The internet of things and SharePoint deliver business benefits

Pairing SharePoint with a trend

SharePoint will not be going away anytime soon. On the contrary, it will continue to be a popular platform for businesses, and SharePoint consulting firms will stay in demand. Perhaps the key is to look at the platform with a trend. To that end, consider SharePoint in terms of a trend that is been bouncing around as of late: the internet of things.

SharePoint meets IoT

People may not see the connection between SharePoint and IoT. Of course, SharePoint cannot talk to a car, factory or refrigerator. Indeed, SharePoint does not monitor or make data. But it’s a platform that can be used to display the resulting data through dashboards, store and surface data or connect data sources to the human eyes. In reality, SharePoint is naturally not affected directly by the internet of things. From a software perspective, there’s minor impact as to how the system operates. Nonetheless, there is a considerable impact on the service delivery of solutions to SharePoint. Things such as support, change management and ownership come into play. Simply because the internet of things is hyped does not mean one has to buy into the hype. When it comes to IoT projects, the key is to start out small. Furthermore, companies should stick to the best practices that they are already using when deploying any new solution, such as planning, testing and piloting.

There are important considerations when looking into SharePoint and the internet of things. For instance, it’s important to know where data feeds come from, to get the support picture figured out with responsibilities and levels of support, and set up monitoring of the performance of the platform and the data feeds performance.

SharePoint connects the workplace

Microsoft SharePoint helps an organization adapt by connecting the workplace with intelligent content management as well as intranets that provide the tools for sharing and working together, and informing and engaging people across the company. Now, it gets easier to organize the intranet in a dynamic way. What stands out among the new functionality included in hub sites is the ability of giving intranet managers the ability to combine numerous team websites, as well as communication sites, in a single place to build an intranet, which reflects how enterprises work. Even better, Microsoft designed the new hubs keeping mobile devices in mind. The SharePoint mobile application can be updated to natively render hub sites, their pages, content and news, and to provide smooth navigation between associated websites as well.

Microsoft SharePoint gives an all-in-one enterprise platform to help organizations and businesses collaborate, manage and locate information better, therefore minimizing wasted time, as well as driving up productivity.

Plenty of growth for IoT in 2018

This year will be a steady growth for IoT, with it seeing plenty of investment, lots of growth and widespread adoption, such as with SharePoint. The following are trends I see for IoT this year:

1. IoT will grow. It will continue expanding, with more and more devices going online every single day. IoT will become the backbone of customer value as it continues to grow. In a lot of ways, the full potential of the internet of things is still being realized and it’s likely to see more of that this year.
2. It becomes more fragmented. Just as the internet of things continues to grow, it will also be increasingly fragmented. The fragmentation will create hurdles for a lot of organizations as they deal with compatibility issues.
3. Greater security concerns. The more complex IoT is, the more network security challenges it will encounter. True, securing all the connected devices in an environment with less regulation will be hard. Finding a way to keep IoT data safe will be the main goal this year.
4. Mobile platforms will make more sense. The mobile-first to mobile-only trend will likely continue to grow, as mobile platforms will be the de facto management system for internet of things devices. This again is not shocking, but not finished either. IoT development is one that will happen over time as early adopters start refining, with latecomers jumping into the mix. This year will continue to see a lot of transition into mobile platform development.
5. Marketing efforts will continue. This year will be ripe with bells, dings and whistles as customers are alerted to incentives, bargains and other news about their homes as well as offices. A growing number of companies will start to use the internet of things for more personalize marketing efforts. Also, they will get closer to finding how-much-is-too-much balance in terms of marketing.
6. There will be plenty of money to be had. It’s predicted that business spending on the internet of things solutions will hit $6 trillion by the year 2021. It then makes sense that venture capitalists will continue pouring funds into the IoT promise, underscoring its potential to boost customer experience in almost each and every industry.

To reap the benefits, organizations may need a professional SharePoint company to find and fix problems in their existing SharePoint infrastructure or a skilled developer who can build custom websites and develop mobile-first, responsive web design projects and use IoT technologies to integrate systems and processes.

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