Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan highlights that the delivery process and on-going management of IoT-based solutions is much more than connecting purpose-built devices to the internet

Beyond smartphones, our “everything connected world” is fostering a rising business opportunity for organizations globally.

Industry-specific and cross-industry Internet of Things (IoT) projects are growing into smart industrial initiatives that provide their respective benefactors with measurable improvements. Smart utilities, smart automobiles, smart public transportation, smart healthcare, smart aviation, and smart logistics are just a few examples of where promised benefits are starting to be realized.

Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan’s new thought leadership paper, Gaining Customer Value from the Internet of Things, outlines the key requirements for businesses to take full advantage of an IoT strategy that creates high customer value. The report, which is commissioned by the global digital infrastructure provider Tata Communications, summarizes the outcomes from several implemented IoT use cases that are providing both business and customer value across a variety of industries. The report also defines some of the key attributes that are critical to profitably meeting the demands of IoT business opportunities.

To download the complimentary white paper, please visit: www.frost.com/iiot

“Businesses and consumers focus on the outcomes from device-to-device interconnection, assuming that the appropriate levers of process automation combine adequately and affordably with the right type of connectivity,” said Karl Whitelock, Global Director Strategy – Operations, Orchestration, Data Analytics and Monetization (ODAM) at Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan. “An IoT Solution Provider recognizes IoT solutions are composed of the inputs from multiple partners and that there are different responsibilities within the partner value chain, which must be coordinated and accounted for continuously.”

While compelling IoT-based solutions are easily conceptualized, implementation is often frustrating and expensive. To design and implement a successful IoT strategy, some of the success factors local businesses and global enterprises should follow are:

Focus on the End Customer: The IoT solution must be timely to meet the needs of the target beneficiary, have a useful enough lifecycle to profitably recover solution costs, and be able to meet future growth opportunities with minimal upgrades.
Develop Compelling Products: Time to market is dependent on the industry and the customers involved. Look for opportunities to leverage what is already in place, as a way to decrease time to market and to help improve the rate of solution adoption.
Build a Revenue Strategy from the Start: There are many examples of IoT-based solutions with large numbers of devices at play, which often contribute small amounts of data, but do so regularly. Defining the right monetization strategy is a must, since failing to set expectations will severely impact the success of related services that will come after initial implementation.
Choose the Right Partners: Partner-level orchestration and management are essential to any IoT solution strategy. IoT component orchestration recognizes there are different responsibilities within the partner value chain and that these responsibilities must be coordinated.
“The more connected the world becomes, the more important it is to provide businesses with a secure, reliable way to capture, move and manage information across the globe,” noted Anthony Bartolo, Chief Product Officer at Tata Communications. “Ubiquitous, high-quality, secure connectivity is crucial for enterprises’ IoT-enabled digital services, and only a strong partner ecosystem across the entire IoT value chain can ensure that these services work seamlessly worldwide.”