Making the Most of Internet of Things

Small and medium-sized businesses in India today have unprecedented access to new markets, customers, suppliers, and technologies, and are constantly looking to shape industry conditions.

Due to increased competition and expansion, they have started to reach out for IT and the Internet as a basic infrastructural requirement for optimizing efficient operations and businesses. In this context, The Internet of Things (IoT) holds a lot of promise in enabling new business models that will improve business efficiencies and increase profit.

In fact, according to a Gartner report, innovative start-ups and small enterprises will be able to drive growth with the help of Internet of Things through the creation of niche applications.

The report also predicts that by 2017, 50 percent of IoT solutions will originate from start-ups that are less than three years old.

Indeed, IoT presents a lot of opportunities for small and medium businesses. However, it requires the stakeholders to have a deep understanding of the technologies which are involved. For SMBs to make full use of IoT, they require a robust network infrastructure which is flexible, scalable and can be easily deployed across applications.

Deploying IoT also comes with its own set of challenges. First, the network needs to be managed closely. When networks grow in complexity, SMBs need to focus on comprehensive network solutions. SMB business leaders usually cannot spare the time to learn about the nitty-gritty of networked systems.

This is where having a dedicated IT staff helps. While adopting IoT solutions, it is critical to have a dedicated IT staff that is up to date with the complete details of the IoT ecosystem and can help manage it. However, most organizations do not have the resources to have a dedicated IT team.

Second, security concerns prevail. Security is a key concern in the IoT ecosystem as large number of devices gets connected to the network. Regardless of scale, organizations need to protect their businesses against interruption that takes place through theft of information, virus outbreak prevention, and application abuse with limited additional cost and manageability issues.