Despite all the promises and potential benefits that IoT could bring to us, a great majority of people across the globe have little trust in smart technologies and are still unwilling to hand their everyday tasks over, fearing the IoT technology may not work as planned, according to a survey conducted by software intelligence company Dynatrace.
Despite all the promises and potential benefits that IoT could bring to us, a great majority of people across the globe have little trust in smart technologies and are still unwilling to hand their everyday tasks over, fearing the IoT technology may not work as planned, according to a survey conducted by software intelligence company Dynatrace.
Dynatrace asked a total of 10,002 people from the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Singapore and China, regarding their view and confidence in smart car, smart home and smart healthcare technologies.
Dynatrace found that well over 80% of the surveyed fear smart cars might malfunction and lead to high-speed collisions. People suspect software glitches will cause serious injuries and fatalities. Also, up to 86% are concerned digital locks will lock them out of the car.
When it comes to IoT on the road, another likely application is smart city traffic lights. But globally on average 67% predict traffic light performance problems could result in chaos.
IoT in the home
People expressed just as little trust in giving technology the power to control their homes. Up to 83% of the surveyed indicated concerns of losing control of their smart homes due to IoT performance issues.
People worry about being locked out of the home, not being able to control the light and not being able to control the indoor temperature. Globally 81% said software glitches or other technology issues may contribute to inaccurate smart meter reading, and further result in overcharged utility bills.
Dynatrace says 39% of consumers using smart meters have experienced performance problems. The figure rises to 59% in Germany and 54% in Brazil. It is not surprising that consumers have little confidence in smart meters’ ability to help them cut water, gas and electricity expenses, Dynatrace points out.
IoT in healthcare
When it comes to smart healthcare, 62% of the respondents said they would not trust IoT devices to administer their medication. The survey shows that the elderly population has less confidence compared with the younger groups. Only 26% of the 55+ age group said they would let IoT devices to administer medication, while 47% of the 18-34 age group said they would.
Also, up to 85% of the respondents suspect performance problems with IoT devices could compromise clinical data.
The solution
According to Dynatrace’s report, about half of the surveyed already use smart devices, ranging from smartwatch, voice assistant devices, connected car, to smart meter, smart thermostat, smart fridge and smart oven. Unfortunately, the majority have experienced performance problems with the hardware.
It shows that “organizations have failed to adapt to web-scale IoT ecosystems that utilize dynamic microservices in hybrid multi-cloud environment,” Dynatrace says.
The ability to continuously baseline normal performance parameters using machine learning capabilities will also be critical. Performance must be designed into every application, Dynatrace says. “Organizations need the ability to auto discover IoT devices and microservices supporting the applications that run on them.”
“They’ll need highly scalable monitoring capabilities that can provide insight into every user’s experience in real time,” Dynatrace says, adding that “when problems do occur, they’ll need to utilize AI to handle the hugely complicated process of analyzing and understanding a dynamic, hyper-scale IoT ecosystem.”