By 2020, enterprise will be utilizing 44 percent of IT budgets for IoT project development and maintenance.

76 percent of enterprises have short-term (within next two years) goals for the integration of new IoT solutions with legacy systems, according to a report from the Telecommunications Industry Association – prepared by Machina Research.

98 percent of decision makers consider product monitoring useful to their businesses, with 78 percent indicating the ability to receive real-time data from their products would be extremely beneficial.

Andy Castonguay, principal analyst, Machina Research, said: “Our research shows businesses are prepared to set aside nearly half of their IT budgets by 2020 to get this right, demonstrating just how much of an opportunity IoT represents.”

The survey of 200 businesses revealed the vast majority will be using IoT services within two years and that nearly two thirds of companies are currently working with systems integrators to progress internal IoT projects.

Demand for IoT applications and services remains extremely high. 91 percent is expected to be using some form of commercial IoT service within the next two years. 48 percent is benefitting from IoT today.

Investors in IoT trust systems integrators such as IBM, HP, Tech Mahindra, Wipro and Accenture (28 percent) and business software partners like Salesforce.com and Oracle (16 percent).

Among IoT companies, the focus was on end-to-end solution providers, whether standards-based (16 percent) or proprietary (15 percent), versus technology suppliers.

Mobile operators were not a partner of choice, with only 8 percent of respondents seeing them as primary providers.

In terms of driving adoption, cost savings held the edge over expanding business, with monitoring for maintenance (25 percent) and reducing operational expenses (25 percent) comprising half of respondents’ top strategic reasons for deployment, versus just over one third of respondents who favored expanding revenue opportunities (18 percent) or better competing with rival products and services (18 percent).

66 percent highlighted standards as being either crucial or significantly important in the adoption of the IoT services over the next couple of years. As part of the solution for solving the complexity of incorporating IoT, 76 percent of companies are either exclusively or primarily focusing on integrating legacy business systems with IoT solutions to get them fit for purpose.