The time is now to start taking advantage of Internet of Things (IoT) technology.

"Adoption of IoT is happening across industries, in governments, and in consumers' daily lives. We are increasingly observing how data generated by connected devices is helping businesses run more efficiently, gain insight into business processes, and make real-time decisions," said Carrie MacGillivray, Vice President, Internet of Things at IDC.

For businesses that have successfully adopted IoT technology, proved return on investment and are continuing to scale projects and increase initiatives across all aspects of their organizations. Implementing IoT projects is a given, but with 620 IoT platforms and counting, deciding the right approach for your company can be challenging. This blog post breaks down IoT projects into three categories:

1. IoT Retrofits
2. Custom Implementations
3. New Connected Equipment

We’ll highlight a few of the pros and cons of each type of project and help you make an informed decision on where to start or possibly reconsider your next project.

Much has been written about why utilities have been slower to adopt new technologies but there are good reasons utility leadership has employed a measured and reliable pace of new IoT project implementation and IoT adoption. Regulatory pressures to keep rates low, unproven technologies, staffing shortages and the costs to implement wide-scale projects have all contributed to slower adoption rates across the industry. However, the utility industry is poised to increase IoT adoption by 20% by 2025 - and these investments are now able to be quantified and thoroughly vetted to ensure a positive return for utilities undertaking these projects. This post explores the top motivators driving the growth of IoT adoption in utilities.

As discussed in our earlier post, A Smarter Approach to Digital Transformation in the Utility Industry, the utility industry is falling behind other industries when it comes to digitization. This affects day-to-day operations on multiple levels, including personnel. In this post, we’ll walk through a few of these opportunities and provide a few strategies to help utilities consider different ways to make incremental forward progress in their own transformation process.