09 / 03 / 2017INDEPENDENT PUBLICATION BY #0438raconteur.net
INDUSTRIAL
INTERNET OF THINGS
CONNECTED MACHINES WILL
CREATE BETTER JOBS
Connected industry will require a shift in skills towards services
Five top applications that are helping to
launch the industrial internet of things
SQUADRONS OF DRONES
AND MINUTE SENSORS06
CAUTION AS THE SUN
IS RISING IN THE EAST
The West is playing catch-up as
factories in the Far East race ahead
14
1
RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0309 / 03 / 2017
/industrial-iot-2017
Although this publication is funded through advertising and
sponsorship, all editorial is without bias and sponsored features
are clearly labelled. For an upcoming schedule, partnership
inquiries or feedback, please call +44 (0)20 3877 3800 or e-mail
info@raconteur.net
Raconteur is a leading publisher of special-interest content
and research. Its publications and articles cover a wide range
of topics, including business, finance, sustainability, healthcare,
lifestyle and technology. Raconteur special reports are published
exclusively in The Times and The Sunday Times as well as online
at raconteur.net
The information contained in this publication has been obtained
from sources the Proprietors believe to be correct. However, no
legal liability can be accepted for any errors. No part of this
publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the
Publisher. © Raconteur Media
RACONTEUR
Industrial IoT represents a
revolution in how products
are designed, manufactured
and operated.
Companies with bold digital
ambitions understand its
objectives and extraordinary
potential.
But the choices faced are far
from simple:
EITHER retain sovereignty over
your data, innovations and digital
skills development OR concede,
and with it the essence of your
competitive advantage.
EITHER tap into new leading-edge,
cloud neutral, pay-as-you-go
digital accelerators OR stick with
the legacy, lock-in approaches
of hitherto trusted software
incumbents.
EITHER empower your line experts
in fast cycle, co-creation of new
digital products and services OR
continue to outsource innovation.
If you believe in sovereignty, a
savvy approach and the power
of your engineers then consider
QiO as your digital partner.
We can provide the secure
platform, toolkit and Industrial
SaaS applications you need to
drive your own digital programme
and all at a highly attractive cost
to value ratio.
We help some of the most
respected industrial firms,
including Rolls-Royce plc and
Lloyd’s Register, unlock trapped
productivity and accelerate their
Industrial IoT transformation.
For more information, visit us at
qio.io
MARTIN BARROW
Former health editor,
news editor, foreign news
editor and business news
editor at The Times, he is
now a freelance writer.
WENDY M.
GROSSMAN
Freelance technology
writer, specialising in
computers, freedom and
privacy, she won the 2013 BT
Enigma Award for lifetime
achievement in information
security journalism.
LEO KING
Writer and editor, he works
with the Financial Times,
The Sunday Times, Forbes,
Bloomberg, The Economist
and The Daily Telegraph.
JIM McCLELLAND
Sustainable futurist, his
specialisms include built
environment, corporate
social responsibility and
ecosystem services.
BEN ROSSI
Editorial director at
Vitesse Media and
formerly editor of
Information Age and
Computer News Middle
East, he writes for
national newspapers and
business publications.
FINBARR TOESLAND
Freelance journalist, he
specialises in technology,
business and economic
issues, and contributes to a
wide range of publications.
CONTRIBUTORS
PUBLISHING MANAGER
Frank Monaghan
DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER
Jessica McGreal
HEAD OF PRODUCTION
Natalia Rosek
DESIGN
Samuele Motta
Grant Chapman
Kellie Jerrard
PRODUCTION EDITOR
Benjamin Chiou
MANAGING EDITOR
Peter Archer
DISTRIBUTED IN
INDUSTRIAL
INTERNET OF THINGS
@raconteur /raconteur.net @raconteur_london
T
he internet of things or IoT,
which can connect any de-
vice to the web, has been a
boon for owners of manufac-
turing firms. By providing data from
multiple machines, factory perfor-
mance can be monitored, goods can
be tracked and maintenance needs
predicted – all for greater efficiency.
Those on the factory floor have
been less supportive of the change,
understandably fearing their jobs
will be replaced by robots and ma-
chines that “speak” to each other.
The reality, however, is more nu-
anced. Rather than eliminating all
roles, the IoT is creating demand
for a different set of skills. Many of
these jobs will come from the ser-
vice sector, supporting customers,
and also the technology sector that
supports the systems.
By 2020, according to the Centre
for Economics and Business Re-
search and technology firm SAS,
some 182,000 jobs will be created in
the UK by the IoT and big data in a
range of areas.
The IoT allows traditional prod-
uct businesses to become services
firms. Instead of simply manu-
facturing and selling goods, the
industry can now maintain and
upgrade them, something the tech-
nology sector rather awkwardly
labels “servitisation”.
IoT-connected devices link con-
sumer goods to manufacturers’
systems, advising of maintenance
and upgrade needs, the same way
factory devices are connected.
Washing machines or heating
control systems, for example, can
be fitted with sensors to detect
when they are going wrong, alert-
ing manufacturers to send an
engineer. The same concept can
be applied to the business world,
and to a water utility’s pipes and
control systems.
Numerous predictions demon-
strate the enormous services oppor-
tunity. Gartner expects 8.4 billion
IoT-connected devices to be in use
worldwide this year, with 5.2 billion
of them in consumers’ hands and
3.2 billion of them in businesses.
Some $1.2 trillion will have been
spent on IoT by 2020, says analyst
IDC, with manufacturing lead-
ing the way last year with a cool
$187 billion.
The change creates demand for a
raft of new talent. “To capture the
bigger opportunities presented by
the industrial IoT,” according to
management firm Accenture, “com-
panies will especially need to look
for skills in data science, software
development, hardware engineer-
ing, testing, operations, marketing
and sales.”
The smartest firms have recog-
nised this shift. Among them is
General Electric, whose chief ex-
ecutive Jeff Immelt says industrial
companies are “in the information
business whether they want to be
or not”.
The most positive aspects of the
new service model are that it pro-
vides a deeper customer relation-
ship and a reliable revenue stream
for manufacturers. Goods makers
can record customer details from
which to develop loyalty and they
can look forward to recurring ser-
vice revenue, repairing the devices
themselves or taking a cut of their
contractors’ income.
Home and heating management
from the Google Nest and Brit-
ish Gas Hive systems accumulate
user data, becoming increasingly
invaluable to people as they link
automated services to recorded
habits, making a brand switch less
appealing. For their makers, both
data analysis and marketing skills
are essential.
This thinking is being taken a step
further by expanded teams of mar-
keting and technology personnel,
who are using the IoT for immediate
promotions. Drinks maker Pernod
Ricard has fitted sensors to bottles
that enable smartphone users to
simply tap their device on the ves-
sels to reveal recipes for cocktails
and ways to buy more products.
Competitor Diageo designs and runs
internet-connected bottles so users
can share their own videos.
An entire workforce will grow to
create, sell and support the new
business. In addition to sales and
marketing, Accenture notes in its
research, new employees “will in-
clude product managers, software
developers to create and test new
information services, hardware de-
signers to develop the products, data
scientists to create and interpret an-
alytics, and user-interface and expe-
rience designers”.
Business buyers are adding to
the scale of these skills demands.
Rolls-Royce and General Electric
have manufactured jet engines that
can be sold as a service, rather than
simply a product. Packaged into
regular costs for airline buyers are
maintenance and upgrades, with
IoT systems telling them when to
take action. Meanwhile, Michelin
uses sensors on customers’ deliv-
ery trucks to help human experts
suggest more efficient travel and
sell tyres based on the number of
miles driven.
As these services become the key
proposition for sales forces, manu-
facturers can use them to drive up-
take of add-on or upgrade products.
The data from all of these services
can also be applied by expanded
research teams to influence fresh
product design.
As businesses move their humans
away from manual tasks, workers
will equally be required to oper-
ate, design, monitor or service the
IoT-linked machines they have
purchased. Then there is the new
demand for staff educators to help
them use the systems and process
engineers to make sure they fit prop-
erly into existing operations, Accen-
ture notes.
Of course, with all these sys-
tems connecting business net-
works to the wider internet, secu-
rity personnel will be paramount.
Gartner expects that the “scarce”
IoT security specialists will be in
ever-higher demand and figures
from freelance database Upwork
show a 194 per cent increase in
2015 in demand for security infra-
structure specialists.
While the IoT may reduce the need
for some manual jobs in factories, it
will also create a huge new demand
for service skills to maintain, create
and market the systems. There is no
doubt that such a colossal shift will
be uncomfortable for some, but the
power of people will remain strong
in the new world.
Connected machines
will create better jobs
ChrisRatcliffe/BloombergviaGettyImages
3.2bn
of the 8.4 billion IoT
connected devices
are for business use
LEO KING
$1.2trn
will have been
spent on IoT
by 2020
Gartner/IDC
$187bn
will have been
spent on IoT within
manufacturing
by 2020
Negative stories have surrounded the internet of things and job
losses have been their focus, but a more accurate analysis
reveals a shift in the skills needed towards services
OVERVIEW
Rolls-Royce’s IoT systems notify the engineering company when maintenance and
upgrades are due
PUBLISHED IN ASSOCIATION WITH
1
RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0309 / 03 / 2017
/industrial-iot-2017
Although this publication is funded through advertising and
sponsorship, all editorial is without bias and sponsored features
are clearly labelled. For an upcoming schedule, partnership
inquiries or feedback, please call +44 (0)20 3877 3800 or e-mail
info@raconteur.net
Raconteur is a leading publisher of special-interest content
and research. Its publications and articles cover a wide range
of topics, including business, finance, sustainability, healthcare,
lifestyle and technology. Raconteur special reports are published
exclusively in The Times and The Sunday Times as well as online
at raconteur.net
The information contained in this publication has been obtained
from sources the Proprietors believe to be correct. However, no
legal liability can be accepted for any errors. No part of this
publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the
Publisher. © Raconteur Media
RACONTEUR
Industrial IoT represents a
revolution in how products
are designed, manufactured
and operated.
Companies with bold digital
ambitions understand its
objectives and extraordinary
potential.
But the choices faced are far
from simple:
EITHER retain sovereignty over
your data, innovations and digital
skills development OR concede,
and with it the essence of your
competitive advantage.
EITHER tap into new leading-edge,
cloud neutral, pay-as-you-go
digital accelerators OR stick with
the legacy, lock-in approaches
of hitherto trusted software
incumbents.
EITHER empower your line experts
in fast cycle, co-creation of new
digital products and services OR
continue to outsource innovation.
If you believe in sovereignty, a
savvy approach and the power
of your engineers then consider
QiO as your digital partner.
We can provide the secure
platform, toolkit and Industrial
SaaS applications you need to
drive your own digital programme
and all at a highly attractive cost
to value ratio.
We help some of the most
respected industrial firms,
including Rolls-Royce plc and
Lloyd’s Register, unlock trapped
productivity and accelerate their
Industrial IoT transformation.
For more information, visit us at
qio.io
MARTIN BARROW
Former health editor,
news editor, foreign news
editor and business news
editor at The Times, he is
now a freelance writer.
WENDY M.
