451 has released its 2016 IoT Preview Report, highlighting the key challenges facing this emerging sector. While communications protocols, security, competing WAN approaches and data management remain concerns, early adopters are focusing on much-needed business process changes required to fully exploit the Internet of Things.

In its newly released 2016 IoT Preview Report, 2016 Trends in the Internet of Things, 451 Research identifies the key challenges facing this emerging sector, and top trends that will drive 2016:

1. Business process changes will continue to be the largest barrier to IoT adoption.
2. Communication protocols at the edge will remain fragmented.
3. LTE-M timing gap and new LPWAN upstarts will force the hand of operators.
4. The volume and management of data generated by 'things' will continue to present new opportunities and challenges to storage, cloud, analytics and visualization vendors.
5. Pricing for IoT components is rapidly declining, bringing IoT deployments into reach for a larger audience.
6. Security of IoT continues to be a source of major concern for early IoT adopters as they connect previously unconnected industrial ‘OT’ systems.

451 Research analysts believe that, while IoT has reached an all-time high of hype and hyperbole, there are a growing number of production deployments – ranging from industrial automation and enterprise to fleet and automotive applications to the wild world of the consumer market. Increasing percentages of organizations plan to evaluate and deploy IoT technologies in the coming year. Fifteen percent of the large enterprises surveyed by451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise Study have already deployed some form of IoT, while another 31% plan to do so in the next 6-12 months.

The IoT market is a hotbed of M&A activity, with more than $23 billion spent in 94 IoT-related transactions in the last 12 months, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase, a database of more than 44,000 technology M&A transactions across 650 industry segments.