Across Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ), 25.5 per cent of businesses have launched Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.
This number is expected to nearly double to 46 per cent in the next 12 months, according to IDC 2016 Global IoT Decision Maker Survey.
Improving productivity, reducing costs, and automating internal processes are seen as the top benefits of an IoT solution, with 62 per cent of companies reporting IoT as strategic to their business.
IDC said companies can expect a strengthening alignment between IT and business as projects are jointly owned and driven by IT departments that work directly alongside functional departments - the main controllers of the majority of IoT budgets.
"Setting strategies, finding budgets, and supporting IoT solutions have contributed to an ongoing tussle between line of business executives and CIOs,” IDC associate vice-president of IoT and telecoms for APeJ, Hugh Ujhazy, said.
“In APeJ, the IT department still leads the charge, but line of business and the C-Suite are increasingly influencing or deciding the IOT direction,” he added.
Research also revealed that strong partner network for IoT project execution, the ability to offer a holistic IoT solution and having a planned IoT roadmap are the top three criteria for businesses when selecting vendors across Asia-Pacific.
"This year we see confirmation that vendors who lead with an integrated cloud and analytics solution are the ones who will be considered as critical partners in an organization’s IoT investment," IDC Internet of Things research manager, Shaily Shah, said.
"We also note that network and traditional IT hardware vendors are slipping down the charts, as analytics and software vendors makes strides in customers' minds.”
This is backed by recent Technology Business Research findings that found vendors with incumbencies in both IT and consulting are the leaders. IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco and Microsoft emerged as the top four in total IoT revenue at $US783.2 million, $US593.5 million, $US576.2 million and $US505.7 million, respectively.
Whilst security, upfront and ongoing costs remain top concerns for decision makers, a lack of internal skills is a newer barrier to adoption as decision makers fear inadequate skills of employers will disable effective data crunching to actually derive the insights required to achieve business outcomes.
Earlier in September, research from an IDC survey also revealed most enterprises to be slow in terms of utilising advantages of edge computing - arguably the most crucial part of IoT, according to the analyst firm.
IDC analyst, Carrie MacGillivray, said deep analysis of long-term data sets can yield insights, but only real-time monitoring, enabled by computing at the edge in IoT devices or gateways, allows IoT systems to take corrective action in the case of failures or hazardous conditions.
She added that completing data analysis at the edge, reduces the need for network bandwidth to move data into the cloud.
According to the survey findings, specific vendors such as Cisco Systems, Dell, IBM and Intel have ramped up their edge computing offerings, yet adoption is slow among IoT users.
