployments," Eclipse said recently in announcing the survey of 366 people conducted late last year to better understand the IoT industry landscape through the identification of requirements, priorities, and challenges faced by organizations deploying commercial IoT solutions.

As to who is providing the public part of the hybrid cloud equation, the usual cast of the top 3 characters in the space was identified: "Overall, AWS, Azure, and GCP are the leading cloud platforms for IoT implementations."

While perhaps best known for its namesake open-source development IDE, the Eclipse not-for-profit organization also heads many other open source-related industry initiatives, including in the IoT space. The organization said an IoT developer-focused survey is in the works.

When asked about their IoT cloud strategies, the hybrid scheme (consisting of at least two distinct components, such as public/private) was named by 26 percent of respondents.

Other highlights of the survey as listed by Eclipse include:

• IoT is real and adoption is growing, if slower than the hype would indicate. Just under 40 percent are deploying IoT solutions today and another 22 percent plan to start deploying IoT within the next 2 years.
• Caution rules in the IoT market, with 30 percent of organizations planning to spend less than $100K in the next year.
• IoT investment is on the rise, with 40 percent of organizations planning to increase their IoT spending in the next fiscal year.
• Open source pervades IoT with 60 percent of companies factoring open source into their IoT deployment plans.

Eclipse also provided takeaways based on IoT stakeholders, where again the hybrid cloud factor figures prominently:

• Software vendors should incorporate open source technologies into their solutions to give customers the flexibility and control they need.
• IoT platform vendors should build offerings that support hybrid cloud environments to become more responsive to customer requirements. At least part of the reason multi-cloud adoption is still in its early stages is because -- not surprisingly -- the leading cloud providers don’t offer their IoT platform services on other cloud platforms.
• IoT solution providers should be prepared for extensive and intensive proofs of concept and pilot projects before they get to the stage of full production rollouts. With companies reluctant to invest heavily in IoT before they’re confident in the return on investment, these practical and tangible demonstrations will be key to encouraging broader adoption.
• Manufacturing organizations should implement IoT solutions that tie automation, asset management, and logistics together. The most innovative organizations will also rely on IoT technologies to improve their value proposition to customers, for example, by including preventive maintenance features on manufacturing equipment.

Eclipse last week said its 2020 IoT Developer Survey is coming soon.