The importance of the Internet of Things, or IoT for short, is constantly growing. Companies are seeing a higher success rate and added value for the company when implementing IoT projects. The number of projects is also increasing rapidly. This is confirmed by a recent study by IDG Research Services with TÜV SÜD and other partners, for which 444 decision-makers from the DACH region were surveyed.

"Smaller companies with fewer than 500 employees in particular have reservations about IoT projects. They often lack resources and expertise when it comes to data protection and IT security, which is why they don't want to take any risks," says Stefan Vollmer, CTO of TÜV SÜD Sec-IT GmbH, explaining the results of the study. "Automated security solutions can provide good support here. As a first step, we recommend that companies continuously analyze their vulnerabilities."

Summary of the results

• 56% of the companies surveyed rate the relevance of IoT as very high or high. In 2018, the figure was 51%.
• The number of companies that have already implemented IoT projects has risen from 44% to 49%. The majority of initiatives are cross-location and/or cross-country.
• The number of failures has also decreased: Only 8 percent of companies did not achieve added value such as higher productivity or lower costs in their IoT projects.
• Current or future IoT projects focus on quality control (40 percent), Industry 4.0 (37 percent) and smart connected products.
• Most companies benefited from more efficient business processes and products in their IoT projects. Companies see the greatest potential of IoT in cost reductions (42%).
• In 50 percent of companies, the IT department and the CIO are responsible for IoT. Only 5 percent of companies have set up a special IoT team.
• The willingness to invest remains high: 77% would like to invest in IoT projects over the next few years, although not to the same extent.

You can download the study here.