A Practical Framework to Turn IoT Technology Into Operational Capability
realized. Many of them have a technical
background, but they are not IT system
developers or automation experts.
Improved or new customer interactions:
44%
Reduced maintenance or downtime:
42%
IT stakeholders, in turn, understands the
business systems and applications that
support the business operations. IT provides
support services to the business such as
cloud, network infrastructure, databases
and business applications. IT management is
primarily concerned with risk, governance
and business support.
A more important insight from the survey is
the difference in perception of IT and
business on the success of IoT projects. 35%
of IT executives consider their IoT projects
successful, while business executives only
regard 15% of IoT projects to be successful.
The survey also showed that IT executives
placed more importance on technologies,
organizational culture, expertise and
vendors. Business executives on the other
hand placed more emphasis on strategy,
business cases, processes and milestones.
OT, on the other hand, uses similar
infrastructure as IT but understands the
operational technology, automation and
“things.” OT focuses on Machine to Machine
(M2M) and Machine to Infrastructure (M2I)
connectivity, control systems, Supervisory
control and data acquisition (SCADA) and
Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). OT
management is concerned with automation,
security,
latency
and
operational
optimization.
This chasm between IT and business is often
the main reason for projects not moving
beyond engineering PoCs, as the Cisco
survey data shows. It is the reason why IoT
fails to deliver the anticipated impact and
improved operational capabilities.
Many of the estimated 450 7 new IoT
platforms aim to cover the convergence of
OT and IT technology but do not address the
needs of business to integrate these IoT
solutions into existing business processes or
workflows.
Industrial IoT projects most often include an
additional Operational Technology (OT)
group and all three stakeholder groups need
to work together to achieve the business
objectives described above.
Business stakeholders are often subject
matter experts (SMEs) with a technical
background. These are often Operations
Managers, Maintenance and Operations
Engineers, Production Managers and Asset
Managers. These SMEs understand the
business problem they want/need to solve.
They know the use cases and where the ROI
(return on investment) is most likely to be
7
These different perspectives all need to be
addressed to deliver a successful IoT project
that provides value beyond a PoC. The
business processes that support the
requirements of all three stakeholders needs
extensible integration and interoperability
to cater to the combined complexity of
https://www.iothub.com.au/news/the-number-of-iot-platforms-jumps-to-450-467554
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March 2018