Security, simplification and techno-weenies: How the Internet of Things (IoT) will overcome early adoption issues.

Among the many attendees of Dell, Inc.’s 1-5-10 Series IoT Discussion in San Francisco, several stars of IT analysis, advising and consulting were present to provide their perspective on the options and opportunities open to the Internet of Things (IoT) and its adopters.

Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group, Inc., was one such stand-out member in attendance, and he joined John Furrier, cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to run through the highlights and hazards of IoT services.

Need to simplify

One of the first issues discussed by the two was the need for IoT to mature to a more widely usable state. “The elements that need to be in place have to take us from a … ‘techno-weenie’ environment to where our spouses could use it and not hate us,” as Enderle phrased it. “We have to get to the solution part and away from the components part.”

The need for some company to handle the end-to-end programming of automated house elements (heating, lighting, etc.) so that “it just simply works” and consumers are not the ones needing to handle that aspect was one example given by Enderle as a goal for companies engaging in IoT development to focus on, though he anticipated reality would not catch up to the features promised by demos for quite some time.

Challenges for IT

Moving on to examine some of the entrenched problems making it difficult to achieve such simplicity, Enderle picked out the habits of companies that used isolated networks as a competitive advantage, a practice which has made it harder for these companies to integrate their discrete services. Also scrutinized was the feast and famine trend in IT, with staff being cut shortly before a new need for the department came up, leading to extra pressure on teams already stretched to near-breaking points.

Extra responsibilities without an increase in budget were another symptom of this cyclical trouble, and Enderle felt that at this point, IoT was waiting for another sort of “major data breach” event, in which a catastrophic event as a result of insufficient funding for maintenance leads to pressure landing on CEOs before a big change is finally issued in response.

Surveillance and security

Discussion of security measures took up the last part of the conversation, with Enderle appearing cautiously enthused by the potential of new federal GSA requirements for connections and security, which he felt may lead to a concerted effort to increase connectivity standards.

However, running against these potential improvements are the worries generated by the U.S. government’s own surveillance activities. Enderle pointed to the Snowden revelations as a major force leading companies with data-management or data-storage divisions to establish regional data centers, due to resultant distrust of U.S. surveillance. Also troubling to Enderle were the efforts by the U.S. government to establish laws granting them access to all encryption produced in the U.S., which he described as “the most insane thing I’ve ever seen.”

However, with security, Enderle said, “it’s all in flux.” Customers and companies don’t want their data accessible by national governments, foreign or otherwise, which has led to a swing back to the ’80s style of vertical, bullet-proof end-to-end security, away from open-source and its lack of individual verification for contributors.

While security is on people’s minds, Enderle feels that the big firms will likely do best business, and as he noted, “Amazon’s in a beautiful position at the moment to kind of take the market.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Dell’s 1-5-10 IoT event.

Photo by SiliconANGLE