From cars to home appliances to wearables, the Internet of Things (IoT) has rapidly found its way into everyday objects, changing the way we live and work. In fact, IDC estimates in its Worldwide Semiannual Internet of Things Spending Guide that by 2021, global IoT spending is expected to total nearly $1.4 trillion.
It’s easy to understand the “why” behind the rapid rise of IoT and why top analysts like Gartner and IDC predict its continued expansion: IoT enables us to simplify our lives and be more productive. But what impact will the continued growth of IoT have on IT teams? What new challenges does it present? And, perhaps most importantly, how can IT teams successfully overcome these challenges to get the most out of their IoT initiatives?
A new white paper by MIT Technology Review delves into these questions, highlighting how the deluge of data created by complex IoT ecosystems creates a major obstacle for IT leaders looking to extract maximum business value from IoT. But, it also reveals how—with real-time performance monitoring tools that incorporate advanced diagnostics and data correlation capabilities—IT teams can surmount this challenge.
Here is a short summary of why application performance monitoring (APM) is the key to IoT deployment success, which IT pros can learn more about in this insightful new report:
The Challenge
As an emerging technology, IoT is disruptive. The size, scope, complexity, and volume of connected devices far exceed the ability of even the most expert IT departments to independently manage and oversee them. As Andrew Baker, CEO and Founder of Brainwave Consulting Company notes, “The explosion of devices and people trying to access and transmit information across IoT ecosystems is staggering, even for small firms with 50 employees.”
IoT infrastructures contain technologies with more complex applications, more robust server hardware, new protocols, new security requirements, faster and more efficient wide-area transmission mechanisms, and more backup procedures.
All of these new technologies tax the skill sets of IT departments and operations staff. IoT also generates much higher volumes of network traffic, making routine network management and capacity planning tasks more daunting.
There is just no way for businesses to manually keep pace with all of these connections, even if they have fully trained IT departments adept at IoT—there is simply too much data.
The Solution
Organizations can mitigate and minimize the impact of this disruption by deploying IoT advanced performance monitoring and management tools that deliver diagnostics and solutions in real time. These tools ensure the smooth configuration, provisioning, deployment, and ongoing maintenance of IoT-connected devices.
But knowing how to best deploy these tools is also a key step in getting the most from IoT—and creating a more nimble organization. When effectively implemented, advanced APM solutions can alert businesses to potential problems, enabling them to proactively address issues in advance of a problem that could result in a disastrous component or network outage. The business intelligence and predictive analytics capabilities of APM solutions can also identify trouble spots and avert service interruptions.
The Benefits
The top two benefits of application performance monitoring tools for IoT deployments, as revealed by MIT Technology Review’s research, are improved performance and security. In fact, 86 percent of survey respondents said the ability to quickly identify performance issues is a major benefit of APM for IoT, while 81 percent said the the ability to quickly identify security issues is a major advantage.
Effectively utilizing IoT monitoring and performance management tools delivers value in real time. Instead of taking hours or even days to identify a performance issue, the monitoring tool can quickly and efficiently locate the problem’s source, correlate the data, and enable the business to swiftly implement a fix. This improves reliability, increases customer satisfaction and retention, and lowers overall product support and ongoing maintenance costs.
With AppDynamics APM, for example, software teams can troubleshoot and quickly identify the source of problems so they can take fast, remedial action and lower mean time to recovery (MTTR) and repair to minimize or avoid costly service outages.
One real-world case study highlighted in the white paper is that of Nasdaq—the single largest U.S. stock exchange by volume. With AppDynamics APM, Nasdaq has dramatically improved visibility and time to resolution. The stock exchange has also gained the potential to automatically access new levels of actionable data. Nasdaq administrators, for instance, no longer need to perform the time-consuming task of scouring event logs to find issues. This has enabled them to cut down the time to pinpoint and resolve problems from hours or days to mere minutes.
APM is critical for identifying and resolving IoT performance issues, security problems, and outages much more quickly—and, ultimately, to getting the most out of IoT.
The Path Forward
IoT is a disruptive technology, but that does not mean the cost efficiencies, economies of scale, and revenue gains it provides will be automatic.
The true value of IoT lies in how effectively corporate enterprises can utilize and leverage it to achieve business goals such as cutting costs, increasing revenue, and optimizing labor resources. And, as MIT Technology Review’s new report highlights, advanced IoT performance monitoring tools are the key to helping IT teams unlock the full business value of IoT.
Read the Full Findings Report
To explore MIT Technology Review’s full findings on this topic, download the free white paper here. The white paper offers deeper insights into the rise of IoT and analysts’ predictions for the future, why IoT projects fail—and how to avoid them, and how APM can be used to drive IoT deployment success.