GROSSMAN
Freelance technology
writer, specialising in
computers, freedom and
privacy, she won the 2013 BT
Enigma Award for lifetime
achievement in information
security journalism.
LEO KING
Writer and editor, he works
with the Financial Times,
The Sunday Times, Forbes,
Bloomberg, The Economist
and The Daily Telegraph.
JIM McCLELLAND
Sustainable futurist, his
specialisms include built
environment, corporate
social responsibility and
ecosystem services.
BEN ROSSI
Editorial director at
Vitesse Media and
formerly editor of
Information Age and
Computer News Middle
East, he writes for
national newspapers and
business publications.
FINBARR TOESLAND
Freelance journalist, he
specialises in technology,
business and economic
issues, and contributes to a
wide range of publications.
CONTRIBUTORS
PUBLISHING MANAGER
Frank Monaghan
DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER
Jessica McGreal
HEAD OF PRODUCTION
Natalia Rosek
DESIGN
Samuele Motta
Grant Chapman
Kellie Jerrard
PRODUCTION EDITOR
Benjamin Chiou
MANAGING EDITOR
Peter Archer
DISTRIBUTED IN
INDUSTRIAL
INTERNET OF THINGS
@raconteur /raconteur.net @raconteur_london
T
he internet of things or IoT,
which can connect any de-
vice to the web, has been a
boon for owners of manufac-
turing firms. By providing data from
multiple machines, factory perfor-
mance can be monitored, goods can
be tracked and maintenance needs
predicted – all for greater efficiency.
Those on the factory floor have
been less supportive of the change,
understandably fearing their jobs
will be replaced by robots and ma-
chines that “speak” to each other.
The reality, however, is more nu-
anced. Rather than eliminating all
roles, the IoT is creating demand
for a different set of skills. Many of
these jobs will come from the ser-
vice sector, supporting customers,
and also the technology sector that
supports the systems.
By 2020, according to the Centre
for Economics and Business Re-
search and technology firm SAS,
some 182,000 jobs will be created in
the UK by the IoT and big data in a
range of areas.
The IoT allows traditional prod-
uct businesses to become services
firms. Instead of simply manu-
facturing and selling goods, the
industry can now maintain and
upgrade them, something the tech-
nology sector rather awkwardly
labels “servitisation”.
IoT-connected devices link con-
sumer goods to manufacturers’
systems, advising of maintenance
and upgrade needs, the same way
factory devices are connected.
Washing machines or heating
control systems, for example, can
be fitted with sensors to detect
when they are going wrong, alert-
ing manufacturers to send an
engineer. The same concept can
be applied to the business world,
and to a water utility’s pipes and
control systems.
Numerous predictions demon-
strate the enormous services oppor-
tunity. Gartner expects 8.4 billion
IoT-connected devices to be in use
worldwide this year, with 5.2 billion
of them in consumers’ hands and
3.2 billion of them in businesses.
Some $1.2 trillion will have been
spent on IoT by 2020, says analyst
IDC, with manufacturing lead-
ing the way last year with a cool
$187 billion.
The change creates demand for a
raft of new talent. “To capture the
bigger opportunities presented by
the industrial IoT,” according to
management firm Accenture, “com-
panies will especially need to look
for skills in data science, software
development, hardware engineer-
ing, testing, operations, marketing
and sales.”
The smartest firms have recog-
nised this shift. Among them is
General Electric, whose chief ex-
ecutive Jeff Immelt says industrial
companies are “in the information
business whether they want to be
or not”.
The most positive aspects of the
new service model are that it pro-
vides a deeper customer relation-
ship and a reliable revenue stream
for manufacturers. Goods makers
can record customer details from
which to develop loyalty and they
can look forward to recurring ser-
vice revenue, repairing the devices
themselves or taking a cut of their
contractors’ income.
Home and heating management
from the Google Nest and Brit-
ish Gas Hive systems accumulate
user data, becoming increasingly
invaluable to people as they link
automated services to recorded
habits, making a brand switch less
appealing. For their makers, both
data analysis and marketing skills
are essential.
This thinking is being taken a step
further by expanded teams of mar-
keting and technology personnel,
who are using the IoT for immediate
promotions. Drinks maker Pernod
Ricard has fitted sensors to bottles
that enable smartphone users to
simply tap their device on the ves-
sels to reveal recipes for cocktails
and ways to buy more products.
Competitor Diageo designs and runs
internet-connected bottles so users
can share their own videos.
An entire workforce will grow to
create, sell and support the new
business. In addition to sales and
marketing, Accenture notes in its
research, new employees “will in-
clude product managers, software
developers to create and test new
information services, hardware de-
signers to develop the products, data
scientists to create and interpret an-
alytics, and user-interface and expe-
rience designers”.
Business buyers are adding to
the scale of these skills demands.
Rolls-Royce and General Electric
have manufactured jet engines that
can be sold as a service, rather than
simply a product. Packaged into
regular costs for airline buyers are
maintenance and upgrades, with
IoT systems telling them when to
take action. Meanwhile, Michelin
uses sensors on customers’ deliv-
ery trucks to help human experts
suggest more efficient travel and
sell tyres based on the number of
miles driven.
As these services become the key
proposition for sales forces, manu-
facturers can use them to drive up-
take of add-on or upgrade products.
The data from all of these services
can also be applied by expanded
research teams to influence fresh
product design.
As businesses move their humans
away from manual tasks, workers
will equally be required to oper-
ate, design, monitor or service the
IoT-linked machines they have
purchased. Then there is the new
demand for staff educators to help
them use the systems and process
engineers to make sure they fit prop-
erly into existing operations, Accen-
ture notes.
Of course, with all these sys-
tems connecting business net-
works to the wider internet, secu-
rity personnel will be paramount.
Gartner expects that the “scarce”
IoT security specialists will be in
ever-higher demand and figures
from freelance database Upwork
show a 194 per cent increase in
2015 in demand for security infra-
structure specialists.
While the IoT may reduce the need
for some manual jobs in factories, it
will also create a huge new demand
for service skills to maintain, create
and market the systems. There is no
doubt that such a colossal shift will
be uncomfortable for some, but the
power of people will remain strong
in the new world.
Connected machines
will create better jobs
ChrisRatcliffe/BloombergviaGettyImages
3.2bn
of the 8.4 billion IoT
connected devices
are for business use
LEO KING
$1.2trn
will have been
spent on IoT
by 2020
Gartner/IDC
$187bn
will have been
spent on IoT within
manufacturing
by 2020
Negative stories have surrounded the internet of things and job
losses have been their focus, but a more accurate analysis
reveals a shift in the skills needed towards services
OVERVIEW
Rolls-Royce’s IoT systems notify the engineering company when maintenance and
upgrades are due
PUBLISHED IN ASSOCIATION WITH
INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET04 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0509 / 03 / 2017
INDUSTRIAL ANALYTICS
Choosing the
right model
for industry
Industrial
companies face a
difficult call when
deciding the best
model for dealing
with, analysing
and acting on the
plethora of data
in the industrial
internet of things
F
or many people, getting stuck
in a lift is their worst night-
mare. But thanks to the inter-
net of things (IoT), it could be
a thing of the past.
German manufacturer ThyssenK-
rupp, which runs more than a million
elevators around the world, is using
intelligent IoT algorithms to predict
when a lift is about to breakdown and
then prevent it from doing so.
The IoT is driven by the ability
to make any object a device by at-
taching sensors to it and connect-
ing it to the internet. The devices
are then able to communicate with
each other to improve processes.
“Businesses need to find a way
to keep up with the rapid pace
of change that 21st-century life
brings,” says Andreas Schieren-
beck, chief executive at ThyssenK-
rupp Elevator. “IoT systems that are
integrated into industry in an in-
telligent and practical way can pro-
vide the solution to this challenge.”
Connecting and carrying out ana-
lytics for more than a million eleva-
tors requires an enormous amount
of computational power. ThyssenK-
rupp uses cloud, where computing
BEN ROSSI
resources are delivered over the in-
ternet on a pay-per-use basis.
But cloud is just one of three
prominent models, the others be-
ing edge computing and fog com-
puting. Choosing the right one can
define the success or failure of any
IoT project.
Edge computing is the opposite of
cloud, processing and storing data
at the data sources themselves. It
uses local processing power and
storage to carry out low-level,
low-value tasks based on the data
it is collecting, such as switching
things on and off or sending alerts
based on trigger events.
Analyst firm IDC predicts that by
2019, 45 per cent of IoT-created data
will be stored, processed, analysed
and acted upon close to, or at the
edge of, the network. “If we want to
capture the opportunities of the in-
dustrial IoT, it’s not enough to rely
on today’s big central data centres
and clouds,” says Colin I’Anson,
chief technologist for IoT at HPE.
Fog is the middle ground. It com-
putes at the edge but includes el-
ements of aggregation with local
resource pools in close proximity to
end-users. Devices act as gateways
by using distributed nodes linked
to the cloud, sending and receiving
data and additional compute power
when needed.
Rentokil Initial, a pest control com-
pany, is harnessing fog computing to
connectitsrodentcontainmentdevic-
estogatewaysthatcollectinformation
and trigger alerts to technicians when
the devices need to be emptied
or serviced.
These gateways are also connect-
ed to a cloud-based command cen-
tre where employees and customers
can analyse data relevant to them.
The company works with software
firm Qlik to visualise that data,
making it easier to act on.
Another example of fog is the use
of blockchain as a decentralised
distributed system for device and
data provenance. “This is not edge
computing as it refers to the whole
system state and not cloud as it is
not held on one server,” says ana-
lyst Ian Hughes of 451 Research.
Cloud, edge and fog each come
with their own advantages and
disadvantages. For all the scal-
ability and flexibility benefits
of cloud, security is an enduring
concern when data is handed over
to a third party. Edge ensures only
useful data is sent over the net-
work, but it can get costly when
more powerful devices are re-
quired to cope with extra process-
ing. And while fog optimises the
amount of data that is sent across
the network, deploying more in-
termediate processing increases
the burden of managing it.
However, industrial organisations
shouldn’t see any of the models in an-
yway exclusive; each is appropriate to
different deployment scenarios.
A smart city lighting project, for
example, requires a more central-
ised system, while an oil refinery
will have lots of edge processing for
parts of the process, but an aggre-
gated, cloud-based digital twin rep-
resentation of the entire refinery.
A train may have an on-board edge
processor to optimise fuel usage as
it travels, but incorporates a cloud-
based system to apply predictive
maintenance to tracks to aggregate
information with other trains.
“For simple localised monitoring,
you could just send the data to a lo-
cal device to process it,” says Gary
Barnett, head of enterprise adviso-
ry at analyst firm GlobalData. “In
more complex environments, like
facilities management, the data
may be sent to an intermediate
server on your site so you can man-
Cloud, edge and
fog each come
with their own
advantages and
disadvantages
age it locally, with alerts or aggre-
gated data sent to the cloud.”
There is no one size fits all. “The
best solution may involve a com-
bination of all three approaches,”
says Graeme Wright, IoT director at
Fujitsu UK and Ireland.
American conglomerate General
Electric is a good example of a com-
pany deploying all three models. Its
industrial internet platform syncs
with every physical device to create
a complete continuum from assets
at the edge to gateways in the facto-
ry and all the way to the cloud.
