This article is part of the Key Research Findings from the 2018 DZone Guide to IoT: Harnessing Device Data.

Introduction

For this year's DZone Guide to IoT, we surveyed 522 software professionals on various aspect of the Internet of Things. From this data, we've put together an article on IoT adoption and the challenges inherent therein. 

Technology Adoption

Overall interest in working with IoT has remained mainly static between 2017 and 2018. Respondents saying that they have worked on IoT projects in the past and are interested in working on more in the future (29%), and those saying they have not worked on any IoT projects before, but are nonetheless interested in working on IoT in the future (64%), changed only a fraction of a percent from last year’s results, showing no significant difference year-over-year. Interestingly, however, respondents who said they are planning on adopting a new IoT technology over the next six months increased dramatically – an 18% year-over-year increase, or a 36% swing, closing the gap between affirmative and negative responses to 18%. Among the related technologies these respondents plan to adopt, AI/ML was the most popular category (61% among respondents planning to adopt), followed by sensors (54%), and IoT development platforms (50%).

Challenges

71% of respondents to this year’s IoT survey are “very concerned” about security in an IoT context, in line with the 74% we saw in last year’s survey. When asking respondents who have experience with IoT development about challenges in this area, we added the choice “device security” to this year’s survey, and it became the most popular challenge among responses, with 52% of IoT-experienced respondents saying they experience challenges with security. The respondents saying that unpredictable physical environments are a challenge in IoT development remained about the same in 2018 (48%) as it was in 2017 (46%). Other challenges, however, had significant decreases; challenges with unreliable data in IoT contexts fell 9% from last year (26% to 17%); and there was a 6% drop in responses claiming challenges in power constraints (44% to 38%), latency (38% to 32%), and device unreliability (43% to 37%). As such, it seems that as enhancements in hardware technology allow for faster, more energy efficient, closer to lossless connections between connected machines, finding adequate security for these devices is another issue entirely, with –potentially – more serious ramifications.

Conclusion

Given that security and hardware concerns seem to be the main barrier to great IoT adoption among developers, does the technology have a future in the mainstream? As long as there is Internet, people will try to hack it — will this cause developers and organizations to continue to steer clear of any real investment in game-changing IoT devices?

This article is part of the Key Research Findings from the 2018 DZone Guide to IoT: Harnessing Device Data.