IoT seen as key revenue and fresh business generator

The Internet of Things category has been identified as the emerging technology that offers the most current and future revenue potential for the channel.

Trade association CompTIA has delivered its annual top ten of emerging technologies that are most likely to deliver both fresh revenue opportunities and business for the channel.

The Internet of Things topped the list last year but there has been some shuffling in the other positions with the top three also including artificial intelligence and 5G.

Two new technologies, serverless computing and robotics, made the latest list pushing out automation, which can be perhaps seen as more of a mainstream proposition now, and quantum computing.

The channel is not going to be able to translate the energy around IoT into instant revenues and there is plenty of education that still needs to be done.

“Everybody in the technology world, as well as many consumers, is hearing the term Internet of Things,” said Frank Raimondi, a member of the CompTIA Emerging Technology Community leadership group who works in strategic channel and business development for Chargifi.

“To say it’s confusing and overwhelming is an understatement,” he added “IoT may mean many things to many people, but it can clearly mean incremental or new business to a channel partner if they start adding relevant IoT solutions with their existing and new customers. More importantly, they don’t have to start over from scratch.”

CompTIA's emerging technology community vice chair Maddy Martin said that there was plenty of interest across key verticals in a technology that would improve data security, decision making speed and accuracy and efficiency.

“With more capable staff, better-qualified sales leads, more efficient issue resolution, and systems that feed actual data back in for future process and product improvements, companies employing AI technologies can use resources with far greater efficiency,” Martin added. “Best of all, as investment and competition increase in the AI realm, costs are reduced.”