Applying this approach has driv-
en productivity increases of up to 20
per cent in GE’s factories, resulting in
$730 million in productivity gains in
2016 alone. The company is aiming
for an additional $700 million in 2017.
“The cloud plays an essential role
in the industrial internet of things,”
says Deborah Sherry, general man-
ager at GE Digital Europe, “but it’s
not enough on its own for industrial
companies looking to optimise their
assets and operations.”
BuenaVistaImages/GettyImages
INDUSTRIAL DATA ANALYTICS APPLICATIONS
ANALYTICS PROFESSIONALS AND DECISION-MAKERS IN GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL COMPANIES RANKED THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FOLLOWING
APPLICATIONS OVER THE NEXT THREE YEARS
IoT Analytics/Digital Analytics Association Germany 2016
Trains have
on-board edge
processors to
optimise fuel
usage, but
incorporate cloud-
based predictive
maintenance
to aggregate
information with
other trains
COMMERCIAL FEATURECOMMERCIAL FEATURE
We’re using the vibration
to power the smart monitoring
of that vibration
Good vibrations: how the industrial internet
of things is creating the ‘intelligent train’
Vibration in train bogies has always been regarded as a problem to be managed. Now a new technology is
harnessing it to provide a self-powered monitoring system bringing improvements in cost of ownership, reliability
of service and safety enhancement
E
ven a casual glance at recent
newspaper headlines reveals
how pressures on the UK
rail network are increasing.
Office of Rail and Road figures show
the number of passenger journeys
on franchised rail services in Brit-
ain increased by 69.5 per cent be-
tween 2002 and 2015. Meanwhile,
train companies are under growing
pressure to manage costs, increase
reliability and ensure they get maxi-
mum usage out of all of their assets.
Modern trains are complex pieces
of equipment and even a small fault
can bring them, and a large part of
the entire network, to a grinding halt.
Most current rail maintenance re-
gimes are mileage or time based,
which means maintenance is done
regardless of condition, resulting in
both massive waste and unpredicta-
ble breakdowns. With condition mon-
itoring, train operators can do main-
tenance only when necessary. They’re
not risking being caught out because
damage is reported in real time
before it causes danger or delays. In
other words, they get no surprises.
Now innovative British company
Perpetuum has developed and im-
plemented a new technology that
can exploit a key feature of the in-
dustrial internet of things (IIoT) to
provide this kind of constant, re-
al-time “in-flight” monitoring and
diagnostics. An approach that’s al-
ready commonplace in aircraft can
now be transferred to trains.
“It means that the train opera-
tors don’t have any unpleasant
surprises caused by key pieces of
equipment failing or wearing out
unexpectedly because the system
predicts outages,” explains Dr
Steve Turley, chief executive of Per-
petuum, a business which was spun
out of Southampton University and
has developed award-winning,
self-powered monitoring systems
for both rolling stock and track.
An exceptionally important fea-
ture of the system is that it uses the
vibrations in the train to generate
enough power for the sensors, mi-
croprocessors and wireless trans-
mitters. So it’s very simple, low cost
and quick to install in minutes with
just a few bolts.
Perpetuum has shipped many
thousands of its sensors globally
and its clients already include six UK
rail operators. It has three elsewhere
in Europe, three in North Ameri-
ca and one in Australia, with many
more globally placing orders.
As Dr Turley explains, if a train op-
erator is constantly kept informed
about the trains’ condition, it can
identify and plan any maintenance
requirements ahead of time. The
system monitors key components
such as wheels, bearings, gearboxes
and now the track itself. As a result,
“in-service” failures can be more or
less eliminated leading to better
safety and reliability, and lower main-
tenance costs for trains and track.
It gives operators the ability to
do what Perpetuum describes as
“maintain on condition”. Dr Turley
says: “If the maintenance team of a
train operator knows what condition
a train is in, they don’t waste time
and money putting it through an un-
necessary upkeep and repair pro-
gramme. ‘Condition-based main-
tenance’ means that trains spend
more time on the track, improved
customer service and increased
profitability of the train operator.”
This “intelligent train,” overcomes
another key challenge facing train
operators of balancing essential
safety requirements with the need
to remain commercially viable. Now
they can improve both as one leads
to the other.
Key to Perpetuum’s success is its
expertise in vibration engineering.
“We’re using the vibration to power
the smart monitoring of that vibra-
tion. Vibration is something that hap-
pens naturally with trains, but we’ve
developed technologies that can
take this hitherto ignored by-prod-
uct of a moving train bogie and use
it to develop valuable, actionable
information,” explains Dr Turley.
For example, if a defect is devel-
oping in a physical system such as a
train, it will create a specific vibration
signature, which Perpetuum’s tech-
nology can identify and isolate from
all the other vibration going on in the
background. The company calls this
“information from vibration”.
Exploiting the IIoT’s key features
of connectivity and reduced need
for human intervention, this data is
turned into clear actionable infor-
mation about the “health” of the
train on a daily basis by Perpetuum’s
software algorithms, which alert
train operators of impending prob-
lems many months in advance. “As
a result of this very early warning,
we’ve never had a failure in service
for the components that it moni-
tors,” says Justin Southcombe, Per-
petuum’s commercial director.
Perpetuum is unique among play-
ers in this sector in that it’s vertically
integrated. “Most IIoT developers
extract information from other peo-
ple’s data, but we have the hardware
– that’s sensors – plus the com-
munications, software, algorithms
and the information display. This
knowledge of the complete systems
means we can deliver better infor-
mation in a more co-ordinated, more
cost-effective manner,” he says.
Another aspect of Perpetuum’s
technology that appeals to its cus-
tomers is that its patented sensor
nodes are powered by the compa-
ny’s proprietary energy harvesters,
which convert the ambient vibration
from a train into electrical energy,
known as “power from vibration”.
The absence of batteries and their
issues of replacement and disposal
make the sensor nodes more envi-
ronmentally friendly. Customers love
this approach as it makes the sensor
system very easy and fast to in-
stall without wiring, and the system
maintenance free.
“All communications are com-
pletely wireless. Wires aren’t a
good mix with bogies because they
get in the way and can become
disconnected because of vibration.
That means the signal becomes an
intermittent and unreliable data
source. People like the fact that
what we offer really is a ‘fit-and-
forget’ self-contained solution,”
says Mr Southcombe.
With all these advantages for
cost-saving, increased reliabili-
ty and safety, plus improved green
credentials that Perpetuum is al-
ready delivering for its customers,
it’s not surprising that more and
more rail operators around the
world are selecting Perpetuum’s
groundbreaking vibration condition
monitoring system. IIoT benefits are
best achieved with sensors that are
self-powered. Perpetuum achieves
this and does it on a mobile platform.
For more information please visit
perpetuum.com
01
Perpetuum delivers
clear, actionable
information
to enable
improvements in
cost of ownership,
reliability of service
and enhancement
of safety
02
Southeastern
has deployed the
Perpetuum system
across a number
of fleets since it
pioneered the
innovation five
years ago
01
02
CONDITION-BASED
MAINTENANCE
MAINTAIN ON
CONDITION
MAJOR COST
REDUCTIONS
NO SURPRISES
IMPROVED SAFETY
IMPROVED RELIABILITY
Predictive/prescriptive maintenance of machines
Customer/marketing-related analytics
Analysis of product usage in the field
Visual analytics
Research/development-related analytics
Data-driven quality control of product
Decision-support systems
Cyber security analytics
Smart grid
Industrial data analytics applications
Extremely
important
Very
important
Moderately
important
Slightly
important
Not at all
important
INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET04 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0509 / 03 / 2017
INDUSTRIAL ANALYTICS
Choosing the
right model
for industry
Industrial
companies face a
difficult call when
deciding the best
model for dealing
with, analysing
and acting on the
plethora of data
in the industrial
internet of things
F
or many people, getting stuck
in a lift is their worst night-
mare. But thanks to the inter-
net of things (IoT), it could be
a thing of the past.
German manufacturer ThyssenK-
rupp, which runs more than a million
elevators around the world, is using
intelligent IoT algorithms to predict
when a lift is about to breakdown and
then prevent it from doing so.
The IoT is driven by the ability
to make any object a device by at-
taching sensors to it and connect-
ing it to the internet. The devices
are then able to communicate with
each other to improve processes.
“Businesses need to find a way
to keep up with the rapid pace
of change that 21st-century life
brings,” says Andreas Schieren-
beck, chief executive at ThyssenK-
rupp Elevator. “IoT systems that are
integrated into industry in an in-
telligent and practical way can pro-
vide the solution to this challenge.”
Connecting and carrying out ana-
lytics for more than a million eleva-
tors requires an enormous amount
of computational power. ThyssenK-
rupp uses cloud, where computing
BEN ROSSI
resources are delivered over the in-
ternet on a pay-per-use basis.
But cloud is just one of three
prominent models, the others be-
ing edge computing and fog com-
puting. Choosing the right one can
define the success or failure of any
IoT project.
Edge computing is the opposite of
cloud, processing and storing data
at the data sources themselves. It
uses local processing power and
storage to carry out low-level,
low-value tasks based on the data
it is collecting, such as switching
things on and off or sending alerts
based on trigger events.
Analyst firm IDC predicts that by
2019, 45 per cent of IoT-created data
will be stored, processed, analysed
and acted upon close to, or at the
edge of, the network. “If we want to
capture the opportunities of the in-
dustrial IoT, it’s not enough to rely
on today’s big central data centres
and clouds,” says Colin I’Anson,
chief technologist for IoT at HPE.
Fog is the middle ground. It com-
putes at the edge but includes el-
ements of aggregation with local
resource pools in close proximity to
end-users. Devices act as gateways
by using distributed nodes linked
to the cloud, sending and receiving
data and additional compute power
when needed.
Rentokil Initial, a pest control com-
pany, is harnessing fog computing to
connectitsrodentcontainmentdevic-
estogatewaysthatcollectinformation
and trigger alerts to technicians when
the devices need to be emptied
or serviced.
These gateways are also connect-
ed to a cloud-based command cen-
tre where employees and customers
can analyse data relevant to them.
The company works with software
firm Qlik to visualise that data,
making it easier to act on.
Another example of fog is the use
of blockchain as a decentralised
distributed system for device and
data provenance. “This is not edge
computing as it refers to the whole
system state and not cloud as it is
not held on one server,” says ana-
lyst Ian Hughes of 451 Research.
Cloud, edge and fog each come
with their own advantages and
disadvantages. For all the scal-
ability and flexibility benefits
of cloud, security is an enduring
concern when data is handed over
to a third party. Edge ensures only
useful data is sent over the net-
work, but it can get costly when
more powerful devices are re-
quired to cope with extra process-
ing. And while fog optimises the
amount of data that is sent across
the network, deploying more in-
termediate processing increases
the burden of managing it.
However, industrial organisations
shouldn’t see any of the models in an-
yway exclusive; each is appropriate to
different deployment scenarios.
A smart city lighting project, for
example, requires a more central-
ised system, while an oil refinery
will have lots of edge processing for
parts of the process, but an aggre-
gated, cloud-based digital twin rep-
resentation of the entire refinery.
