To gather insights on the current and future state of IoT, we talked to 23 executives involved with the Internet of Things. We asked them, "What are the most common issues you see preventing companies from fully realizing the benefits of IoT?"

Talent

• Projects stall because companies are not able, or do not have the talent, to complete the end-to-end solution.
• Challenges/barriers are connecting with legacy infrastructure. Organizations are slow to upgrade to next-generation technology. Connectivity can be a problem for remote locations. Vendors are so focused on platforms rather than the fact that customers do not have the people capable of performing the analysis, AI/ML skills to take advantage of the data to solve problems. There are some significant skills deficient. Employees don’t understand use cases to drive business results.
• I think some companies are uneasy over cybersecurity risk potential, deployment costs, and data talent shortages, as well as the potential to add value. All of these things weigh on deliberations.
• The unrealized complexity of deployment and the lack of skills to do so.
• Building hardware has a lot of pitfalls that you need expertise to handle. It’s also hard to budget for the hardware since you are constantly iterating.

Problem Definition

• Failing to have a use case or a specific problem to solve. Only using their existing stack to solve the problem. Rethink the problem disregarding legacy solutions which do not scale. Pick the right technology for the problem you are trying to solve. In-memory databases are a great fit for geospatial and time series data.
• Lack of business need or use case. Taking a regular product and making it connected increases cost – must also increase the value to the end user.
• Failure to know which IoT devices have unsecure open source code. Knowing how you are going to monetize the IoT device before you develop it. Knowing the business problem you are solving. 
• The world is still locked into the Integration of Devices rather than the Internet of Things. In parallel with the true meaning of Internet of Things devices, we enable devices to act as IoT via integration. There is still a general lack of awareness about the impact IoT can have and what problems it can solve. With buy-in from crucial industry thought leaders, we can move ahead to fully adopt and embrace IoT and lead the movement.
• Failing to identify the real business need.
• Creating business value for customers without engineering bright and shiny things.

Other

• Lack of a seamless and secure data fabric platform.
• Tools available to handle data are few and far between for industrial use cases. Streaming data tools for connecting platforms. Determining the right hardware for compute. Volumes and responsiveness. Resin.io firmware updates.
• It’s challenging to make something at scale while maintaining quality.
• Creating scalable devices that connect to everything they need to.
• I believe the issue isn’t so much that companies and individuals aren’t fully realizing the benefits of IoT and web-connected devices. The market is clearly adopting and embracing products that make their lives easier, simplifies tasks, and improves productivity. Rather, I believe that the market is ignoring a significant risk that is increasing by the day. With every newly connected device that is installed without security, the potential size and scope of the risk and future attacks only increase. The check will come due – it’s simply a matter of the time and the target – which will be decided by whoever has control of these billions of connected devices - and it’s not the device owners).
• Not knowing what technologies to use given all of the options.
• Data lakes turning into swamps.
• Legacy applications and thinking need to be educated, informed, and excited about what can be accomplished with IoT and data that are analyzed in real time.

Here’s who we spoke to:

• Adam Fingerman, CXO and Co-founder, and Troy Petersen, Marketing Director, ArcTouch
• Andreas Pettersson, CTO and CPO, Arcules
• Sean Grundy, CEO and Founder, Bevi
• Jeff Bonnell, V.P. of Industry Solutions, Coresystems
• Eli Feldman, CTO, Advanced Technology, EPAM
• Brent Pietrzak, V.P. Producer Solutions and Strategy, Flexera
• Scott Allen, CMO, FreeWave
• Mark Herring, CMO, Tim Hall, V.P. of Products, Brian Mullen, V.P. of Business Development, InfluxData
• Dipti Borkar, V.P. of Product Marketing, Kinetica
• Crystal Valentine, V.P. of Technology Strategy, MapR
• Jesse Robbins, CEO, Orion Labs
• Lars Knoll, CTO, Qt
• Olivier Pauzet, V.P. and General Manager IoT Solutions, Sierra Wireless
• Jens-Ole Graulund, CTO, Spiio
• Monte Zweben, CEO, Splice Machine
• Shawn Reynolds, CMO, Telit
• Yu Xu, CEO, TigerGraph
• Ray Wu, Founder and CEO, Wynd
• Alex Kubicek, CEO, Understory
• Jeff Finn, CEO, zvelo