Parenting IoT – Why Service Providers Must Help This Emerging Opportunity Mature

Recently, LiveWorx 2015, a leading Internet-of-Things conference, was held in Boston. The event is actually the annual user conference for, SiteWorx, an IoT platform owned by enterprise software provider PTC but the event was about more than just one provider and its ecosystem. LiveWorx 2015 was about the awakening opportunity for IoT.

The level of buzz from the 2,000 plus practitioners in attendance was high. Many of these folks have been toiling away in a decades old market formally known as M2M (machine-to-machine). Suddenly, the incorporation of analytics and big data coupled with ever-cheaper sensors and computing power has brought a renewed sense of attention upon their field and they are excited to be hitting the mainstream.

Yet despite the overall enthusiasm, some participants expressed concerns that IoT was getting hijacked by newcomers who did not understand what it was truly about. Others– including a few sponsors in the demo hall – lamented that the opening sessions were little more than a big promotional event for the host company PTC. Since that is pretty much the point of every end user conference, the naiveté of the sentiment struck me as a bit odd. Especially since, when compared to the prior year, LiveWorx 2015 incorporated much more external thought leadership with the likes of Harvard Professor Michael Porter, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, and Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak all taking the stage.

These pockets of disappointment shed light on the biggest challenge for IoT today. The emerging opportunity needs a unified voice operating at the level of business impact if it is ever going to break off its M2M shackles that currently limit much of its dialogue to that of heavy industry, network engineers, and sensor manufacturers. For its part, PTC – the software provider that hosted the event, showed itself to be one the most mature in its presentation of the opportunity and the full range of benefits to be had. For most of the rest, there seemed to be an inability to explain IoT in anything but technical terms. Yet even PTC struggled at times to move away from the speed and feed mentality. For example, it measured the impact of the event by the # of tweets posted per day rather than the actual observations themselves – as if value is equated to throughput rather than the thought put. 

This is not to say IoT needs more conferences. There was another IoT forum underway last week and like the last one the sponsor list is long. But take a look at who is exhibiting and you will not see a single Tier 1 global service provider on the list. That missed opportunity creates a void that savvy firms have filled. But while those smaller firms can drive innovation around IoT, the market needs a broader push for the opportunity to truly take off. The possibilities of IoT are nearly endless with the ability to drive meaningful and measurable gains in productivity and customer satisfaction as well as significant new revenue streams. But making sense of this opportunity requires the leadership of global service providers to start educating their enterprise clients how the right mix of sensors, big data, and analytics can create sustainable advantages in the near term.

IoT is not a technology problem it is a business opportunity. Those that understand this the best will win mindshare and market share in the coming years.