Cost continues to disrupt commercial IoT adoption in New Zealand – Technologist

Tech research firm IDC says remains the biggest barrier to commercial adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in New Zealand.

The latest IDC report titled 2018-2019 Global IoT Decision Maker Survey, revealed that while one third of New Zealand enterprises already have at least one IoT solution, cost barriers are slowing the deployment of commercial solutions.

Monica Collier, IDC’s ANZ Practice Research Manager, says, “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.”

Collier says New Zealand enterprises have told IDC that they want IoT vendors to improve their security offerings and expertise.

“Of those companies with active IoT pilot projects, 75% are planning on expanding their trial systems into full scale solutions. But they can’t easily do that until security concerns are addressed and infrastructure barriers removed,” says Collier.

IDC observed that security concerns are neither uniform nor consistent.

“Across the IoT ecosystem industry it is becoming plain that security is a complex topic with many layers across applications, network, data and devices. 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 organisations should not overlook this potential weakness. We need more IoT platforms that do a good job of IoT endpoint device management.”

“To move past the barriers inhibiting production scale IoT, organisations have to solve the broader security and upgrade issues. IoT vendors should be supporting enterprises with IoT-specific security expertise, more comprehensive analytics and better guidance on measuring how the solution is performing against business requirements,” says Collier.