Internet of Things poised to drive changes in the cloud

A new study has the Internet of Things growing strongly in the federal market and also having a significant impact going forward on cloud technologies such as software as a service.

Big data and analytics firm Govini released its report on Internet of Things, or IoT, in the federal market and said spending in this area grew by 20 percent between fiscal 2011 and fiscal 2015.

Because IoT is a general term and data for spending on IoT isn’t easily captured, Govini looked at spending on infrastructure and software and cybersecurity, technology areas that enable IoT.

Cloud technologies, such as cloud storage, in particular play an important role. IoT is dependent on cloud storage and back-end development tools such as infrastructure as a service. Between 2011 and 2015, the federal government spent $3.6 billion on IaaS, according to Govini.

Govini also sees platform as a service growing in the federal market as more agencies adopt IoT solutions. “PaaS is the most suitable cloud computing model for IoT because of its flexible architecture and ability to support development of applications built for event-driven data, instead of traditional applications built for structured data,’ Govini wrote.

IoT also will have a significant impact on Software as a service.

“Traditional SaaS applications display historical data and allow users to interact with that data to improve decision-making. IoT upends this model by using real-time data to improve decision making and could potentially do so without human interaction,” Govini wrote.

To examine IoT, Govini dives deep into the various aspects of the cloud market include identifying market leaders in areas such as email as a service, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

For example, Govini’s analysis found that five companies captured 66.4 percent of the EaaS market from 2011 through 2015:

• CSRA -- $732.9 million in revenue
• CGI Federal -- $450.7 million
• SAIC -- $372.7 million
• General Dynamics -- $335 million
• Accenture -- $219.7 million

IBM leads the cloud migration and support sector of the cloud market with $1.1 billion in revenue from 2011 through 2015.

Carahsoft captured the most revenue in the platform as a service sector with $625.9 million in revenue over the same period.

DLT Solutions led the SaaS sector with $426.9 million from 2011 through 2015.

Govini also identified several takeaways from its study including how traditional systems integrators such as those dominating the EaaS sector can leverage their past performance into more complicated systems.

There also will continue to be a strong need for skills, solutions and services around transition from legacy systems to the cloud.

And increasing machine-to-machine learning will drive more IoT and with it more software as a service opportunities.

Download the entire report here.