Do Companies Need a Chief IoT Officer? | VentureBeat

In-brief: An article on the web site Venturebeat.com makes the case for a Chief Internet of Things Officer to manage adoption of new technologies. But are companies ready for a CIoT? 

Syed Hoda, an executive at the Internet of Things analytics firm ParStream has an interesting, contributed article over on venturebeat.com. Hoda poses the question of whether it is time for competitive firms to start thinking about hiring a “senior-level champion” (aka “an executive”) to accelerate the adoption of new “game changing” technologies.

So is this the dawn of the age of the CIoT – the Chief Internet of Things Officer?

Hoda observes that the idea of hiring an executive to spur technology adoption and innovation isn’t new. Cisco had an internal “Internet Business Solutions Group” to spot promising opportunities in the early, go-go days of e-commerce and the Internet.

A similar transformation is happening today, as the Internet of machines gives way to a much larger and more diverse Internet of Things. Industries across the economy stand poised for transformation. As this article at TechCrunch correctly observes, connected vehicles will transform automobiles from a big, one time sale item for automakers to application- and services platforms that generate revenue over the long-term. The prevalence of granular data about individuals’ lives and activities will also be a boon to industries like insurance.

But, within organizations, IoT will “need someone to explore and define its possibilities while driving action within the company and with partners and customers,” Hoda argues.

Who will that be? And where should the CIoT live within the corporate hierarchy? Nobody knows, really. But Hoda says that the prerequisites to IoT success are “centralized ownership, cross-departmental collaboration, and agility.”

This is why the Chief IoT Officer is so crucial. Ken Forster, a Managing Director at ThingMUSE Ventures says that “the Chief IoT Officer will need to be the focal point where IT and operational technology (OT) data is integrated, analyzed, and turned into actionable insights.”

Read more via The Chief IoT Officer: The most important CxO you still haven’t hired | VentureBeat | Business | by Syed Hoda, ParStream.