Most CIOs fear IoT performance problems

Nearly three quarters of IT leaders are concerned that Internet of Things (IoT) performance problems could directly impact business operations and significantly damage revenues.

Software intelligence company, Dynatrace, has announced the findings of an independent global survey of 800 CIOs, which reveals that 78 percent of CIOs said there is a risk that their organisation will roll-out IoT strategies without having a plan or solution in place to manage the performance of the complex cloud ecosystems that underpin IoT rollouts.  69 per cent of CIOs predicted that IoT would become a significant performance management burden as they struggle to overcome the escalating complexity of their modern enterprise cloud environments.

Dave Anderson, digital performance expert at Dynatrace said: “Businesses across every industry are eagerly exploring IoT’s potential to engage new markets, drive new revenue and create stronger competitive advantage.” However, he added, IoT ecosystems and delivery chains are intricate and boundless, which creates unprecedented frequency of change, size and complexity in the cloud environments on which they are built. “Enterprises are already struggling to master cloud complexity, and now IOT substantially magnifies this challenge.”

The report looks at the challenges organisations face in maintaining seamless software experiences as they continue to roll-out IoT ecosystems. Key findings include:

The scale of IoT is just too big to manage traditionally. More than 73 percent of CIOs worry that the number of third-parties and internal resources involved in IoT service delivery chains will make it incredibly difficult to identify who is responsible when performance problems arise.

Over half of CIOs say understanding the impact that IoT platform providers and network operators have on performance is a crucial challenge to managing user experience in IoT.

More than 75 percent of CIOs are concerned that problems within the platform or network layer that impact the performance of their applications could be hidden from them by an IoT service provider.

It’s impossible to master IoT complexity manually. More than 84 percent of CIOs believe  that AI and the ability to automate most of the processes that support IoT deployments will play a crucial role in the success of their IoT strategies.

IoT is losing its ability to meet user expectations. More than 70 percent of CIOs worry that consumer and user expectations for faster, fault-free experiences could soon increase beyond what IT teams can deliver.

About 69 percent of  CIOs fear losing control over the user experience as the IoT delivery chain continues to become more convoluted.

Meanwhile, 64 percent of CIOs are worried that the spiralling numbers of wearables could soon make it impossible to manage mobile performance for such devices.

IoT creates new user experience headaches, including ensuring that IoT device firmware updates and security patches don’t have a negative performance impact (62 percent), Having the ability to track application behaviour on IoT devices as they interact with cloud services (60 percent).

That seems like a very long series of headaches.

Anderson said: “If IoT is to deliver on its promise, organisations can’t afford to be overwhelmed by the complex issues it presents – which is exactly what happens if an enterprise is using a traditional monitoring approach. Platform-specific tools and do-it-yourself solutions aren’t built for web-scale, highly dynamic, complex cloud environments – they leave you cobbling together a mix of solutions which will never add up to a sophisticated platform that gives you a complete view of your environment and automated way of making sense of everything real-time. ”

He said that organisations need a new approach that works at scale and simplifies IoT cloud complexity; a software intelligence platform that uses AI and automation to provide full operational insights into vast ecosystems of IoT sensors, devices, gateways, applications and underlying infrastructure.