As we head into spring 2019, the story around Connected Industry continues to be the blooming of business value across verticals. A common theme across our discussions with practitioners, clients and vendors is that businesses are less concerned with the specifics around technology choices and more focused on eliciting value from their digital transformation initiatives.
It’s worth highlighting how broad transformations reach across industries as proof of concept projects give way to production implementations leaving lessons along the way.
The logistics industry, for instance is benefiting from customer self-service and end-to-end transparency as table stakes. Healthcare is being transformed with the advent of smart diabetes management systems, intelligent vaporizers and even smart contact lenses. Factories are improving visibility, quality and efficiencies through IoT. The construction industry is embracing connected technologies through the adoption of wearables, drones, smarter building materials and use of drones and sensors to monitor sites.
There continues to be sustained investment from tech giants: SAP has recently unveiled its broad Leonardo Internet of Things offerings, staking a claim to the opportunity to help drive Industrial transformation. Microsoft has also announced an expanded set of IoT capabilities in Windows 10.
Challenges still remain, with regulatory uncertainty and security concerns top of mind. AI and machine learning are becoming ubiquitous across industries, though ethics concerns are increasingly coming to the fore. A Trend Micro study has shown how the adoption of smart home technologies creates new risks.
Progress comes gradually, then suddenly – we’re watching incremental changes with the view that substantive progress will continue to unfold in 2019.
