Techaisle Blog

Techaisle survey shows that a strong link between analytics, Big Data and IoT. The connection between IoT solutions supporting process analysis and analytics and Big Data is not lost on the SMBs included in the Techaisle SMB and midmarket IoT Adoption survey. Findings from the research reveal that there are strong links between analytics/Big Data use and intentions and IoT use and intentions and sophisticated SMB use explicitly ties these two together.

Consider the data presented in the figure below. The top left quadrant of the tables shows the proportion of current analytics and Big Data users who have also deployed IoT; at 37% and 47% respectively. There is evidence that current users of analytics and Big Data are the lead adopters of IoT, a finding that is further supported by the fact that 53% of current analytics users and 45% of Big Data users are planning to use IoT in the near term, which will bring the proportion of analytics/Big Data users who are also deploying IoT to about 90%.

Techaisle’s US SMB & midmarket IoT adoption trends data survey shows that use of IoT today may be low within small businesses generally, and particularly within microbusinesses, it is more widespread within midmarket firms, with roughly 30% reporting that they are currently using IoT. As is often the case with emerging technologies, production-grade usage levels are not yet quite as high as the data would appear to suggest. Detailed perspective on SMB use of IoT is gained by examining the nature of current deployments and the survey finds that there is a five-level IoT progression.

As the figure below shows, just over half of SMBs who are using IoT today are at one of the two bottom levels: they either have a limited number of sensors feeding isolated systems, or are using IoT devices to enable remote monitoring/service/control. SMBs who reported that they are using IoT to “provide basic information” or are in an “ad hoc pilot” are included in these first two levels.

Techaisle’s cloud adoption trend data shows that within US SMBs the SaaS penetration increased from 27% in 2011 to 58% in 2014 and reached 73% in 2016. It is expected that the figure will reach 94% by the end of 2017. Unweighted data analysis shows that SaaS adoption within US SMBs is already at 86% and will likely reach 96% adoption within the next one year. Even at the worldwide level, survey data shows that 76% of cloud-SMBs are currently using SaaS applications.

This view of SaaS as a deepening force within the SMB market raises an important, related question: what is the current benchmark for SaaS within SMBs? How many SaaS applications are in use today? And how many new applications are expected to be added?

The ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) trend has its roots in two significant events that challenged corporate IT behavior. The first was the “Great Recession” of 2008-2009. The recession affected the entire economy, and IT was not spared its shadow. One key result of the recession was the interruption of regular refresh cycles. Prior to the recession, many businesses replaced endpoint devices (then, almost exclusively PCs) on a regular cycle – e.g., one third of devices would be refreshed every year, and the devices themselves would be used for three years, dividing the capital cost of keeping endpoint technology up-to-date across multiple annual budgets. The cash crunch that hit most businesses in the recession prompted many to forego refresh cycles, replacing individual units only when they failed. This approach did conserve scarce resources during the downturn, but when stability returned to the economy, CIOs realized that a large proportion of corporate endpoints were due for replacement – and CFOs realized that they lacked the CAPEX funds needed to refresh the entire endpoint fleet.

At the same time, another trend – Consumerization – was sweeping through the IT industry.