64% Look To Internet Of Things To Create Better Customer Experiences

mediapost.com ^ | 01/31/2016 | chuck martin

[BenLurkin]

The good news is that companies see customers as the main beneficiaries of their IoT efforts, according to the survey. Here’s how business leaders expect IoT initiatives to impact their businesses in the long term, as in a five-year planning horizon...

The not-so-good news is that many companies rate their organization as not great in their ability to executive using in-house resources.

For example, just over a third (35%) of business leaders say their business is excellent or very good at strategy definition while 27% rate it as poor or fair.

And while 29% rather their business as excellent or very good at determining the most effective and efficient way to create a solution, 32% say it’s poor or fair.

This matters a lot, since the majority (55%) of businesses see the long-term impact of IoT initiatives to have a transformational or significant impact on their business in the long term. Only 2% of businesses see IoT as having no impact.

...

As in other studies, the biggest risk or challenge in realizing IoT potential is the increased exposure of data and information security.

Despite this, many companies are moving forward with IoT initiatives, with 39% either implementing or piloting projects and another 10% planning them.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I love the idea of my refrigerator reporting back to the NSA.

[uglybiker]

Then the NSA will know that I have a dog, a cat and I like beer.

[samadams2000]

Not that far off. My ice machine wasn’t working. Called LG they told me to hold my cell phone up to the speaker on the inside of the door. They ran diagnostics from the fridge through my phone to their system to troubleshoot. They said we were opening the door too many times for the ice machine to get cold enough.

[moose07]

Talkie Toaster was supposed to be a joke!
:)

[AFreeBird]

I’m not hooking my fridge, microwave or whatever up to the net.

[wku man]

Oh yeah...everything with a power switch networked...what could possibly go wrong? /sarc

Sky Net, anyone?

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!

[tbw2]

I don’t consider giving them the ability to turn off my appliances during a brown out, devices that can call for authorized service before I can try to fix it or have appliances hacked by ransomware of “pay me $500 or I shut down the freezer and it all spoils while you are vacation” good.

[tbw2]

Then there’s the bandwidth such devices take up in an already crowded network.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

I have very little experience with IoT but I've started taking some baby steps toward home automation, just for the fun of it - I replaced the switches for the recessed lighting and the ceiling fan in my living room with Z-Wave dimmers connected to a SmartThings hub, which in turn is connected to my Amazon Echo. This lets me say things like "Alexa, turn on the living room lights" or "Alexa, set the living room lights to 50", etc. to control the lighting in the living room. Of course, the dimmers still work manually if disconnected from the hub.

Next will be setting up some ifttt conditionals =).