Top 5 Reasons IoT projects fail

If you’re doing an Internet of Things deployment, prepare for failure. That’s the overarching takeaway from a survey Cisco conducted of more than 1,800 IT leaders in the U.S. and U.K.

Up to 60% of IoT projects that respondents started stalled at the proof of concept phase, Cisco found. Just 26% of respondents said they had what they considered a successful IoT deployment. So where do IoT projects go south?

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Cisco found that in most cases, it was not a technology problem. In most cases, problems arise from company culture, organization and structure. The top five most common reasons IoT projects fail are:

• They take too long
• The enterprise has limited expertise
• Quality of data is sub-par
• Lack of integration across teams
• Budget over-runs

The survey did not just look at failures, but also examined what ingredients make an IoT project successful. Of the respondents who did have successful deployments, 54% said collaboration between the IT and business departments was absolutely critical. Cisco also recommends asking fpr vendors help guiding IoT projects to provide added expertise that may be lacking in the organization that's doing the deployment.