A train may have an on-board edge
processor to optimise fuel usage as
it travels, but incorporates a cloud-
based system to apply predictive
maintenance to tracks to aggregate
information with other trains.
“For simple localised monitoring,
you could just send the data to a lo-
cal device to process it,” says Gary
Barnett, head of enterprise adviso-
ry at analyst firm GlobalData. “In
more complex environments, like
facilities management, the data
may be sent to an intermediate
server on your site so you can man-
Cloud, edge and
fog each come
with their own
advantages and
disadvantages
age it locally, with alerts or aggre-
gated data sent to the cloud.”
There is no one size fits all. “The
best solution may involve a com-
bination of all three approaches,”
says Graeme Wright, IoT director at
Fujitsu UK and Ireland.
American conglomerate General
Electric is a good example of a com-
pany deploying all three models. Its
industrial internet platform syncs
with every physical device to create
a complete continuum from assets
at the edge to gateways in the facto-
ry and all the way to the cloud.
Applying this approach has driv-
en productivity increases of up to 20
per cent in GE’s factories, resulting in
$730 million in productivity gains in
2016 alone. The company is aiming
for an additional $700 million in 2017.
“The cloud plays an essential role
in the industrial internet of things,”
says Deborah Sherry, general man-
ager at GE Digital Europe, “but it’s
not enough on its own for industrial
companies looking to optimise their
assets and operations.”
BuenaVistaImages/GettyImages
INDUSTRIAL DATA ANALYTICS APPLICATIONS
ANALYTICS PROFESSIONALS AND DECISION-MAKERS IN GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL COMPANIES RANKED THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FOLLOWING
APPLICATIONS OVER THE NEXT THREE YEARS
IoT Analytics/Digital Analytics Association Germany 2016
Trains have
on-board edge
processors to
optimise fuel
usage, but
incorporate cloud-
based predictive
maintenance
to aggregate
information with
other trains
COMMERCIAL FEATURECOMMERCIAL FEATURE
We’re using the vibration
to power the smart monitoring
of that vibration
Good vibrations: how the industrial internet
of things is creating the ‘intelligent train’
Vibration in train bogies has always been regarded as a problem to be managed. Now a new technology is
harnessing it to provide a self-powered monitoring system bringing improvements in cost of ownership, reliability
of service and safety enhancement
E
ven a casual glance at recent
newspaper headlines reveals
how pressures on the UK
rail network are increasing.
Office of Rail and Road figures show
the number of passenger journeys
on franchised rail services in Brit-
ain increased by 69.5 per cent be-
tween 2002 and 2015. Meanwhile,
train companies are under growing
pressure to manage costs, increase
reliability and ensure they get maxi-
mum usage out of all of their assets.
Modern trains are complex pieces
of equipment and even a small fault
can bring them, and a large part of
the entire network, to a grinding halt.
Most current rail maintenance re-
gimes are mileage or time based,
which means maintenance is done
regardless of condition, resulting in
both massive waste and unpredicta-
ble breakdowns. With condition mon-
itoring, train operators can do main-
tenance only when necessary. They’re
not risking being caught out because
damage is reported in real time
before it causes danger or delays. In
other words, they get no surprises.
Now innovative British company
Perpetuum has developed and im-
plemented a new technology that
can exploit a key feature of the in-
dustrial internet of things (IIoT) to
provide this kind of constant, re-
al-time “in-flight” monitoring and
diagnostics. An approach that’s al-
ready commonplace in aircraft can
now be transferred to trains.
“It means that the train opera-
tors don’t have any unpleasant
surprises caused by key pieces of
equipment failing or wearing out
unexpectedly because the system
predicts outages,” explains Dr
Steve Turley, chief executive of Per-
petuum, a business which was spun
out of Southampton University and
has developed award-winning,
self-powered monitoring systems
for both rolling stock and track.
An exceptionally important fea-
ture of the system is that it uses the
vibrations in the train to generate
enough power for the sensors, mi-
croprocessors and wireless trans-
mitters. So it’s very simple, low cost
and quick to install in minutes with
just a few bolts.
Perpetuum has shipped many
thousands of its sensors globally
and its clients already include six UK
rail operators. It has three elsewhere
in Europe, three in North Ameri-
ca and one in Australia, with many
more globally placing orders.
As Dr Turley explains, if a train op-
erator is constantly kept informed
about the trains’ condition, it can
identify and plan any maintenance
requirements ahead of time. The
system monitors key components
such as wheels, bearings, gearboxes
and now the track itself. As a result,
“in-service” failures can be more or
less eliminated leading to better
safety and reliability, and lower main-
tenance costs for trains and track.
It gives operators the ability to
do what Perpetuum describes as
“maintain on condition”. Dr Turley
says: “If the maintenance team of a
train operator knows what condition
a train is in, they don’t waste time
and money putting it through an un-
necessary upkeep and repair pro-
gramme. ‘Condition-based main-
tenance’ means that trains spend
more time on the track, improved
customer service and increased
profitability of the train operator.”
This “intelligent train,” overcomes
another key challenge facing train
operators of balancing essential
safety requirements with the need
to remain commercially viable. Now
they can improve both as one leads
to the other.
Key to Perpetuum’s success is its
expertise in vibration engineering.
“We’re using the vibration to power
the smart monitoring of that vibra-
tion. Vibration is something that hap-
pens naturally with trains, but we’ve
developed technologies that can
take this hitherto ignored by-prod-
uct of a moving train bogie and use
it to develop valuable, actionable
information,” explains Dr Turley.
For example, if a defect is devel-
oping in a physical system such as a
train, it will create a specific vibration
signature, which Perpetuum’s tech-
nology can identify and isolate from
all the other vibration going on in the
background. The company calls this
“information from vibration”.
Exploiting the IIoT’s key features
of connectivity and reduced need
for human intervention, this data is
turned into clear actionable infor-
mation about the “health” of the
train on a daily basis by Perpetuum’s
software algorithms, which alert
train operators of impending prob-
lems many months in advance. “As
a result of this very early warning,
we’ve never had a failure in service
for the components that it moni-
tors,” says Justin Southcombe, Per-
petuum’s commercial director.
Perpetuum is unique among play-
ers in this sector in that it’s vertically
integrated. “Most IIoT developers
extract information from other peo-
ple’s data, but we have the hardware
– that’s sensors – plus the com-
munications, software, algorithms
and the information display. This
knowledge of the complete systems
means we can deliver better infor-
mation in a more co-ordinated, more
cost-effective manner,” he says.
Another aspect of Perpetuum’s
technology that appeals to its cus-
tomers is that its patented sensor
nodes are powered by the compa-
ny’s proprietary energy harvesters,
which convert the ambient vibration
from a train into electrical energy,
known as “power from vibration”.
The absence of batteries and their
issues of replacement and disposal
make the sensor nodes more envi-
ronmentally friendly. Customers love
this approach as it makes the sensor
system very easy and fast to in-
stall without wiring, and the system
maintenance free.
“All communications are com-
pletely wireless. Wires aren’t a
good mix with bogies because they
get in the way and can become
disconnected because of vibration.
That means the signal becomes an
intermittent and unreliable data
source. People like the fact that
what we offer really is a ‘fit-and-
forget’ self-contained solution,”
says Mr Southcombe.
With all these advantages for
cost-saving, increased reliabili-
ty and safety, plus improved green
credentials that Perpetuum is al-
ready delivering for its customers,
it’s not surprising that more and
more rail operators around the
world are selecting Perpetuum’s
groundbreaking vibration condition
monitoring system. IIoT benefits are
best achieved with sensors that are
self-powered. Perpetuum achieves
this and does it on a mobile platform.
For more information please visit
perpetuum.com
01
Perpetuum delivers
clear, actionable
information
to enable
improvements in
cost of ownership,
reliability of service
and enhancement
of safety
02
Southeastern
has deployed the
Perpetuum system
across a number
of fleets since it
pioneered the
innovation five
years ago
01
02
CONDITION-BASED
MAINTENANCE
MAINTAIN ON
CONDITION
MAJOR COST
REDUCTIONS
NO SURPRISES
IMPROVED SAFETY
IMPROVED RELIABILITY
Predictive/prescriptive maintenance of machines
Customer/marketing-related analytics
Analysis of product usage in the field
Visual analytics
Research/development-related analytics
Data-driven quality control of product
Decision-support systems
Cyber security analytics
Smart grid
Industrial data analytics applications
Extremely
important
Very
important
Moderately
important
Slightly
important
Not at all
important
INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET06 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0709 / 03 / 2017
The concept of
tiny sensors the
size of a grain of
sand, with the
ability to detect
everything from
chemicals to vi-
brations, was first thought up in the
early-1990s, but little progress was
made in the following years turning
this intriguing idea into a reality.
However, interest in this nascent
technology has grown recently, with
research firm Gartner predicting
smart dust will trend in the next five
to ten years.
SMART DUST Applications of these connected
smart dust particles in the IIoT are
virtually endless, from oil explo-
ration companies spreading smart
dust to monitor rock movements to
small sensors all over factory equip-
ment continually looking out for
changes and problems.
At the moment smart dust sen-
sors are still out of reach, primar-
ily due to the difficulty in min-
iaturisation and the prohibitive
cost of producing huge quantities.
However, they are slowly but sure-
ly becoming cheaper to manufac-
ture, so it may not be long before
billions upon billions of minis-
cule smart dust particles populate
the world.
The industrial internet of things is poised
for take-off and will be given trajectory by
innovative ideas. Here are five of the best
Minute sensors like dust
and squadrons of drones
Unmanned aerial
vehicles, or drones,
have quickly be-
come one of the
most talked about
products in the
tech space, thanks
to their many useful applications. In
the near future these machines could
play a significant part in the IIoT by
acting as either a sensor or by pro-
viding a connection between sensors
and data collection points.
Drones may not yet be seen as a
fully fledged connected IIoT de-
vice, but they can carry all range of
sensors and are autonomous ma-
chines capable of gathering massive
amounts of valuable data. Construc-
tion companies can use drones to
undertake daily land surveys and
feed this data into software to en-
sure construction is on schedule and
send an alert if anything looks out of
place or improperly built.
But drones are no mere data col-
lectors, with the devices potentially
being able to quickly act on the data
they collect and communicate with
other drones in the IIoT to work to-
gether to overcome problems.
DRONES
Far from the facto-
ry floor, in count-
less farms around
the world, is where
the IIoT could
make the biggest
difference. Utilis-
ing the latest tech-
nologies is nothing new for the agri-
culture industry, but implementing
smart, connected IIoT projects
enables farmers to make use of the
massive amounts of data generated
on their farms.
The large size of many farms makes
manual surveys ineffective and diffi-
cult, leading farmers to turn to IIoT
solutions. Oyster farmer Ward Aqua-
farms, with the help of telecoms firm
Verizon, deployed an IIoT program
to maximise productivity and en-
sure the quality of food in the supply
chain, using satellite imaging and
IIoT track-and-trace technology to
monitor farming operations all the
FUTURISTIC FARMING
way from harvest to delivery.
“Agriculture presents perhaps the
perfect business case for IoT imple-
mentation, so we are likely to see a
much greater extension of its ap-
plications over the next five years,”
says Tony Judd, managing director
for Verizon in the UK. “In areas like
precision agriculture, real-time data
about soil, weather, air quality and
hydration levels can help farmers
make better decisions about the
planting and harvesting of crops.”
save a significant amount of man-
hours and money for airlines.
