Research commissioned by Inmarsat, the global, mobile satellite communications provider, has found that investment in Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) technology in mining is set to overtake cloud computing, next generation

security, big data analytics and other Industry 4.0 technologies. Mining respondents reported plans to invest the greatest proportion of their IT budget on IoT projects over the next three years. While IoT accounted for an average of 7.5 per cent of a typical mining organisation’s IT budget between 2017 and 2020, businesses are planning to spend 10.4 per cent of their IT budgets on IoT projects over the next three years. Planned investments in IoT are notably higher than those earmarked for other Industry 4.0 technologies, including cloud computing (8.6 per cent), big data analytics (7.5 per cent), next generation security (7.5 per cent) and machine learning (5.6 per cent). The Inmarsat Research Programme report Industrial IoT in the Time of Covid-19 focuses on measuring the IoT maturity of global industry during the Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of digitalised production and supply chains. It analyses a number of key themes such as adoption, connectivity,

data, skills, security and investment. The report is based on interviews with 450 global respondents across the agriculture, electrical utilities, mining, oil & gas and transport & logistics sectors in early 2021, a year after the start of the pandemic. Respondents from businesses with at least 250 employees from the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific responsible for delivering IoT initiatives at their respective organisations were surveyed. As part of the research, Inmarsat is also offering businesses the opportunity to measure their IoT readiness versus the respondents in the survey, using a free IoT maturity tool. To use the IoT Maturity tool and download the full report, visit: inmarsat.com/iot2021