Darren Jackson: Unlocking Opportunities in the Internet of Things

Many enterprise customers believe that vendors haven’t significantly lowered the biggest barriers to IoT adoption. Darren Jackson, a partner with Bain's Technology practice, discusses how companies can succeed by focusing on fewer industries, understanding customer pain points and addressing those concerns through end-to-end solutions.

Read the Bain Brief: Unlocking Opportunities in the Internet of Things

Read the transcript below.

DARREN JACKSON: Enterprise customers remain bullish on IoT. However, expectations have certainly been tempered. Solutions are taking a bit longer to implement and achieve the ROI that they expected. That said, we still expect to see significant growth in the market.

In 2021, across hardware, software and services, we expect the markets to achieve about $520 billion of revenue. And that's 2x what we saw just in 2017. We are seeing some changes in the market. For example, cloud service providers have achieved a more prominent, influential role.

CSPs lower the barriers to adoption, enabling companies to scale quicker. Yet their offer is not tied with specific industry vertical and it's a bit broad, enabling opportunities for others. In order to capitalize on these opportunities, companies need to focus on fewer verticals.

We're still seeing people focus on four, five, six verticals, which we would say is too many. We would say two to three at best. Once you focus on those verticals, you achieve deep expertise and a competitive advantage. As vendors gain this competitive advantage, they can partner to create true end-to-end solutions, which we know customers are demanding. Understanding customer pain points is the first step. Addressing them in an end-to-end fashion will enable companies to succeed in the Internet of Things.

Read the Bain Brief

Unlocking Opportunities in the Internet of Things

Vendors can improve the market by addressing customer concerns over security, integration and returns on investment.