According to the research firm Gartner, "The installed base of 'things', excluding PCs, tablets and smartphones, will grow to 26 billion units in 2020, which is almost a 30-fold increase from 0.9 billion units in 2009."
On this note, Infoblox in partnership with ITWeb, is conducting an online Internet of things (IoT) survey during July and August to gain valuable insight into the Internet of things strategies within South African organisations.
"This survey is designed to gauge opportunities and challenges surrounding the IoT and assess whether enterprise networks in South Africa are ready for a surge in IoT deployments," says Chris Marrison, EMEA technical director at Infoblox.
Marrison believes there is a tremendous amount of buzz around the IoT: How it will revolutionise manufacturing, agriculture, medicine and our daily lives; the novel capabilities it will support; the new era it will herald. But the IoT relies on networks, and networking technologies are deployed and managed by people - network administrators, in particular. Yet in recent years network administrators have been asked to "do more with less" with less budget, and a smaller staff.
He adds: "I have spoken with many customers who initially said they had no IoT devices whatsoever. When pressed, though, and given concrete examples (networked badge readers, surveillance systems, HVAC systems, cash registers, vending machines and so on), most realised they already had at least a nascent IoT infrastructure."
Marrison says he has also encountered very few IT organisations that have deployed any infrastructure specifically for IoT, from dedicated networks to management systems. Since, in most cases, no dedicated network infrastructure exists for IoT devices, most IT organisations relegate IoT devices to existing networks.
"I find that most organisations simply dump IoT devices on existing guest wireless networks, which usually provide Internet access (which many "things" require). However, guest wireless networks usually don't allow access to internal resources (e.g., Domain Controllers, database and file servers), which other IoT devices need, and they provide little or no authentication, unpredictable performance, and no prioritisation of traffic, all of which are required by some categories of these devices," says Marrison.
"Despite the varied requirements of these IoT devices, many IT organisations I've met with described having 'things' that are 'thrown over the wall' for deployment, well after another business unit had made the purchasing decision," Marrison says.
He goes on to say that he believes this difficulty in implementation isn't surprising.
"From our customers, we've learned that IoT devices aren't that smart. Many lack a user interface, making configuration a challenge - and often the responsibility of a network administrator, setting up DHCP options.
Marrison also believes that the collection of useful and reliable data is also another trend taking place.
"We come across this phenomenon all the time. When companies have grown and kept on adding systems. They then struggle to aggregate this data into a meaningful dataset from which decisions can be made."
Marrison also points out that many are not easily upgradeable. Many are designed for consumer rather than enterprise deployment, and lack tools and features required for enterprise use. "A university network administrator told me about dorm networks with hundreds of Apple TVs - making Apple's Remote iOS app nearly useless, because it presents you with a list of those hundreds of Apple TVs to choose from. Some "Things" are just designed poorly."
"This same lack of capability extends to security features. Most "Things" don't support strong authentication mechanisms such as 802.1X, leaving network administrators to use their MAC addresses - or nothing - as a weak form of authentication, he says.
Marrison concludes by advising that the Internet of Things could make it harder for IT leaders to stay in the loop when devices are added to enterprise networks, much as the BYOD trend has seen employees bringing personal devices to work without prior IT department approval.
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