Vodafone research finds 76% of companies see IoT as critical

Some 76 per cent of companies believe that making use of technologies related to the Internet of Things (IoT) will be critical for the future success of any organisation, according to the fourth edition of the annual Vodafone IoT Barometer Report.

The global survey of business sentiment regarding innovation and investment in the IoT was conducted by Circle Research in April and May 2016 and involved more than 1,096 companies across Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, the UAE, the UK and the U.S.

Other findings were that 89 per cent of companies investing in IoT have increased their budgets over the last 12 months. Furthermore, 63 per cent of IoT adopters said they are seeing "significant" returns on investment, up from 59 per cent in last year's report.

IoT investment now accounts for 24 per cent of the average IT budget, on a par with cloud computing or data analytics, the report added.

Vodafone Group IoT director Erik Brenneis claimed that 2016 is the year when the IoT entered the mainstream.

"Three-quarters of the companies we interviewed now recognise that the Internet of Things is a new industrial revolution that will change how people work and live forever, and almost half the companies surveyed across multiple countries and sectors told us they're already planning to bring connected network intelligence to millions of devices and processes over the next two years," Brenneis added.

Vodafone said the survey found that 28 per cent of organisations already use IoT. A further 35 per cent are less than a year away from launching their own projects.

"So what matters now is not whether a business should adopt IoT, but how. Organisations planning and implementing their own initiatives need benchmarks and best practices that can help them maximise their returns," the company commented.

For more:
- see the Vodafone release

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