Taleris, a joint venture by Gener-
al Electric and Accenture, is at the
forefront of developing IoT solu-
tions for airlines, aimed at min-
imising delays and disruptions
by analysing data collected from
sensors on aeroplanes.
Uptake of these IoT technologies
in the aerospace sector has been
slow, as cost-savings are not easy
to estimate, but as the benefits
of these systems become appar-
ent, interest from airlines will
grow. The widespread usage of
analytics programs that have the
ability to monitor aircraft proac-
tively not only
improves turn-
around times
for airlines but
also helps meet
customer needs
more effectively.
Aerospace companies have mainly
introduced IIoT solutions on the fac-
tory floor for tracking tools and parts,
with some beginning to expand the
number of on-board IoT devices. An
aeroplane that knows when it’s going
to encounter maintenance problems
before they actually happen would
AEROSPACE
Energy companies
can expect to see
their operations
f u n d a m e n t a l l y
altered when IoT
is fully embraced
in their sector.
Spikes in ener-
gy consumption around major TV
broadcasts and weather events have
long troubled utility firms. But with
effective energy demand manage-
ment through the IIoT, the need for
investment in both energy networks
and power plants is reduced.
Smart meters are one example
of the industry’s move towards
IoT technologies, although at the
moment they only record usage
amounts and timings. Utility firms
could potentially provide price in-
formation to these meters, which
could in turn interact with other IoT
devices to use energy at the most ef-
ficient time.
ENERGY NETWORKS
New oil and gas pipelines are fit-
ted with sensors that detect leaks
and alert repair teams, so issues are
fixed before they can cause prob-
lems and the number of blackouts
and brownouts are kept to a mini-
mum. Any improvements the IoT
can achieve in energy supply man-
agement will become increasingly
valuable as utility companies look
for the most effective ways to deal
with multiple energy sources in a
decentralised network.
T
he growth of the internet of things (IoT) is drastically changing how
consumers interact with their cars, homes and appliances, but the
aptly named second digital revolution has major implications for
industry too. From machine-learning, machine-to-machine com-
munication to artificial intelligence, the industrial internet of things (IIoT)
takes IoT technologies and directly applies them to industrial concerns and
in the process improves efficiency and productivity.
While consumer-focused IoT solutions have dominated headlines in re-
cent years and the relatively long life cycles of industrial equipment has
limited growth in this sector so far, major firms and manufacturers are be-
ginning to embrace IIoT on a big scale, attracted by the opportunity to drive
down costs and increase competitiveness.
Developments in the IIoT environment over the next few years can be ex-
pected to increase adoption further, leaving few companies ignoring its fu-
ture, with a survey by software company Infor finding
that 52 per cent of manufactures believe IoT is a
priority for their business.
FINBARR TOESLAND
The industrial internet
of things (IIoT) may be
a new term to most
businesses, but it
is creating signif-
icantly more soci-
etal and economic
valuethanisderived
from simply “consid-
ering the cloud”.
IIoT accelerates this
value by integrating opera-
tional practices, in every industry,
with big data and machine-learning.
IIoT affects a wide range of technol-
ogies at both the systems and device
levels to include industrial automa-
tion systems, communication tech-
nology, cloud-based data analytics
and related infrastructure.
While many think of manufac-
turing as the “industrial” in IIoT,
the IIoT impact is in fact pervasive
across industries, with early appli-
cations in transportation, health-
care, power, process control, build-
ings and smart cities.
True connectivity is redefining
businesses in nearly every vertical
segment globally. Connected build-
ing systems can improve power man-
agement, which enhances building
safety and reliability. On a larger
scale, intelligent electrical grids al-
low businesses to both analyse op-
erational data for better efficiency of
current plants and integrate renewa-
ble sources to support green environ-
mental initiatives globally.
The need for connectivity and
improved efficiency is paramount
in creating greater value. A shift to-
wards tighter systems integration en-
ables enterprises to not only be more
efficient, but also more profitable due
to greater flexibility and responsive-
ness to changing conditions. Connec-
tivity contributes to environmental
sustainability objectives too.
With greater connectivity comes
an accelerating need for greater cy-
ber security practices and technol-
ogies in industrial control systems.
The complexity of IIoT dictates that
IIoT-focused cyber security meas-
ures be designed into business prac-
tices, automation systems and com-
ponents to ensure the security of
individual assets and related larger,
holistic systems.
Companies that first optimise
and then digitise their operations
through IIoT solutions are seeing
immediate value from real-time
data, dramatically improving oper-
ations, creating value both within
the business and for their end-use
customers. When managed well, this
data can apply such value as predic-
tive analytics to stave off unplanned
downtime, often identifying the
sources of potential
equipment issues and
catastrophic risks
before they hap-
pen. Companies
are also benefiting
from safety and se-
curity measures.
For businesses to
achieve maximum
value from IIoT systems,
best practices are essential.
The Industrial Internet Consortium
(IIC) has three main objectives –
build community, provide industry
guidance and prove with testbeds.
OurIICcommunityofmorethan270
companies represents today’s larg-
est IIoT ecosystem of experts in IIoT.
StakeholderswithintheIICcomefrom
every segment globally, including pri-
vate industry, governments and aca-
demia. Our testbed programme is the
industry’s most comprehensive, with
more than 25 testbeds and growing.
We are releasing practical guidance
on how to build IIoT systems. The IIC
published a set of reference docu-
ments. The Industrial Internet Refer-
ence Architecture provides a strategic
treatment of how to build an IIoT
system. The Industrial Internet Secu-
rityFramework extends the reference
architecture to consider IIoT securi-
ty concerns. The Industrial Internet
Connectivity Framework provides a
deep understanding of IIoT connec-
tivity issues and best practices.
The Business Strategy and Innova-
tion Framework provides high-level
identification and analysis of issues
enterprises will need to capitalise
on with opportunities emerging
from the IIoT. These deliverables
are key enablers of IIoT, creating a
roadmap for businesses to enter the
IIoT ecosystem.
The potential of IIoT is to cre-
ate new applications that were not
possible before the combination
of intelligence and networking,
including innovations such as au-
tonomous cars for safe, efficient
transportation, optimised agricul-
ture, medical devices and systems
that can connect and work together
to care for patients, and integrated
central and distributed power gen-
eration that will transform the core
infrastructure of the planet, opti-
mising and creating industries.
These IIoT applications will be the
primary economic growth drivers
of the next several years. Although
most IIoT systems take time to de-
sign, build and deploy, they are rap-
idly becoming the infrastructure for
a new generation of systems ben-
efiting both business and society
mutually. As we say within the IIC,
“Things are coming together.”
JOHN TUCCILLO
Steering committee chair
Industrial Internet Consortium
OPINION COLUMN
‘True connectivity is
redefining businesses
in nearly every vertical
segment globally’
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
THE FUTURE CFO RACONTEUR.NET2 06 / 12 / 2016
A
s they move on the football
field, NFL players have car-
ried more than just a ball over
the last few seasons. The
Zebra Sports Solution tracks players’
movement on the field, which enables
coaches to gather performance data
including speed, distance travelled,
acceleration and location.
Coaches then use this data to con-
duct deeper analysis into formations
and player tendencies. In addition,
broadcasters can use it to show
player statistics as part of NFL Next
Gen Stats.
The Zebra Sports Solution leverag-
es the same identity, tracking and
location technologies that strategic
enterprise internet of things adviser
Zebra Technologies implements glob-
ally for multinational corporations in
healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and
transportation and logistics to give
real-time visibility to an organisation’s
assets, people and processes.
“Sensing technology has delivered
huge benefits to enterprises globally,
especially when the data created by
those sensors is analysed effectively,”
says Zebra chief technology officer
Tom Bianculli. “But all too often this
data is used to generate reports or
statistics long after it can be used
to impact operations in the moment.
We are now entering a new phase in
which we’re helping a wide range of
organisations to act on their data in
near real time. Today it’s about sens-
ing and analysing, and then taking
that next best action right at the
point of activity whenever and wher-
ever possible.”
For example, Zebra is helping re-
tailers to gain greater visibility of
their stock and their customers,
and to act based on that new dig-
ital picture. “Big data is essential
for longer-term forecasting and our
technology takes full advantage
of what it offers,” says Mr Bianculli.
“And we help organisations to use
small data as well. Just as coaches
can use the data they receive from
the field of play, retail sensor tags
can sense that a display of jeans in
a shop is down to its last three pairs.
The system can then trigger a work-
flow to have another dozen brought
up from the stock room in minutes.”
To help retailers co-ordinate the
information available to them and
make the best use of it, Zebra Tech-
Transform enterprise
operations in three
simple steps...
More organisations are capturing more data while a growing
number are improving their analysis of it. True value will come
to those who sense, analyse and act on this data in real time,
before the resulting benefits perish
nologies recently launched Smart-
Sense™ for Retail. This solution turns
an entire physical store into a smart
online store by automatically sens-
ing and recording the location and
movement of virtually everything in
the space, including merchandise,
staff, shoppers and products.
“For example, sensor tags can in-
dicate how much of which stock is
available while video analytics can
identify merchandise and people in
motion, and all of that sensor data
can be fused together to identify the
next best action for store associates.
Whether that be aiding a customer
looking to make a purchase decision
or being dispatched to replenish a
shelf with stock from the back room,”
says Mr Bianculli.
Enabling employees to act quick-
ly and easily with this data enables
companies to gain a competitive
edge and deploy their valuable re-
sources most effectively. “In health-
care, a smart wristband informs the
hospital system of the location of
patients which, when combined
with other data sources, can be
used to enhance the care-flow
journey, reducing waiting times and
errors, and improving patient care
and throughput,” he says.
“Technology is creating an ocean
of data that, with the advent of
machine-learning, can be distilled
down to actionable insight not just
for managers but for every em-
ployee. However, it’s not just about
quantity of data anymore. Today
the important aspect is how quickly
and easily you can turn that data
into real-time, actionable informa-
tion that allows you to make smart-
er business decisions which result in
operational and customer-experi-
ence benefit.”
For more information please visit
www.zebra.com
We are now entering
a new phase in which
we’re helping a wide
range of organisations to
act on their data in near
real time
COMMERCIAL FEATUREFIVE TOP APPLICATIONS
INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET06 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0709 / 03 / 2017
The concept of
tiny sensors the
size of a grain of
sand, with the
ability to detect
everything from
chemicals to vi-
brations, was first thought up in the
early-1990s, but little progress was
made in the following years turning
this intriguing idea into a reality.
However, interest in this nascent
technology has grown recently, with
research firm Gartner predicting
smart dust will trend in the next five
to ten years.
SMART DUST Applications of these connected
smart dust particles in the IIoT are
virtually endless, from oil explo-
ration companies spreading smart
dust to monitor rock movements to
small sensors all over factory equip-
ment continually looking out for
changes and problems.
At the moment smart dust sen-
sors are still out of reach, primar-
ily due to the difficulty in min-
iaturisation and the prohibitive
cost of producing huge quantities.
