IoT already impacting IT infrastructure from edge to the cloud

The massive amounts of data generated by IoT is already having significant impact on enterprises, with companies planning to increase their storage capacity and IT infrastructure to manage the data storm.

New figures from 451 Research show organisations deploying IoT are planning increases in storage capacity (32.4%), network edge or perimeter equipment (30.2%), server infrastructure (29.4%) and off-premises cloud infrastructure (27.2%) in the next 12 months as they grapple with the increasing volumes of data generated by IoT.

Just 26.1% said they expected no change in their IT resources as a result of their  IoT projects.

Changes to company-owned/leased data centers and facilities were expected by 22.5%, with changes to third party managed service provider facilities (17.9% ) and third party colocation facilities (10.2%) also flagged.

The Voice of the Enterprise: IoT – Workloads and Key Projects report shows spending on IoT projects continues to be 'solid', with 65.6% of respondents planning to increase spending in the next 12 months and just 2.7% planning a decrease in spend.

The report is drawn from survey's of more than 60,000 senior IT buyers globally, with the majority based in North America and Europe.

Most companies say they initially store (53.1%) and analyse (59.1%) IoT data at a company owned data center, however while data remains stored their for two-thirds of respondents, nearly one-third move data to the public cloud.

"Researchers find that, once IoT data moves beyond operational and real-time uses and the focus is on historical use cases such as regulatory reporting and trend analysis, cloud storage gives organisations greater flexibility and often significnat cost savings for the long term," 541 Research says.

Despite this centralisation of IoT data, the survey also finds action at the edge.

"Just under half of respondents say they do IoT processing – including data analysis, data aggregation or data filtering – at the edge, either on the IoT device (22.25%) or in nearby IT infrastructure (23.3%)," 451 Research says.

Rich Karpinski, 451 Research Voice of the Enterprise: Internet of Things research director, says companies are currently processing IoT workloads to improve security, process real-time operational action triggers and reduce IoT data storage and transport requirements.

"While some enterprises say that in the future they will do more analytics – including heavy data processing and analysis driven by big data or AI – at the network edge, for now that deeper analysis is happning in company-owned data centers or in the public cloud," Karpinksi says.

And while IT-centric projects are the dominant IoT use cases today – particularly data center management and surveillance and security monitoring – 451 Research is forecasting that in two years facilities automation will most likely be the most popular use case.

Line of business-centric supply chain management is also epxected to jump from number six to number three during that two year timeframe.