IoT: The CIO challenge

The Internet of Things (IoT) has definitely become one of the most common and much hyped concepts across business and technology domain. And it is entirely justified and backed by the statistics. Gartner in a release stated that, “It is expected to see about 25 billion Internet-connected things by 2020, and close to $2 trillion of economic benefit globally. A lot of these applications are not general purpose devices, such as smartphones and PCs, but dedicated objects, such as vending machines, jet engines, connected soap dispensers and a myriad of other examples.” As the requirement increases there are certain challenges that are faced by the respective CIOs in implementing IoT solutions in their respective organisations. Once they surmount the challenge the depolyment will have a great impact on the economy by transforming many enterprises into digital businesses and facilitating new business models, improving efficiency, and generating new forms of revenue.  Sri Karambati, CIO, SSS Springs says, “IoT is not new. It has existed in some avatar called as SCADA systems. What is different now is that the economics and the ecosystem of hardware/ software are more favorable. The challenge to IoT adoption mainly remains the mind-set. Either IoT is not considered to be value accruing or too much is expected of it. What is essential is a proper and through understanding of its capability, especially at the management level of organizations. IoT can bring in transformational benefits if approached and adopted holistically.”  The Indian organizations must first understand the business use case for which they want to use IoT. It has multiple benefits for Indian enterprises through various use cases to acquire concrete business benefits and successful implementations. D.D. Mishra, Research Director, Gartner says, “Many Indian enterprises today understand the impact of IoT technologies on their business. Although organizations are currently underprepared to embrace IoT due to the lack of infrastructure, the fact that end-user organizations are today asking questions about how to prepare for IoT, or start IoT implementation in their organizations. This is proof enough that this technology is clearly gaining momentum.” He added, “Going further CIOs will have to overcome challenges around security concerns and risks, skills and competency in an emerging market, integration and implementation in a complex environment, Data Management and regulatory issues and concerns.”  “Success will also depend on aligning the IT and operation technology (OT) resources, processes and people carefully. Therefore, experimenting with pilot projects to understand the implications on people, process, technology and the business is an essential first step for Indian organizations.” Karambati said, “The CIO must first start with awareness creation, not just through presentations, but through a pilot. In most cases a successful pilot can automatically lead to a larger scale role out. Fortunately, it is possible to conduct pilot experiments at a low cost. Given that the future of business is going to be tech driven, defined by Industry 4.0, now is the time to get going.”