IT professionals are pretty excited about the potential benefits of the Internet of Things, but few are ready to deal with the new breed of connected devices landing in their organizations.

The warning comes from Spiceworks, a professional network of IT pros, which says that more than half of IT professionals are ill-equipped to handle what it describes as an “inevitable” wave of connected devices hooked up to corporate networks. While the majority of survey respondents are well aware of IoT’s onslaught into their environments, few are actually doing anything about it.

The report, “The Devices are Coming”, finds that 71 percent of IT pros believe the IoT will affect their workplace. But 59 percent say they’re not doing anything to prepare for the impact it will have. Spiceworks conducted its survey in April, and quizzed more than 440 IT pros in the US and EMEA.

“The data technology trends we’ve seen emerge over the past few years, like BYOD, coupled with the IoT will have a dramatic impact on how IT professionals do their jobs,” said Kathryn Pribish, Voice of IT program manager at Spiceworks, in a prepared statement.

“IT professionals understand the inevitability of the IoT but the reality is, though the impact will be gradual, resource-strained IT departments and others who haven’t jumped on the IoT bandwagon will be playing catch-up if they don’t adequately prepare.”

Of the thirty-odd percent who are trying to do something, 68 percent said they were investing in new hardware and infrastructure in anticipation of more connected devices entering their networks. Meanwhile, another 63 percent were buying more security solutions, and another 55 percent were in the midst of expanding bandwidth to make room for more ‘things’. Bandwidth is one of the least problematic areas however, as about 70 percent of IT pros said their existing networks are already able to support at least two devices per employee.

Bandwidth could become an issue later though, which is why 43 percent of IT pros are planning to build a separate network for new devices to protect their existing infrastructure. Another 23 percent said they were planning to accommodate IoT devices on their existing corporate networks, while 25 percent said they had no plans at all for managing new devices.

While most IT professionals recognize that IoT is going to cause a strain on their networks, it seems that many are either too lazy, or don’t have the resources to shore things up in readiness. That could prove to be a reckless decision given IoT’s inevitable march. IDC recently said it expects the global IoT market to be worth $7.1 trillion by 2020, up from $1.9 trillion now – in other words, we can expect to see millions if not billions of new devices entering the workplace by the end of the decade.

photo credit: ralphbijker via photopin cc; Infographic via Spiceworks