The Eclipse Foundation, one of the world’s largest open source software foundations, today announced results from its 2023 IoT & Edge Developer Survey.
Administered by the Eclipse IoT Working Group and the Eclipse Sparkplug Working Group, the survey provides essential insights into IoT and edge computing industry landscapes, challenges developers face, and the opportunities for enterprise stakeholders in the IoT & edge open source ecosystem. Now in its ninth year, the survey is the IoT & edge industry’s leading technical survey.
“This year’s results yielded some very interesting trends, particularly those related to real-world use cases and technology choices,” said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation.
“What’s clear is that developers are actively building production solutions leveraging open source technologies to tackle today’s IoT challenges across industrial, agricultural, and municipal settings.”
The online survey was conducted from April 4, 2023, to July 5, 2023, during which 1,037 global developers, committers, architects, and decision-makers from a broad set of industries and organisations participated. Key findings include:
Development is increasing across all IoT sectors. Industrial automation is once again the top area of focus (33%, up from 22%), followed by agriculture (29 %, up from 23%), building automation, energy management, and smart cities (all at 24%).
Developers indicate that Java is the preferred language for IoT gateways and edge nodes, while C, C++, and Java are the most widely used languages for constrained devices.
MQTT is the top IIoT communication protocol. Nearly half of developers (49%) indicate a preference for MQTT for IIoT communications, with MQTT + Sparkplug checking in at 8%.
The withdrawal of IoT Middleware providers has created an opportunity for innovators to enter the market. Google Cloud IoT Platform, Bosch IoT Suite, IBM Watson IoT, and SAP Internet of Things all exited the market in 2022 or announced their intent to do so. While nearly half of respondents indicated a relationship with one or more of these providers, only 12% have migrated to a new provider.
Control logic (40%) surpassed artificial intelligence (37%) as the most common edge computing workload. Does this imply a renewed focus on the practical aspects of delivering real-world solutions? Only time will tell.
Software Supply Chain Security has become an essential issue for IoT/edge developers, with 70% saying it is vital to their work.
5G is enabling accelerated IIoT adoption. Cellular adoption has doubled since 2022 (44% vs. 22% in 2022) largely due to 5G penetration, while WiFi (38% vs. 36% in 2022), Ethernet (38% vs 29% in 2022) and Bluetooth (23% vs 20% in 2022) continue to be viable options.
The survey data contains further insights on developer choices for edge computing workloads, platform connectivity, developer concerns, and use case breakdowns by market. In addition, the report provides breakdowns of use cases by market and detailed recommendations on the next steps for IoT developers.
The entire report can be downloaded here.