However, they are slowly but sure-
ly becoming cheaper to manufac-
ture, so it may not be long before
billions upon billions of minis-
cule smart dust particles populate
the world.
The industrial internet of things is poised
for take-off and will be given trajectory by
innovative ideas. Here are five of the best
Minute sensors like dust
and squadrons of drones
Unmanned aerial
vehicles, or drones,
have quickly be-
come one of the
most talked about
products in the
tech space, thanks
to their many useful applications. In
the near future these machines could
play a significant part in the IIoT by
acting as either a sensor or by pro-
viding a connection between sensors
and data collection points.
Drones may not yet be seen as a
fully fledged connected IIoT de-
vice, but they can carry all range of
sensors and are autonomous ma-
chines capable of gathering massive
amounts of valuable data. Construc-
tion companies can use drones to
undertake daily land surveys and
feed this data into software to en-
sure construction is on schedule and
send an alert if anything looks out of
place or improperly built.
But drones are no mere data col-
lectors, with the devices potentially
being able to quickly act on the data
they collect and communicate with
other drones in the IIoT to work to-
gether to overcome problems.
DRONES
Far from the facto-
ry floor, in count-
less farms around
the world, is where
the IIoT could
make the biggest
difference. Utilis-
ing the latest tech-
nologies is nothing new for the agri-
culture industry, but implementing
smart, connected IIoT projects
enables farmers to make use of the
massive amounts of data generated
on their farms.
The large size of many farms makes
manual surveys ineffective and diffi-
cult, leading farmers to turn to IIoT
solutions. Oyster farmer Ward Aqua-
farms, with the help of telecoms firm
Verizon, deployed an IIoT program
to maximise productivity and en-
sure the quality of food in the supply
chain, using satellite imaging and
IIoT track-and-trace technology to
monitor farming operations all the
FUTURISTIC FARMING
way from harvest to delivery.
“Agriculture presents perhaps the
perfect business case for IoT imple-
mentation, so we are likely to see a
much greater extension of its ap-
plications over the next five years,”
says Tony Judd, managing director
for Verizon in the UK. “In areas like
precision agriculture, real-time data
about soil, weather, air quality and
hydration levels can help farmers
make better decisions about the
planting and harvesting of crops.”
save a significant amount of man-
hours and money for airlines.
Taleris, a joint venture by Gener-
al Electric and Accenture, is at the
forefront of developing IoT solu-
tions for airlines, aimed at min-
imising delays and disruptions
by analysing data collected from
sensors on aeroplanes.
Uptake of these IoT technologies
in the aerospace sector has been
slow, as cost-savings are not easy
to estimate, but as the benefits
of these systems become appar-
ent, interest from airlines will
grow. The widespread usage of
analytics programs that have the
ability to monitor aircraft proac-
tively not only
improves turn-
around times
for airlines but
also helps meet
customer needs
more effectively.
Aerospace companies have mainly
introduced IIoT solutions on the fac-
tory floor for tracking tools and parts,
with some beginning to expand the
number of on-board IoT devices. An
aeroplane that knows when it’s going
to encounter maintenance problems
before they actually happen would
AEROSPACE
Energy companies
can expect to see
their operations
f u n d a m e n t a l l y
altered when IoT
is fully embraced
in their sector.
Spikes in ener-
gy consumption around major TV
broadcasts and weather events have
long troubled utility firms. But with
effective energy demand manage-
ment through the IIoT, the need for
investment in both energy networks
and power plants is reduced.
Smart meters are one example
of the industry’s move towards
IoT technologies, although at the
moment they only record usage
amounts and timings. Utility firms
could potentially provide price in-
formation to these meters, which
could in turn interact with other IoT
devices to use energy at the most ef-
ficient time.
ENERGY NETWORKS
New oil and gas pipelines are fit-
ted with sensors that detect leaks
and alert repair teams, so issues are
fixed before they can cause prob-
lems and the number of blackouts
and brownouts are kept to a mini-
mum. Any improvements the IoT
can achieve in energy supply man-
agement will become increasingly
valuable as utility companies look
for the most effective ways to deal
with multiple energy sources in a
decentralised network.
T
he growth of the internet of things (IoT) is drastically changing how
consumers interact with their cars, homes and appliances, but the
aptly named second digital revolution has major implications for
industry too. From machine-learning, machine-to-machine com-
munication to artificial intelligence, the industrial internet of things (IIoT)
takes IoT technologies and directly applies them to industrial concerns and
in the process improves efficiency and productivity.
While consumer-focused IoT solutions have dominated headlines in re-
cent years and the relatively long life cycles of industrial equipment has
limited growth in this sector so far, major firms and manufacturers are be-
ginning to embrace IIoT on a big scale, attracted by the opportunity to drive
down costs and increase competitiveness.
Developments in the IIoT environment over the next few years can be ex-
pected to increase adoption further, leaving few companies ignoring its fu-
ture, with a survey by software company Infor finding
that 52 per cent of manufactures believe IoT is a
priority for their business.
FINBARR TOESLAND
The industrial internet
of things (IIoT) may be
a new term to most
businesses, but it
is creating signif-
icantly more soci-
etal and economic
valuethanisderived
from simply “consid-
ering the cloud”.
IIoT accelerates this
value by integrating opera-
tional practices, in every industry,
with big data and machine-learning.
IIoT affects a wide range of technol-
ogies at both the systems and device
levels to include industrial automa-
tion systems, communication tech-
nology, cloud-based data analytics
and related infrastructure.
While many think of manufac-
turing as the “industrial” in IIoT,
the IIoT impact is in fact pervasive
across industries, with early appli-
cations in transportation, health-
care, power, process control, build-
ings and smart cities.
True connectivity is redefining
businesses in nearly every vertical
segment globally. Connected build-
ing systems can improve power man-
agement, which enhances building
safety and reliability. On a larger
scale, intelligent electrical grids al-
low businesses to both analyse op-
erational data for better efficiency of
current plants and integrate renewa-
ble sources to support green environ-
mental initiatives globally.
The need for connectivity and
improved efficiency is paramount
in creating greater value. A shift to-
wards tighter systems integration en-
ables enterprises to not only be more
efficient, but also more profitable due
to greater flexibility and responsive-
ness to changing conditions. Connec-
tivity contributes to environmental
sustainability objectives too.
With greater connectivity comes
an accelerating need for greater cy-
ber security practices and technol-
ogies in industrial control systems.
The complexity of IIoT dictates that
IIoT-focused cyber security meas-
ures be designed into business prac-
tices, automation systems and com-
ponents to ensure the security of
individual assets and related larger,
holistic systems.
Companies that first optimise
and then digitise their operations
through IIoT solutions are seeing
immediate value from real-time
data, dramatically improving oper-
ations, creating value both within
the business and for their end-use
customers. When managed well, this
data can apply such value as predic-
tive analytics to stave off unplanned
downtime, often identifying the
sources of potential
equipment issues and
catastrophic risks
before they hap-
pen. Companies
are also benefiting
from safety and se-
curity measures.
For businesses to
achieve maximum
value from IIoT systems,
best practices are essential.
The Industrial Internet Consortium
(IIC) has three main objectives –
build community, provide industry
guidance and prove with testbeds.
OurIICcommunityofmorethan270
companies represents today’s larg-
est IIoT ecosystem of experts in IIoT.
StakeholderswithintheIICcomefrom
every segment globally, including pri-
vate industry, governments and aca-
demia. Our testbed programme is the
industry’s most comprehensive, with
more than 25 testbeds and growing.
We are releasing practical guidance
on how to build IIoT systems. The IIC
published a set of reference docu-
ments. The Industrial Internet Refer-
ence Architecture provides a strategic
treatment of how to build an IIoT
system. The Industrial Internet Secu-
rityFramework extends the reference
architecture to consider IIoT securi-
ty concerns. The Industrial Internet
Connectivity Framework provides a
deep understanding of IIoT connec-
tivity issues and best practices.
The Business Strategy and Innova-
tion Framework provides high-level
identification and analysis of issues
enterprises will need to capitalise
on with opportunities emerging
from the IIoT. These deliverables
are key enablers of IIoT, creating a
roadmap for businesses to enter the
IIoT ecosystem.
The potential of IIoT is to cre-
ate new applications that were not
possible before the combination
of intelligence and networking,
including innovations such as au-
tonomous cars for safe, efficient
transportation, optimised agricul-
ture, medical devices and systems
that can connect and work together
to care for patients, and integrated
central and distributed power gen-
eration that will transform the core
infrastructure of the planet, opti-
mising and creating industries.
These IIoT applications will be the
primary economic growth drivers
of the next several years. Although
most IIoT systems take time to de-
sign, build and deploy, they are rap-
idly becoming the infrastructure for
a new generation of systems ben-
efiting both business and society
mutually. As we say within the IIC,
“Things are coming together.”
JOHN TUCCILLO
Steering committee chair
Industrial Internet Consortium
OPINION COLUMN
‘True connectivity is
redefining businesses
in nearly every vertical
segment globally’
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
THE FUTURE CFO RACONTEUR.NET2 06 / 12 / 2016
A
s they move on the football
field, NFL players have car-
ried more than just a ball over
the last few seasons. The
Zebra Sports Solution tracks players’
movement on the field, which enables
coaches to gather performance data
including speed, distance travelled,
acceleration and location.
Coaches then use this data to con-
duct deeper analysis into formations
and player tendencies. In addition,
broadcasters can use it to show
player statistics as part of NFL Next
Gen Stats.
The Zebra Sports Solution leverag-
es the same identity, tracking and
location technologies that strategic
enterprise internet of things adviser
Zebra Technologies implements glob-
ally for multinational corporations in
healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and
transportation and logistics to give
real-time visibility to an organisation’s
assets, people and processes.
“Sensing technology has delivered
huge benefits to enterprises globally,
especially when the data created by
those sensors is analysed effectively,”
says Zebra chief technology officer
Tom Bianculli. “But all too often this
data is used to generate reports or
statistics long after it can be used
to impact operations in the moment.
We are now entering a new phase in
which we’re helping a wide range of
organisations to act on their data in
near real time. Today it’s about sens-
ing and analysing, and then taking
that next best action right at the
point of activity whenever and wher-
ever possible.”
For example, Zebra is helping re-
tailers to gain greater visibility of
their stock and their customers,
and to act based on that new dig-
ital picture. “Big data is essential
for longer-term forecasting and our
technology takes full advantage
of what it offers,” says Mr Bianculli.
“And we help organisations to use
small data as well. Just as coaches
can use the data they receive from
the field of play, retail sensor tags
can sense that a display of jeans in
a shop is down to its last three pairs.
The system can then trigger a work-
flow to have another dozen brought
up from the stock room in minutes.”
To help retailers co-ordinate the
information available to them and
make the best use of it, Zebra Tech-
Transform enterprise
operations in three
simple steps...
More organisations are capturing more data while a growing
number are improving their analysis of it. True value will come
to those who sense, analyse and act on this data in real time,
before the resulting benefits perish
nologies recently launched Smart-
Sense™ for Retail. This solution turns
an entire physical store into a smart
online store by automatically sens-
ing and recording the location and
movement of virtually everything in
the space, including merchandise,
staff, shoppers and products.
