The Leadership Gap IT and OT have different perspectives on who is responsible for driving IoT initiatives, creating a Leadership Gap that may impact the efficiency and success of IT/OT collaboration. When it comes to IoT implementations, the existence, and importance, of collaboration between IT and OT teams is evident. But the question exists, who is driving these initiatives? Given the importance of IoT to operational performance, it is imperative that OT is highly involved in this process, and the survey data bears this out. Overall, close to 80 percent of all respondents either Agree or Strongly Agree that both IT and OT are driving strategic IoT initiatives. However, there is a perception that IT plays a stronger strategic leadership role for IoT initiatives: the Leadership Gap. We asked survey respondents to evaluate how strongly they perceived IT and OT to be driving IoT Strategy Initiatives. In a balanced organization, it would be reasonable to have IT and OT collaborating, and leading, equally, and our overall data generally bears this out:
• 30.2 percent of all respondents indicated they Strongly Agreed with the statement “IT is driving IoT Strategy Initiatives within your organization” and
• 27.2 percent of all respondents indicated they Strongly Agree with the statement “OT is driving IoT Strategy Initiatives within your organization” However, when the data is broken out into IT-focused and OT-focused responses, we see the perception gap emerge.
In a head-to-head comparison, IT focused respondents perceive that leadership is roughly equal between IT and OT, with OT holding a slight edge (33.1 percent to 31.9 percent). However, only 19.5 percent of OT respondents Strongly Agree that they are driv-
Source: Futurum Research, Bridging the IoT Perception Gap, Survey of 500 IT/OT Professionals
ing IoT Strategy Initiatives, leading to an interesting disconnect. Given the importance of IoT to business operations, it would be expected that OT, where the value of IoT begins, would view itself as being in a stronger, or more equal, leadership position.
INFORMATION VS OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY 11 COPYRIGHT © 2018 FUTURUM RESEARCH
