After years of fascination with the novelty and promise of the connected world, the Polish Internet of Things market is entering a crucial phase of maturity. The time of exciting but isolated tests is coming to an end. Companies are no longer asking “what is IoT?”, but are asking a much more difficult question: “how do we make money from this and implement it across our organisation?”
The year 2026 promises to be a watershed year. A clear market division will take place before our eyes. On the one hand, we will see companies permanently stuck in “pilot purgatory” – possessing impressive test presentations but unable to turn them into real value. On the other side will be leaders who are successfully scaling their IoT solutions, turning them into measurable profits, process optimisation and sustainable competitive advantage. What differentiates these two groups? The key to success is no longer the technology itself, but its strategic integration and proven, hard business value.
A graveyard of promising pilots
Anyone who follows the technology market has heard these stories. An innovative team in a large manufacturing company creates an ingenious monitoring system for a single machine. The results are great, managers clap their hands and a presentation from the project goes on the company intranet as an example of success. And that’s the end of it. The project is never implemented throughout the factory and after a year no one remembers it anymore.
This ‘graveyard of promising pilots’ is a real problem. Its main causes are a lack of a clear business objective from the outset, a focus on technology for technology’s sake, and a lack of strategic board support when it comes time for real investment. To move from a promising test to a profitable large-scale deployment, companies need to overcome three fundamental barriers.
Three key barriers to scaling in 2026
Today, success in IoT does not depend on whether we can connect a sensor to a network. It depends on whether we can weave hundreds of such sensors into the living organism of the enterprise without crippling it.
Technological barrier – a problem of integration, not innovation
The challenge no longer lies in the availability of advanced sensors, powerful microcontrollers or powerful cloud platforms. The problem is to bundle them into a single, smoothly functioning and secure system. Moreover, in the realities of Polish industry, energy or logistics, modern IoT solutions must integrate with infrastructure that often remembers a previous era. Connecting an intelligent system to a machine from the 1990s is a task not for an enthusiast, but for an experienced engineer.
2. organisational barrier – tribal warfare IT vs. OT
Successful implementation of IoT requires breaking down walls between departments. The IT team, responsible for data, networks and cyber security, must find common ground with operational technology (OT) – maintenance engineers, machine operators and production managers. When each side defends its territory and uses a different metric for success, the project is doomed to failure. Without a unified, cross-departmental strategy, even the best technology will remain a mere curiosity.
3. financial barrier – hard evidence of return on investment (ROI)
Boards and CFOs have stopped getting excited about technological innovations. The investment in a full IoT implementation is often in the millions, and hard evidence is needed for such expenditure. Instead of stories about ‘digital transformation’, CFOs want to see concrete figures: by how much will downtime drop? How much will OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) increase? By how much will service and maintenance costs decrease? Without answers to these questions, the project will remain in the drawer.
To understand how market players are approaching these challenges and what is currently the biggest challenge in scaling IoT projects in Polish companies, we asked Volodymyr Shevchyk, CEO, Indeema Software, an engineering company with a track record of successful, scalable IoT deployments across Europe.
“The biggest challenge in scaling IoT projects for Polish companies is not just the technology itself, but the integration of multiple layers—hardware, firmware, cloud, and applications—into existing business ecosystems while keeping ROI clear for decision-makers.
We’ve seen this across several of our projects. For example, in the energy sector, we worked with a client to create a smart solar monitoring system that connected dozens of assets into a single platform. The technical challenge wasn’t building the sensors—it was ensuring secure, near real-time data transfer from field devices to the cloud, and then making the insights easily accessible for business users. The result was a system that reduced downtime by over 20% and optimized energy output, making ROI visible and immediate.
In the industrial domain, we developed a custom smart lift management system. The integration had to accommodate decades-old infrastructure, but with IoT hardware and cloud software working together, the client gained predictive maintenance capabilities. This significantly cut service costs while extending the lifespan of existing assets.
Our way of addressing these challenges is through an R&D-first approach. Every project starts in our IoT Lab, where we validate the client’s idea on small prototypes—testing sensors, connectivity options, and cloud integrations. This stage is crucial, as it allows us to de-risk technology before moving into scaling. Once validated, we build a roadmap that covers hardware development, firmware, cloud architecture, and AI if needed. By the time we reach deployment, both our team and the client have confidence that the solution will work in the real environment and deliver measurable results.
So, to answer directly: the main challenge is alignment—between tech capabilities, existing infrastructure, and business expectations. With a structured R&D process, companies can overcome these barriers and scale their IoT systems successfully.” – highlights Volodymyr Shevchyk, CEO, Indeema Software
A recipe for scalable success in 2026
Success in 2026 will not depend on having the best technology, but on perfectly aligning it with business realities and existing infrastructure. The key word is ‘alignment’, as mentioned by Volodymyr Shevchyk.
An approach based on research and development (R&D) and verification of ideas under controlled laboratory conditions is becoming the market standard. It is a method for intelligently managing risk – both financial and technological – before deciding on multi-million dollar investments. Companies that understand this gain confidence that their project will not only work but, above all, be profitable.
The year 2026 will ultimately separate companies that treat IoT as an IT project from those that see it as a foundation for business transformation. The winners in this game will be the latter – pragmatic, strategic and ruthlessly focused on measurable results. The experiments are over. The time for scale has come.