“For example, sensor tags can in-
dicate how much of which stock is
available while video analytics can
identify merchandise and people in
motion, and all of that sensor data
can be fused together to identify the
next best action for store associates.
Whether that be aiding a customer
looking to make a purchase decision
or being dispatched to replenish a
shelf with stock from the back room,”
says Mr Bianculli.
Enabling employees to act quick-
ly and easily with this data enables
companies to gain a competitive
edge and deploy their valuable re-
sources most effectively. “In health-
care, a smart wristband informs the
hospital system of the location of
patients which, when combined
with other data sources, can be
used to enhance the care-flow
journey, reducing waiting times and
errors, and improving patient care
and throughput,” he says.
“Technology is creating an ocean
of data that, with the advent of
machine-learning, can be distilled
down to actionable insight not just
for managers but for every em-
ployee. However, it’s not just about
quantity of data anymore. Today
the important aspect is how quickly
and easily you can turn that data
into real-time, actionable informa-
tion that allows you to make smart-
er business decisions which result in
operational and customer-experi-
ence benefit.”
For more information please visit
www.zebra.com
We are now entering
a new phase in which
we’re helping a wide
range of organisations to
act on their data in near
real time
COMMERCIAL FEATUREFIVE TOP APPLICATIONS
Forrester 2016
Accenture 2015
Accenture/Frontier Economics 2015
$7.1trn
$1.8trn
$0.5trn
$0.7trn
INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET08 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0909 / 03 / 2017
CONNECTED CAPABILITIES
IoT OPPORTUNITIES BY INDUSTRY AND APPLICATION
INDUSTRIAL IoT ENABLING FACTORS BY SELECTED COUNTRY
EACH COUNTRY IS RANKED BY ITS NATIONAL ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY, SCORED OUT OF 100, BASED ON A NUMBER OF SOCIAL,
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ENABLING FACTORS
The internet of things (IoT) has the potential to transform almost every function of every industry, from retail and healthcare to transportation and oil and gas.
Here are the sectors and countries leading the charge
VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL IoT IN 2030
WHAT INDUSTRIAL IoT COULD BE WORTH TO THE FOLLOWING ECONOMIES
CHINA
GERMANY
UK
UNITED STATES
64
54.4
61.8
50.9
UNITED STATES
JAPAN
NORWAY
CANADA
63.9
54.3
59
47.1
SWITZERLAND
GERMANY
NETHERLANDS
CHINA
63.2
54.1
58.8
45.7
FINLAND
AUSTRALIA
DENMARK
FRANCE
62.4
52.2
55
33
SWEDEN
SOUTH KOREA
UK
SPAIN
Facility
management
APPLICATION
Security and
surveillance
Supply chain
management
Inventory
and warehouse
Customer order/
delivery tracking
Industrial asset
management
Smart products
Energy
management
Fleet
management
SECTOR
RANKING OF OPPORTUNITIES Cool Warm Hot Hotter Hottest
Primary
manufacturing
High-tech and
industrial production
Transportation
and logistics
Retail and
wholesale
Utilities and
telecommunications
Media,
entertainment
and leisure
Healthcare
Consumer packaged
goods and
pharmaceuticals
Chemicals,
oil and gas
Financial
services and
insurance
Government,
education and
social services
Forrester 2016
Accenture 2015
Accenture/Frontier Economics 2015
$7.1trn
$1.8trn
$0.5trn
$0.7trn
INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET08 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0909 / 03 / 2017
CONNECTED CAPABILITIES
IoT OPPORTUNITIES BY INDUSTRY AND APPLICATION
INDUSTRIAL IoT ENABLING FACTORS BY SELECTED COUNTRY
EACH COUNTRY IS RANKED BY ITS NATIONAL ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY, SCORED OUT OF 100, BASED ON A NUMBER OF SOCIAL,
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ENABLING FACTORS
The internet of things (IoT) has the potential to transform almost every function of every industry, from retail and healthcare to transportation and oil and gas.
Here are the sectors and countries leading the charge
VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL IoT IN 2030
WHAT INDUSTRIAL IoT COULD BE WORTH TO THE FOLLOWING ECONOMIES
CHINA
GERMANY
UK
UNITED STATES
64
54.4
61.8
50.9
UNITED STATES
JAPAN
NORWAY
CANADA
63.9
54.3
59
47.1
SWITZERLAND
GERMANY
NETHERLANDS
CHINA
63.2
54.1
58.8
45.7
FINLAND
AUSTRALIA
DENMARK
FRANCE
62.4
52.2
55
33
SWEDEN
SOUTH KOREA
UK
SPAIN
Facility
management
APPLICATION
Security and
surveillance
Supply chain
management
Inventory
and warehouse
Customer order/
delivery tracking
Industrial asset
management
Smart products
Energy
management
Fleet
management
SECTOR
RANKING OF OPPORTUNITIES Cool Warm Hot Hotter Hottest
Primary
manufacturing
High-tech and
industrial production
Transportation
and logistics
Retail and
wholesale
Utilities and
telecommunications
Media,
entertainment
and leisure
Healthcare
Consumer packaged
goods and
pharmaceuticals
Chemicals,
oil and gas
Financial
services and
insurance
Government,
education and
social services
INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET10 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 1109 / 03 / 2017
A
ll we need is for one of us –
just one, sooner or later –
to have the thing we’re all
hoping for... one… good...
day.” Fans of the hit TV series Buffy
the Vampire Slayer may recognise
that – it’s the vampire Spike explain-
ing to Buffy why her life expectancy
is irredeemably short. It also serves
as a metaphor for cyber attackers
and IT systems – there are an un-
told number of them and one of you,
London professor who leads the
multi-university Research Insti-
tute for Trustworthy Industrial
Control Systems.
He cites statistics from the US-
based Industrial Control Systems
Computer Emergency Response
Team (ICS-CERT), which show a
steadily increasing number of inci-
dents over the last five years. Their
2015 report tallied 295 reported inci-
dents and, while that’s a small num-
ber compared to today’s near-daily
headlines about data breaches, the
examples he cites are scary enough.
WENDY M. GROSSMAN
Inadequate security remains a concern with the industrial
internet of things as the number of cyber attacks continues to rise
Too many loopholes
for cyber criminals
The earliest example dates from
2000 in Australia, when an attack
on Maroochy Shire Council’s com-
puterised waste management sys-
tem caused millions of litres of raw
sewage to spill into rivers, parks
and hotel grounds. In 2015 and 2016
Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek
showed they could use a Jeep Cher-
okee’s internet connection to im-
mobilise it remotely on a highway,
cause unintended acceleration,
slam on the brakes and turn the
steering wheel.
Professor Carsten Maple, of the
University of Warwick’s Cyber Se-
curity Centre and the PETRAS In-
ternet of Things Research Hub, adds
a few more such tales. In 2014 the
German Federal Office of Informa-
tion revealed that an attack caused
millions of pounds worth of damage
by overheating the furnace in a Ger-
man steel mill.
Last year a ransomware attack
spread across the computers belong-
ing to San Francisco’s municipal
transportation system; rather than
pay the $73,000 the attackers de-
manded, staff opened the gates and
allowed passengers to ride for free
for two days while they restored the
system from backups.
Also last year a former employee
used a virtual private network to
breach Georgia-Pacific and reach
one of its paper towel factories, cost-
ing an estimated $1.1 million in lost
or spoiled production.
In both 2015 and 2016 attacks
on substations turned off power
to tens of thousands of Ukrainian
households. And let’s not forget
Stuxnet, which attacked comput-
er controls over the centrifuges
used to refine uranium within
Iranian nuclear facilities, dam-
aging them and the country’s nu-
clear programme. As harbingers
of things to come, none of these
is trivial.
“If you look at the ICS-CERT an-
nual report,” says Professor Hankin,
“the major sector experiencing cy-
ber incidents until 2014 was energy.
Then in 2015 the largest was critical
manufacturing, though energy was
still quite big.”
Scott Lester, principal researcher
at Context Information Security,
comments: “From our experience,
all traditional manufacturers are
struggling to keep up.” The desire
for speed to market is a key issue,
but he adds: “It’s surprising how
lax some very big manufacturers
are about their products. People
aren’t even thinking about existing
threats.” And, as Spike said, it just
takes one successful exploit.
A key element, says Professor Ma-
ple, is understanding that in terms
of security it’s not helpful to think
separately about operational tech-
nology, such as industrial control
systems and enterprise IT. In many
cases, such as the Jeep Cherokee,
they may be linked because of poor
design which failed to implement
sandboxing to segment the driv-
ing system from the entertain-
ment system. In others, changes
over time may open up undocu-
mented connections.
Professor Hankin agrees: “Al-
most all of the case studies we
know about seem to have start-
ed off with some compromise of
the enterprise IT system as a way
of getting to the industrial con-
trol system.” The anatomy of the
attack is a bit different when a
hybrid cyber-physical system is
involved and the goal is substan-
tially different, but separating
them is meaningless when the
vector for infection for something
as sophisticated as Stuxnet begins
with a phishing e-mail.
The issue of safety adds complex-
ity because one of the first things
security people will tell you is to
ensure that everything is patched
and up to date. But, as Professor
Hankin notes, changes to software
should trigger a safety recheck, a
much more expensive process and
one companies do not typically ex-
pect to undertake with anything
like the frequency of today’s soft-
ware patching.
Worse, he adds, sometimes the two
are in conflict. As a simple exam-
ple, consider a tube station where
something has gone wrong. Securi-
ty might dictate closing the barriers
and keeping people in, while safety
might dictate opening the barriers
to let them out.
None of this is to downplay the
usefulness of the industrial inter-
net of things in terms of improving
efficiency, reducing waste and add-
ing flexibility. What’s crucial is to
be aware of the security issues that
come with adding communications
capabilities to legacy systems.
This will be even truer as consum-
er-grade internet of things devices
penetrate previously manual facto-
ry areas. Even if the systems them-
selves are air-gapped, workers in
those areas may be wearing person-
al health monitors, smart watches or
augmented reality headgear and, of
course, everyone might be carrying
a smartphone.
“When you put operational tech-
nology into the cloud or connect in
any way to the internet you have
a problem,” says Professor Maple.
“You have to do a proper threat as-
sessment. Does it give you benefit,
are you aware of all the risks?”
Saverio Romeo, principal analyst
at Beecham Research, recommends
assuming the worst will happen,
and developing strong remediation
systems so you can recover quickly
and safely. He also stresses the im-
portance of designing in security
from the beginning.
In response to the exploits Miller
and Valasek, Fiat-Chrysler eventually
recalled 1.4 million cars, which was
surely more expensive than starting
with a sandboxed design that sepa-
rated the automotive control systems
from the entertainment systems.
“Retrofitting is economically very
expensive and difficult to do,” says
Mr Romeo. “Design of a connect-
ed system requires proper security
strategy, which includes the ability
to remediate.” He recommends con-
sulting the guidelines published by
the European Cyber Security Group,
Internet of Things Consortium and
Industrial Internet Consortium. To
that list Professor Hankin adds the
National Institute of Standards and
Technology and the UK’s National
Centre for Cyber Security.
When you put operational
technology into the cloud or
connect in any way to the internet
you have a problem
SECURITY
and all they have to do is have one
good day.
