As the emerging trillion-dollar Internet of Things market begins to gets its footing, IoT vendor and management specialist RF Code looks to be one of the industry's frontrunners.

IBM, CenturyLink and Dell are just some of the companies who utilize the Austin, Texas-based company's asset management and monitoring solutions, such as its Workplace IoT Platform, which combines wire-free asset location and environmental instrumentation with a dedicated reader infrastructure and data normalization middleware, integrated with its data center management software.

The IoT market will expand from $780 billion in 2015 to $1.7 trillion by 2020, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 17 percent, according to a recent report by IDC. RF Code CEO Ed Healy talks to CRN about how IoT is being utilized in 2015, the large players in the market – such as Cisco and IBM -- and how channel partners will define the success of the industry.

Can you give me 3 examples of how businesses are saving money/improving performance today through RF Code IoT solutions?

1) IBM’s global deployment of RF Code has produced estimated savings of $40 million over a period of five years.

2) CenturyLink saw ROI in 11 months, generated savings of $2.9 million in the first two years of using RF Code and has projected savings of $15 million by the end of 2018. Perhaps even more impressive is the $538,000 rebate CenturyLink received from its energy company due to efficiencies in power use.

3) Dell has built a global 200 lab management system that ensures 100 percent visibility of asset location for compliance and audit purposes, and for clearer capacity planning and density management.

Will channel partners be the driving force behind IoT?

Instrumentation simply collects and sends raw data. It is up to the ability of the IT services companies to make the most of the data, which is where VARs and integrators can excel. We are currently in the process of expanding our channels as we scale our sales and services to meet IoT solution demand.

Channel partners are definitely important to the success of the industry. VARs and global systems integrators have a real opportunity to grow their revenues by providing end users proven solutions that deliver long-term business outcomes. Partners should also look to guide their customers through a fragmented marketplace filled with “IoT vendors” lacking ROI or customer use cases.