The Eclipse Foundation recently announced the availability of its 2021 IoT and Edge Commercial Adoption Survey report which is based on an online survey of more than 300 IoT and edge professionals. To find out more about the report and its findings, VMblog reached out to Frédéric Desbiens, program manager at the Eclipse Foundation.
VMblog: Before we get started, can you give VMblog viewers a quick background on the Eclipse Foundation and its role in the open source space?
Frédéric Desbiens: The Eclipse Foundation is one of the largest open source foundations in the world. We’re probably best known for the Eclipse IDE used by millions of developers or perhaps for the Jakarta EE platform, the successor to Java EE. However, we are also one of, if not THE, largest open source organizations focused on IoT and Edge Computing technologies. The Eclipse IoT Working Group and Edge Native Working Group have members including Bosch, Intel, Huawei, Red Hat, Eurotech, ADLINK, and many more. Together, these projects have generated more than 30M lines of code.
VMblog: What exactly is the thrust of your latest IoT & Edge Commercial Adoption Survey report?
Desbiens: We wanted to gain a better understanding of the overall IoT and edge computing ecosystem’s challenges and the concerns of today’s organizations deploying these technologies. This year’s survey not only focuses on how today’s organizations are perceiving IoT and edge adoption on a macro level but also to gain valuable insights on the overall IoT and Edge ecosystem’s challenges and concerns.
VMblog: What are some of the key takeaways from the data provided?
Desbiens: First and foremost, interest in IoT and edge computing is on the rise, even during the recent pandemic. 47% of respondents currently deploy IoT solutions and an additional 39% plan to deploy within the next 12 to 24 months. Edge computing adoption is also picking up, with 54% of organizations either utilizing or planning to utilize edge computing technologies within 12 months. Another 30% have plans to evaluate edge deployments over the next 12 to 24 months.
Just as importantly from our perspective, 74% of organizations are factoring open source IoT and edge solutions into their deployment plans, which is a 14% increase over the 2019 survey. This clearly demonstrates that the dominant IoT & edge platforms will either be open source or based on open source.
VMblog: What seems to concern enterprises and other technology organizations about IoT and Edge Computing?
Desbiens: Our survey found that the top three IoT and edge operational challenges are; number one, end-to-end monitoring of the IoT or edge solution; two, overall device management; and, three, securing these solutions, including the network, the devices, and the data itself.
VMblog: What recommendations does the Eclipse Foundation have for enterprises, solution providers, platforms, and software vendors on the IoT and Edge Computing front?
Desbiens: We have quite a few of these in the paper itself, but it’s clear that solutions based on open source are going to play a big role in these markets. Whether you’re an enterprise, a solution provider, or a platform vendor, you need to embrace industrial open source and open standards as enablers for interoperability, security, manageability, and freedom from lock-in that benefit the ecosystem and make it more resilient to change. In broad strokes, leveraging open source building blocks will help avoid the costs and lack of flexibility associated with proprietary and closed solutions.
VMblog: Where can our viewers get a hold of the detailed results?
Desbiens: Anyone can download the 2021 IoT & Edge Commercial Adoption Survey Report now. And if companies are interested in participating in the industry-scale collaboration in open source IoT and edge technologies, they can visit Eclipse IoT and the Edge Native Working Group to get involved.
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Frédéric Desbiens is a program manager at the Eclipse Foundation, the world’s largest open source software foundation focused on IoT and Edge, where he runs the organizations’ efforts for IoT and Edge Computing. His job is to help the community innovate by bringing devices and software together. In the past, he worked as a product manager, solutions architect and developer for companies as diverse as Pivotal, Cisco and Oracle.
