In a move that was undoubtedly set to happen at some point, IBM has launched a new IoT consulting practice that it says can give enterprises a single throat to choke—as well as capable expertise—for their IoT strategy.
The new group will be staffed with more than 1,500 consultants at first, placed at nine centers in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. As an enticement, IBM is offering enterprises access to its Watson IoT Platform at no charge, up to a certain level of usage. Here's IBM's pitch in a nutshell:
By integrating IBM Watson IoT Platform APIs and technologies, including cognitive, analytics, mobile, security and cloud capabilities, together with development and implementation consulting and ongoing support, clients can fully use the IoT without the risk and complexity of dealing with multiple vendors.
The initial industries IBM is targeting with the new practice include automotive, industrial products, retail, telecommunications, transportation and smart buildings, among others. Digital imaging and printing provider Ricoh is named in IBM's release as an initial customer for the practice.
Meanwhile, it's not as if IBM offers every piece of the IoT puzzle from a technology and equipment basis. In fact, it has at least 66 IoT partners already, spanning silicon and sensors, networking, devices, gateways and cloud services. The new consulting practice's job will be to stitch together a complete solution effectively, using both partner and IBM technology.
There is the rub, of course. The sheer complexity of large-scale IoT projects creates important considerations at the contract negotiation level for enterprises when signing a major consulting engagement. For decades, many an ERP project has gone over time and budget due to missed milestones, deliverables, inadequate testing and other factors. It's not difficult to see how IoT projects could rack up similar overruns.
In any case, there's still plenty of runway ahead for most enterprises' IoT initiatives, notes Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Andy Mulholland.
"IBM's move could be interpreted as a tacit admission that there are problems across the technology industry in delivering IoT solutions around design, deployment, and integration due to the skills required," he says. "This is certainly true, but there are just as many challenges on the buying side, with customers also struggling to decide how to deploy IoT to create business value. It seems likely that IBM will use their position to try to gain access to the boardroom, or at least senior executives, to try to make a break through for their IoT solutions proposition."
