Unlocking IoT: It’s all about Services My previous post on “Rise of a New Era: Advancing Towards 50B Connected Devices” discussed the promise of connected devices a.k.a. Internet of Things evolving into connected everything and highlighted 5 key areas of attention for enabling the next wave of global digital transformation. This post discusses why Business Internet of Things (IoT) markets are all about services and how IoT providers have to organize processes and projects to scale up their excellence. Anyone involved with Business IoT and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) will have realized that there is no lack of great ideas and that there are plenty of use cases to go around, but that no ones know if or when they will be profitable. Why is that? Below is a list of obstacles for companies interested to use IoT: Immaturity of industry standards Lack of data security, safety, control, compliance and privacy Lack of mature eco-system for pre- and post-deployment phase Lack of one-stop experience from cradle to grave High cost of required investment in IoT infrastructure The most critical barrier for strong growth in IoT adoption over the next few years is “strong business and use cases that deliver tangible value with quantifiable outcomes”. Business IoT from start to finish: Why is it all about services? Based on my experience and customer engagements, 80% of businesses pointed to budget constraints as a barrier to initiate an IoT project. Even more astonishing, 70% of all the businesses convinced of the IoT benefits found the upfront cost to be the key barrier followed by life cycle management and operational expenses to support IoT use cases. Businesses see IoT as a way to enrich their services, gain customer insights, increase efficiency, improve employee productivity, etc. It all comes down to creating differentiated opportunities by means of new, hybrid and disruptive business models such as sensor data/network as a service, revenue/savings sharing model, power-by-the-hour model, etc. The key to enabling these new business models is services – IoT providers need to combine capabilities across their management and partners. The combined partner eco-system should be capable of providing flexible and scalable end-to-end services so that businesses can focus on their customers and core operations. The 5 key services essential for rapid adoption of IoT with new /disruptive business models in the marketplace are 1) smarter advisory services, 2) smarter project management services, 3) smarter technology solutions services, 4) smarter financial/capital services and 5) smarter life cycle management services.