• Matthew Dunkley, Senior Director of Strategy & Product Management at Flexera


• 14.11.2018 12:30 pm
undisclosed

The Internet of Things has become ingratiated into our everyday lives, but despite this, there still remains a lack of control in both those delivering products and those receiving them.  2019 will bring with it greater understanding of monetisation, but also greater security risk.

Here’s our top 5 IOT predictions for 2019:

1. IoT will be weaponised 

2019 will be the year when IoT will be weaponised to attack major infrastructure and governments, causing disruption for citizens. This danger has been present for a while, and reports suggest that rogue actors and nation states have already infiltrated key systems, and re-waiting to be activated to cause disruption. 

1. New digital and recurring business and revenue models will take hold 

Companies in the manufacturing, medical and telco sectors will start implementing new digital business models, moving from a ‘one-off-sale’ to an ‘as-a-service-model’ that will bundle devices, software, services and data.

Enterprise and Industrial IoT companies will start analysing and improving their customer experience to achieve their goal of high renewal rates as they move to recurring revenue models. They’ll invest in self-service, automated processes for software delivery and updates and more flexible and agile processes to change device capability and capacity on demand.

1. IoT companies will offer SaaS solutions

Increasingly, IoT companies will offer SaaS solutions that help displaying and analysing data feeds coming directly from Edge devices. While a few will try to come up with new models for monetising data directly, most will rely on consumption-based models for the use of their SaaS applications, moving away from a pure, per-user monetisation approach.

1. Bill of Materials (BOM) will be a must, not a maybe

Software and IoT companies will more diligently build BOM for all of their products and provide to customers. Related to that, there will be new laws requiring software BOM. For example, already the U.S. FDA has proposed requiring software BOM for medical devices. More companies will require a BOM before purchasing software packages – even in the absence of legislation.

1. Devices and systems will become platforms for continuous innovation

Device manufacturers will invest more in the development of modular systems and the refinement of their underlying business model. They’ll offer more ways for customers to add functionality as part of a modular system. New pricing models and advanced technology for IoT monetisation including licensing, entitlement management and business model enforcement will be drivers to take these solutions to market.