ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY
The Internet of
Opportunity
There’s no doubt the lucrative potential of the Internet of Things (IoT), but how can
those in the channel maximise the opportunities and minimise the threats?
By Pippa Sanderson
A
ccording to Mohammad Jamal
Tabbara, Senior Systems
Engineer – UAE at Infoblox,
today we have more than 20 billion IoT
devices, with smart homes being the
biggest industry. By 2020, this number
is expected to increase to some 30
billion connected IoT devices, helped
by government initiatives to develop
smart cities and their associated trends
and applications, such as smart parking,
smart traffic controls, smart lights,
smart roads, smart waste management,
smart structural health, smartphone
detection and more. Furthermore, it’s
expected these trends and applications
within smart cities will assimilate with
one another, forming an integrated
and orchestrated ecosystem. Smart city
technologies alone are expected to be
worth roughly $100 billion by 2020.
A global study, The Internet of Things:
Today and Tomorrow, published by Aruba,
a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company,
reveals that IoT will soon be widespread as
85 per cent of businesses plan to implement
IoT by 2019, driven by a need for innovation
and business efficiency. While the analysis
confirms the clear business benefits from
investments in IoT, Aruba’s report cautions
that connecting thousands of things to
existing business networks has already
resulted in security breaches for the
majority of organisations.
The research questioned 3,100 IT
and business decision makers across 20
countries to evaluate the current state
of IoT and its impact across different
industries. The study shows that while
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