The Internet of Things Myth by William Webb & Matt Hatton

Author:William Webb & Matt Hatton [Webb, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-09T23:00:00+00:00

The above chapter only briefly examines the potential changes required in organisations deploying IoT. Any one of these could be an essay in its own right. It should also be noted that this is not an exhaustive list but does cover the most prominent areas for consideration when adopting disruptive technologies.

5.5

Moving out of “PoC Hell”

The challenges associated with IoT deployment as outlined in Section 5.4 are neatly illustrated by the problems that most organisations have in moving from a proof-of-concept (PoC) to a full deployment.

The proof-of-concept is a well-established mechanism whereby an organisation that is considering deploying a new technology can run a trial with a chosen vendor (or vendors) to test it. It follows initial discussions with vendors and in some cases is followed by a separate proof-of-value (PoV) to further test the commercial ramifications. If the PoC (and PoV, if applicable) are successful then things move on to full deployment.

The Internet of Things has much more than its fair share of PoCs. So much so that both buyers and sellers in the space are expending substantial effort on running PoCs that never turn into a full commercial deployment. As a rule of thumb, around 80% of IoT deployments are PoCs, and 80% of those never turn into a commercial project. This makes it very hard for anyone selling IoT to make a profit and it also burns up resources on the buyer’s side too.

The fundamental issue is one of alignment. It’s very easy for an IT department to set up a vendor PoC on an area that is nominally interesting. It is quite another for the buyer to be ready to actually deploy should the PoC prove successful. Most IoT deployments require some (often quite significant) change in the commercial and operational models of the adopting organisation, as discussed above. But in many, if not most, cases the company for which the PoC is being run has not given sufficient consideration to the non-technical aspects of the PoC, i.e. how it’s going to be deployed in real life with the required changes to internal business processes and practices. The result is a PoC which might ‘work’ within a set of narrowly defined technical parameters, but with which the client is not ready or able to make the next step to commercial deployment within a reasonable time-frame, if at all.

The question, of course, is: how does an organisation avoid getting mired in PoC hell?

The key question is this: is the company really ready to go to a full deployment? In order to answer that question, the vendor should be asking:

Is there really a requirement for a PoC or is this really about broader education on IoT? If so, are there other resources that the potential client can be directed towards, e.g. online education.

Has the organisation thought through the commercial and operational implications of moving to a full deployment? If this is a project that has been exclusively managed by the IT department that should set alarm bells ringing immediately.

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