There has been much hope (and hype) relative to use of Internet of Things (IoT) on the factory floor, as a critical component of the "smart factory" of the future.
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| Cloud application vendors, such as AWS and Microsoft, are increasingly extending to the edge to access their source data directly from the shop floor. |
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But the pace of the move to this brave new world has been slow, according Chantal Polsonetti, an analyst at ARC Advisory Group, in a recent blog post.
Key barriers to a move to widespread industrial IoT adoption, Polsonetti says, include extended time to scale, security concerns, the overall timeline for adoption of cloud-native technology at the edge, and – interestingly - lingering doubts in some corners as to "the edge" data value proposition.
Polsonetti says companies have ramped up proof of concepts at a slow pace, in part due to challenges faced when transitioning from pilots to production.
However, "Despite these findings, the long-term value proposition for industrial IoT edge solutions remains solid," Polsonetti says, adding that "cloud-based solutions need data from connected assets in order to maximize efforts to reduce cost, increase revenue, or achieve product and service innovation."
Cloud IoT platform application vendors, such as AWS and Microsoft, are increasingly extending to the edge to access their source data directly from the shop floor.
That said, "Customers evaluating edge solutions from the cloud players should note that, in our experience to date, the enterprise cloud-based solutions tend to represent a more toolset versus solution approach at the edge, while industrial domain knowledge can vary," ARC says.
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 Polsonetti notes that "This can result in significant investments in both time and development to tailor these more horizontal solutions to your installation, typically by the enterprise-level IT organization and data scientists," adding that "This contrasts to dedicated edge solutions that can generate much quicker time to value and overcome real deficiencies when extending the cloud to endpoint devices."
She says those deficiencies include latency of edge to cloud communications and security and operational concerns regarding sending data to and from off-premise components of the infrastructure.
Polsonetti adds that some companies look to avoid cloud lock-in all the way to the edge, which third party edge solutions can typically address.
Most research is very bullish on industrial IoT growth. For example, a new report from Market Research Inc. predicts the global market will expand rapidly, with a compound annual growth rate of 24% through 2025.
Do you agree industrial IoT is slow to take off? Why or why not? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback section below.
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