There’s an IT in IoT. There’s also an OT in IoT, albeit with a small ‘o’. The Internet of Things (IoT) can serve both Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) in an organisation. The IoT’s sensor, identification and real-time location technologies digitally capture what is physically happening in day-to-day operations.
Where should our organisation start adopting IoT initiatives?
A question we often hear is “where to start”. An obvious starting point would be OT because, you know, operations: that’s what IoT captures. Right?
In fact, our experience shows that an IT-first approach to IoT adoption has emerged as the more promising path. And so, to mark IoT Day 2025, today let’s argue our case!
OT is limited by constraints
Q: What do you call a $20k industrial machine retrofitted with a $20 wireless sensor? A: Permissionless innovation.
At reelyActive, we’ve visited plenty of operations floors over the years, many with high-tech machinery that collects digital data. However, more often than not, operators tell us that the data is in fact inaccessible due to unjustifiable vendor licensing costs, security concerns or even internal policies.
As a result, it is often easier to retrofit an inexpensive, commodity wireless sensor to collect data than it is to access the primary data from the machinery itself! That parallel data stream might be directed to a standalone laptop or Raspberry Pi (shhh… don’t tell IT!), but to achieve scale, a conversation with IT about using “their” network is indeed inevitable…
IT has the IoT infrastructure
Q: What do you call a WiFi AP with an IoT radio? A: Opportunity knocking.
What if IT told you that they could capture your wireless sensor data using the WiFi access point (AP) infrastructure that’s already deployed throughout your facilities? In the five years since we’ve been technology partners with HPE Aruba Networking, we’ve seen the IoT infrastructure obstacle transform into an opportunity: wherever there’s WiFi, there can be IoT!
Many IT departments are just now discovering that they hold the keys to a coveted IoT infrastructure which is already detecting the ambient Bluetooth Low Energy devices present in any given space. That’s why we’re excited to contribute to the HPE Aruba IoT Operations ecosystem which presents, in the same platform, all those IoT devices in a familiar, IT-friendly way.
As a result, IoT becomes a boon, rather than a burden, to IT. Managing IoT devices on a network is even easier than managing IT devices on the same network. And so, with IoT data readily collected, a knock on the door from BI becomes inevitable…
IT and BI (often) get along
Q: What do you call a data analyst with access to IoT data? A: Your new best friend.
What if IT could easily provide their business intelligence (BI) colleagues with a continuous stream of IoT data in their platform of choice? They can! And that’s where our Pareto Anywhere open source IoT middleware comes in.
You’re a Microsoft shop? Connect your IoT infrastructure to your SQL Server using Pareto Anywhere and analyse the data in Power BI—like you already do!
You’re open source all the way? Connect your IoT infrastructure to the Elastic Stack, to InfluxDB & Grafana, or to any of the countless free tools available, using the same open source IoT middleware. You’re free to use the data as you please!
At the end of the day what matters is that someone is looking at the IoT data in a familiar platform and ensuring that the data is put to good use. IT can easily relay the IoT data wherever it needs to be.
Start with the capital IT in IoT
While the Internet of Things benefits organisations as a whole—not just IT or OT—experience has shown that successful IoT adoption nonetheless depends on where and how initiatives emerge. With the current level of maturity of IoT technologies and vendor ecosystems, IT is often readily equipped to manage all the key aspects of an organisation’s IoT adoption initiatives.
The advent of a shared IT/IoT infrastructure with an IT-friendly management interface throughout is perhaps the unsung hero we should be celebrating on IoT Day 2025!
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