Unleashing the potential of IoT in the new normal

The global pandemic has accelerated the push for IoT technology in many sectors including retail, manufacturing, and healthcare. New IoT use cases are leading to growth, especially in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). Greater adoption of 5G and other factors will likely continue to drive growth in the post-COVID economy.

These emerging trends are covered in Avasant’s IoT Services 2021 RadarView™ report. The report provides a view into the changing IoT landscape and provides recommendations on how to cope with these changes in the new normal.

Avasant evaluated 42 providers using three dimensions: practice maturity, partnership ecosystem, and investments and innovation. Of those 42 providers, we recognized 24 as having brought the most value to the market during the past 12 months.

The report recognizes service providers in four categories:

• • Leaders: Accenture, Capgemini, Cognizant, HCL, IBM, Infosys, TCS, and Wipro
  • Innovators: Atos, HARMAN Connected Services, L&T Tech Services, LTI, Mindtree, NTT DATA, and Tech Mahindra
  • Disruptors: Birlasoft, eInfochips, Innominds, Persistent Systems, and Mphasis
  • Challengers: CGI, Microland, UST, and Zensar

Figure 1 from the full report illustrates these categories:

Renée Lahti, Distinguished Avasant Fellow, congratulated the winners noting, “IoT is often thought of as a technology to reduce costs in supply chain and maintenance. However, companies are now using a broader range of connected products, such as connected vehicles and digital health products, to build new revenue streams.”

Some of the findings from the full report include the following. Enterprises should:

1. Choose the right approach and platform for IoT implementation.

• • IoT is upending traditional business models, creating better platforms for as-a-service consumption models, and generating new forms of revenue for businesses.
  • Organizations must carefully assess their needs and objectives when selecting the right IoT platform.

2. Seek a broader 5G package, integrating edge computing, IoT, and AI.

• • IoT is about actions at the edge, not just collecting data at the edge. Companies need to spend less time managing data at the edge and more time determining how to monetize it.

3. Collaborate with service providers to drive top-line and bottom-line growth.

• • The provider’s role is crucial in helping businesses integrate future IoT investments. Providers can help with business transformation efforts and facilitate organizational change management. In the last 12 months, service providers have made notable investments in IoT services. They have established CoEs and made human capital investments, and there has been considerable inorganic investment.

4. Improve IoT security.

• • Enterprises must continually invest in IoT security by examining and learning from past IoT attacks, including during COVID-19. Enterprises need to enforce strong password policy, create asset maps, network segmentation, firewalls, and lockdown tool access, and exercise hypervigilance.
  • DevSecOps must be adopted to make security span across the silos of software design, product engineering, security operations, and compliance.

“ The growing use cases for IoT give it a greater complexity. Couple that with issues of security and change management, and service providers can be a critical partner for enterprises as enterprises look to deploy IoT in a post-COVID economy.” said Shwetank Saini, Avasant’s Research Leader.

The full report also features detailed RadarView profiles of the 24 service providers, along with their solutions, offerings, and experience in assisting customers in digital transformation.

This Research Byte is a brief overview of the Internet of Things Services 2021 RadarView™ report (click for pricing).