The 2022 IoT & Edge Developer Survey Report provides key insights into developer preferences, concerns, challenges, and focus areas in what are arguably the most important technologies today. This visibility is essential for everyone who wants to better understand the IoT and edge computing landscape and take full advantage of industry opportunities.
The IoT & Edge Developer Survey is the industry’s leading technical survey and is now in its eighth year. This year’s survey was administered by the Eclipse IoT Working Group, the Eclipse Edge Native Working Group, and the Eclipse Sparkplug Working Group between April 1 and June 15. The results reflect the input of 910 developers, committers, architects, and decision-makers from a broad set of industries and organizations globally.
The complete survey report provides detailed data, including breakdowns by market and comparisons to 2021 survey results, as well as summaries of key findings. To give you an idea of what you can expect from the report, here’s a brief look at just a few of the key findings.
Agriculture Is the Top Industry Focus Area
Agriculture remained ahead of industrial automation by just one percent to continue as the top industry for Industrial IoT (IIoT) and edge computing technology adoption.
Although the automotive industry came in third, there are significant, and very promising, developments currently happening in that segment, so we can expect to see substantial growth over the next few years. The rapid expansion of the Eclipse Foundation’s Software Defined Vehicle working group is proof. We’ll also likely see increased IoT and edge technology adoption in education and building automation as these industries may have been impacted by shifting priorities during the pandemic.
Security Concerns Have Escalated Dramatically
Although connectivity remains the top developer concern, it’s worth noting that security worries have nearly doubled since last year’s survey results. Security concerns are now the second biggest issue for developers, tied with data collection and analytics.
Interestingly, developers’ concerns about deployment issues and integration complexity both showed noticeable drops from last year’s results.
Edge Computing Is Gaining Traction
All types of edge computing workloads increased compared to the 2021 survey results, with artificial intelligence continuing as the most common workload for edge gateways and edge nodes. Control logic, data exchanges between multiple nodes, and data analytics round out the top four edge computing workloads.
Java, C, C++, Python, and JavaScript Dominate
When it comes to programming languages, all of the usual suspects in the IT world also dominate the IoT and edge space. Java is particularly popular, with 47 percent of respondents using it for constrained devices. Java also dominates the programming languages used in IoT gateways and edge nodes, with 42 percent of respondents using the language.
MQTT Remains the Top Protocol
MQTT continues to be the most widely used IIoT communications protocol, though there seems to be increased fragmentation. HTTP/HTTPS and REST show slight decreases in IIoT usage compared to 2021, while communications protocols such as TCP/IP, AMQP, and in-house and proprietary protocols have experienced noticeable growth.
Get the Full Survey Results
The full report includes insights into several other key areas of the IoT and edge landscape, including:
- How often the big three public cloud providers — Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform — are being used
- Preferred operating systems for constrained devices, IoT gateways, and edge nodes
- The most commonly used connectivity technologies
- Dominant hardware architectures
- The top edge computing artifacts deployed for IoT solutions
- The types of information stored in databases and datastores
Help Shape the IoT and Edge Landscape
To learn more about the benefits of getting involved in Eclipse IoT, Eclipse Edge Native, Eclipse Sparkplug, and other working groups at the Eclipse Foundation, visit our Working Groups webpage.