Analytics, Cloud Computing Dominate Internet Of Things App Developers’ Plans

• 79% of Internet of Things (IoT) app developers spend at least 25% of their time with analytics or databases,  and 42% work on Big Data or advanced analytics projects.
• 55% of IoT developers primarily connect devices through the Cloud, with 32% connecting through a hub or middle tier.
• 26% of IoT developers most associate cloud computing with the Internet of Things and are 3X more likely to use the Cloud as a development environment.

These and many other insights are from the Internet of Things Study 2015, Volume I by Evans Data Corporation. Evans Data Corporation (EDC) maintains an international panel of developers who were contacted for this study. 578 in-depth interviews were conducted with developers who are currently planning and working on projects for connected devices and sensors. Only those developers who are currently writing apps for connected devices or plan to within the next six months are included in this survey.

Key take-aways include the following:

• 26% of Asia Pacific and 23% of North American app developers are actively working on IoT projects today. An additional 26% of Asia Pacific app developers are planning to develop IoT applications.  The Asia Pacific region is a strong catalyst of IoT research and development globally, with Samsung, Fujitsu and many other leading technology companies based there. EDC found that this region is growing quickly due to developers being involved with the Sensing China Initiative and the partnership China has with the European Union to create fifteen smart cities. India and South Korea’s partnership to bring IoT to the former nation is also reflected in the following distribution of IoT development activity:

• Commercial, ISV applications (36.5%), custom apps for system integrator and Value-Added Reseller (VAR) use (31.8%) and enterprise apps (18.3%) are the three most common app areas IoT developers are working on today.  Corporate workgroup (6.8%), Original Equipment Manufacturer (2.8%), scientific (2.6%) and other (1.2%) are the types of applications IoT developers are working on today.

• IoT app developers are primarily focused on analytics on aggregated data (25.3%), middleware development (20.5%), and backend/server development (18.6%).  Additional areas of focus include firmware or preloaded software for the client device (16.3%), downloadable applications for the client device (8.7%) and Web application or web-based user interface development (8.7%).  The following graphic compares where developers are primarily focusing their efforts.

• 34.2% of IoT developers spend 50% or more of their time working with analytics and databases. IoT developers are more likely to spend 25% of their development time working with analytics and databases across all app categories as well.  Clearly analytics and databases are an essential design element of current and future IoT applications.

• 37.9% of IoT apps are being developed in the Cloud, and 49.6% of developers plan to begin development there in the next twelve months.  Only 5.5% of IoT developers sruveyed have no plans to build their apps in the Cloud.

• IoT developers are priortizing their development efforts on apps that include multiple devices or sensors connected to the Internet 54.9% of the time.  Additional app development efforts include attaching a single device or sensor to the Internet (24.8%), multiple devices or sensors of the same kind to each other (13.7%), and multiple device or sensor types to each other (3.9%).

• 55.4% of IoT app developers are integrating to connected devices through the Cloud. 31.9% report their apps are integrated to connected devices through a hub or middle tier, and 11.2% are integrating connected devices directly to each other.

• Office productivity and office appliances lead connected device app development (15.8%) followed by e-commerce (B2B) (12.8%), and transpiration (not car-based) (12.3%).  Additional connected device projects include security and surveillance (11.1%), public utilities (10.7%), home and home appliance (6.1%), logistics (5.5%) and connected car (4.9%). The graphic below explains the connected device projects IoT developers are working on today.

• IoT developers most often associate cloud computing (26.1%), Big Data (17.4%) and real-time event processing (17.2) with IoT and the development efforts they are working on.  Also included are cognitive computing (11.1%), Wi-Fi enablement (10.9%), machine-to-machine communication (10.7%) and Near Field Computing (6.1%).The following graphics show the distribution of responses and a breakdown of responses by region.

• Security (21.2%), technology will exceed demand (15.8%), and variety of data (12.6%) are the top three concerns of IoT developers creating new apps. Additional concerns include privacy (11.9%), amount of data (10.2%) and tools do not meet requirements (8.2%). Additional concerns including insufficient standards (7.2%), fragmentation of platforms (6.1%) and fragementation of devcices (5.6%).

• 51% of IoT developers have management and leadership positions in their organizations, with 15% self-identifying themselves as project leads or team leaders. EDC found IoT developers self-identify themselves into job descriptions and titles that reflect a more fragmented, pluralistic development community globally than other app development areas. 25% of IoT developers defined themselves in a specialist role, including business analyst, data architect, software architect or Web developer.

• 94% of IoT developers are using one of a series of Microsoft Windows operating systems as their primary development host. 43.7% are developing on Windows 7, 37.6% on Windows 8/8.1, and 6.6% on Windows 10. 3.1% are using Linux as their operating system and 1.9%, Apple Mac OS X.