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Investment in Internet of Things (IoT) technologies saw a huge increase last year as more companies from all parts of the economy got on board with the technology, with manufacturers, transport companies and utilities firms leading the way.
This is according to figures from International Data Corporation (IDC), which estimated that global spending on the technology - including hardware, software, services and connectivity - would reach $737 billion (£588 billion) in 2016, an increase of almost 18 per cent compared with the previous year.
IDC also observed that this boom in demand is far from over, as it forecast the sector will continue to enjoy a compound annual growth rate of 15.6 per cent until 2020, by which time it will be worth $1.29 trillion.
This will mean many networking professionals around the world will find themselves having to determine how best to incorporate this new category of devices into their infrastructure to ensure that the data collected by IoT sensors is gathered, sent to the right locations and analysed effectively.
IoT research fellow and senior vice-president Vernon Turner said: "It is great to see that the Internet of Things will continue to fuel both business transformation and innovation acceleration markets such as robotics, cognitive computing, and virtual reality."
The biggest spending category for the IoT sector in 2016 was hardware, with sensors and modules that connect end-points to networks dominating purchases in this area. Overall, 30.6 per cent of IoT investments went on hardware last year. Meanwhile, a quarter of spending went toward software, with application software representing more than half of this, while connectivity solutions accounted for 16.9 per cent of overall spend.
Manufacturing was estimated to be the biggest single contributor to this, with companies in this sector investing $178 billion in IoT solutions in 2016. Within this, the most common use for the technology is in manufacturing operations, with production asset management and maintenance and field service also generating a great deal of interest.
Elsewhere, transportation companies are deploying the technology for applications such as freight monitoring, while smart grid technology, vehicle telematics, remote health monitoring and digital signage are among the use cases being considered by firms as diverse as utilities companies, retailers and healthcare providers.
Marcus Torchia, research manager for IoT within IDC's Customer Insights and Analysis team, said: "As a whole, the IoT opportunity is a diverse developing marketplace for vendors and end users alike."
He added: "A fairly close relationship exists between high growth IoT use cases in consumer product and service oriented verticals like retail, insurance, and healthcare."
