Supporting The Internet Of Things

By 2020, somewhere between 25 and 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet; some estimates predict that this hyperconnectivity will generate $2.3 trillion in revenue by the year 2025. It’s called the Internet of Things (IoT), and while this rapid expansion will undoubtedly present new support issues, it will also present an opportunity for internal support and their vendors' external, customer-facing support to cooperate formally to benefit a business's end users.

To discover how - and whether - support organizations are planning for the IoT explosion, HDI fielded a survey in May and June 2015 to assess what both internal support and external, customer-facing, support organizations are doing to prepare. Ninety-four respondents identified themselves as external, customer facing (i.e., part of a support team for a vendor of products either in the IoT space, or potentially could be in the IoT space) and 189 identified themselves as internal (i.e., part of an internal technical support team that provides support to the company's employees).

The survey revealed that internal teams aren't prepared for the work that will be coming their way. Even if other departments are responsible for the IoT product, IT will be responsible - in many cases - for the network connections and, therefore any configurations needed to connect. It's likely that support will be assisting. Already, according to the survey results, above nine percent (median) of the total contacts received by internal support teams are related to the IoT, but there is likely large variance in how they define the IoT.

See more results of the survey to find out what interesting results HDI found within their research of Supporting the IoT.