Protecting the industrial internet
of things requires a mental shift
from protecting enterprise IT. With
enterprise IT, the biggest threat is
typically to data that may be ex-
filtrated, deleted, rendered inac-
cessible – as in ransomware – or
published. With industrial control
systems, the threat shifts to physi-
cal damage.
“I don’t think these threats
are over-hyped,” says Chris
Hankin, the Imperial College
Jeep’s owner Fiat-Chrysler recalled 1.4 million Cherokee vehicles after hackers showed
they were able to use its internet connection to immobilise the car remotely on a highway
VolhaHannaKanashyts/Shutterstock
It’s surprising how lax some
very big manufacturers are about
their products
MOST SIGNIFICANT IoT SECURITY CONCERNS FOR
UK ENTERPRISES
ISACA 2015
Vulnerabilities
in the device
themselves
Data leakage
Access controlAsset management
Other
41%
6%
3%
36%
14%
THE FUTURE CFO RACONTEUR.NET2 06 / 12 / 2016
I
n the rush to develop the internet
of things (IoT), device makers have
focused on how their own prod-
ucts get online and there has been
little standardisation.
The danger is that the default solu-
tion is to have complex hardware
and software systems that require a
central unit to act as both controller
and translator, often relying on the
cloud to link devices that are just a
few metres apart.
Lemonbeat believes there is an al-
ternative and has devised a universal
software framework – a set of build-
ing blocks or services – for microcon-
trollers that allows users to develop
smart devices swiftly and easily. A
common language enables those
smart devices to interact with each
other directly and independently, al-
lowing the IoT to operate as simply
and effectively as possible.
The benefits of direct device inter-
action are increased speed, reduced
need for infrastructure, less disrup-
tion from internet downtime and high
levels of security.
This ability to bring intelligence out
of the cloud and on to even the sim-
plest devices – sometimes referred to
as an edge-based solution – eases
the burden on the network and ac-
celerates the performance of the
whole system.
The ability to adopt a common
language has huge implications and
potential benefits for a wide range of
applications, including smart homes,
smart buildings, smart energy and
industry 4.0.
Started in 2015, Lemonbeat is a
subsidiary of European energy group
innogy. It calls its language Lemon-
beat Smart Device Language (LsDL)
and even though it boasts that it
is groundbreaking, it believes it will
prove popular because it is based
on the XML language familiar to pro-
grammers and developers.
The technology is already used in
the SmartHome product range of
Innogy, and in the garden water-
ing systems and robot lawnmowers
made by Gardena.
This year Lemonbeat announced
a collaboration with electrical com-
ponents maker Phoenix Contact to
work on building automation tech-
nology, with a focus on reducing the
amount and complexity of hard-
ware to increase efficiency and bring
down costs.
Devising a common
language so that
things can ‘talk’
The dream of an internet of things could turn into a nightmare
without a common language to avoid it being drowned out
by a babel of voices connecting billions of devices
Other areas where it sees a take-
up in the near future include smart
meters for utilities and electric vehi-
cle charging points.
Lemonbeat managing director
Oliver van der Mond likens their con-
cept of universal building blocks to the
genotype or working instructions that
living organisms carry. “It’s like the DNA
for the IoT. Communication is con-
trolled in a decentralised manner, sim-
ilar to a biological organism,” he says.
To make sure devices can communi-
cate, it can be used on LoRa, wi-fi and
ethernet networks, but the company
has also developed its own Lemon-
beat Radio product for transmitting on
the sub-GHz radio spectrum on which
many IoT devices will run. In general it
uses standard internet technologies
such as IPv6.
It consumes very little energy, so is
particularly useful for so-called con-
strained devices such as sensors that
rely on battery power.
Lemonbeat is determined not to
work on the development of its frame-
work in isolation and is keen to fuel a
debate on how a common language
can be used to the benefit of all users
of the IoT, from manufacturers of de-
vices and equipment, to commercial
building managers and production
line operators.
It is working with Web of Things In-
terest Group, part of World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C,) to develop
a common web standard and is a
member of Europe’s EEBus initiative
to focus on standardisation in the
IoT across sectors including energy,
homes and buildings, and connected
devices such as domestic appliances.
Mr van der Mond concludes: “A
common standard for developing
smart things for the IoT will serve
users better, just as HTML does for
building websites. We think it is im-
portant to collaborate so that we
can share our know-how and ex-
pertise with others. Therefore, we
engage with partners across a wide
range of backgrounds.”
For more information please visit
www.lemonbeat.com
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
IoT NETWORK ARCHITECTURE
Current classical network architecture
Incompatable, isolated, inflexable, expensive, insecure
Future IoT networks
Interoperable, intergated, adaptive, low-cost, secure
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET10 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 1109 / 03 / 2017
A
ll we need is for one of us –
just one, sooner or later –
to have the thing we’re all
hoping for... one… good...
day.” Fans of the hit TV series Buffy
the Vampire Slayer may recognise
that – it’s the vampire Spike explain-
ing to Buffy why her life expectancy
is irredeemably short. It also serves
as a metaphor for cyber attackers
and IT systems – there are an un-
told number of them and one of you,
London professor who leads the
multi-university Research Insti-
tute for Trustworthy Industrial
Control Systems.
He cites statistics from the US-
based Industrial Control Systems
Computer Emergency Response
Team (ICS-CERT), which show a
steadily increasing number of inci-
dents over the last five years. Their
2015 report tallied 295 reported inci-
dents and, while that’s a small num-
ber compared to today’s near-daily
headlines about data breaches, the
examples he cites are scary enough.
WENDY M. GROSSMAN
Inadequate security remains a concern with the industrial
internet of things as the number of cyber attacks continues to rise
Too many loopholes
for cyber criminals
The earliest example dates from
2000 in Australia, when an attack
on Maroochy Shire Council’s com-
puterised waste management sys-
tem caused millions of litres of raw
sewage to spill into rivers, parks
and hotel grounds. In 2015 and 2016
Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek
showed they could use a Jeep Cher-
okee’s internet connection to im-
mobilise it remotely on a highway,
cause unintended acceleration,
slam on the brakes and turn the
steering wheel.
Professor Carsten Maple, of the
University of Warwick’s Cyber Se-
curity Centre and the PETRAS In-
ternet of Things Research Hub, adds
a few more such tales. In 2014 the
German Federal Office of Informa-
tion revealed that an attack caused
millions of pounds worth of damage
by overheating the furnace in a Ger-
man steel mill.
Last year a ransomware attack
spread across the computers belong-
ing to San Francisco’s municipal
transportation system; rather than
pay the $73,000 the attackers de-
manded, staff opened the gates and
allowed passengers to ride for free
for two days while they restored the
system from backups.
Also last year a former employee
used a virtual private network to
breach Georgia-Pacific and reach
one of its paper towel factories, cost-
ing an estimated $1.1 million in lost
or spoiled production.
In both 2015 and 2016 attacks
on substations turned off power
to tens of thousands of Ukrainian
households. And let’s not forget
Stuxnet, which attacked comput-
er controls over the centrifuges
used to refine uranium within
Iranian nuclear facilities, dam-
aging them and the country’s nu-
clear programme. As harbingers
of things to come, none of these
is trivial.
“If you look at the ICS-CERT an-
nual report,” says Professor Hankin,
“the major sector experiencing cy-
ber incidents until 2014 was energy.
Then in 2015 the largest was critical
manufacturing, though energy was
still quite big.”
Scott Lester, principal researcher
at Context Information Security,
comments: “From our experience,
all traditional manufacturers are
struggling to keep up.” The desire
for speed to market is a key issue,
but he adds: “It’s surprising how
lax some very big manufacturers
are about their products. People
aren’t even thinking about existing
threats.” And, as Spike said, it just
takes one successful exploit.
A key element, says Professor Ma-
ple, is understanding that in terms
of security it’s not helpful to think
separately about operational tech-
nology, such as industrial control
systems and enterprise IT. In many
cases, such as the Jeep Cherokee,
they may be linked because of poor
design which failed to implement
sandboxing to segment the driv-
ing system from the entertain-
ment system. In others, changes
over time may open up undocu-
mented connections.
Professor Hankin agrees: “Al-
most all of the case studies we
know about seem to have start-
ed off with some compromise of
the enterprise IT system as a way
of getting to the industrial con-
trol system.” The anatomy of the
attack is a bit different when a
hybrid cyber-physical system is
involved and the goal is substan-
tially different, but separating
them is meaningless when the
vector for infection for something
as sophisticated as Stuxnet begins
with a phishing e-mail.
The issue of safety adds complex-
ity because one of the first things
security people will tell you is to
ensure that everything is patched
and up to date. But, as Professor
Hankin notes, changes to software
should trigger a safety recheck, a
much more expensive process and
one companies do not typically ex-
pect to undertake with anything
like the frequency of today’s soft-
ware patching.
Worse, he adds, sometimes the two
are in conflict. As a simple exam-
ple, consider a tube station where
something has gone wrong. Securi-
ty might dictate closing the barriers
and keeping people in, while safety
might dictate opening the barriers
to let them out.
None of this is to downplay the
usefulness of the industrial inter-
net of things in terms of improving
efficiency, reducing waste and add-
ing flexibility. What’s crucial is to
be aware of the security issues that
come with adding communications
capabilities to legacy systems.
This will be even truer as consum-
er-grade internet of things devices
penetrate previously manual facto-
ry areas. Even if the systems them-
selves are air-gapped, workers in
those areas may be wearing person-
al health monitors, smart watches or
augmented reality headgear and, of
course, everyone might be carrying
a smartphone.
“When you put operational tech-
nology into the cloud or connect in
any way to the internet you have
a problem,” says Professor Maple.
“You have to do a proper threat as-
sessment. Does it give you benefit,
are you aware of all the risks?”
Saverio Romeo, principal analyst
at Beecham Research, recommends
assuming the worst will happen,
and developing strong remediation
systems so you can recover quickly
and safely. He also stresses the im-
portance of designing in security
from the beginning.
In response to the exploits Miller
and Valasek, Fiat-Chrysler eventually
recalled 1.4 million cars, which was
surely more expensive than starting
with a sandboxed design that sepa-
rated the automotive control systems
from the entertainment systems.
“Retrofitting is economically very
expensive and difficult to do,” says
Mr Romeo. “Design of a connect-
ed system requires proper security
strategy, which includes the ability
to remediate.” He recommends con-
sulting the guidelines published by
the European Cyber Security Group,
Internet of Things Consortium and
Industrial Internet Consortium. To
that list Professor Hankin adds the
National Institute of Standards and
Technology and the UK’s National
Centre for Cyber Security.
When you put operational
technology into the cloud or
connect in any way to the internet
you have a problem
SECURITY
and all they have to do is have one
good day.
Protecting the industrial internet
of things requires a mental shift
from protecting enterprise IT. With
enterprise IT, the biggest threat is
typically to data that may be ex-
filtrated, deleted, rendered inac-
cessible – as in ransomware – or
published. With industrial control
systems, the threat shifts to physi-
cal damage.
“I don’t think these threats
are over-hyped,” says Chris
Hankin, the Imperial College
Jeep’s owner Fiat-Chrysler recalled 1.4 million Cherokee vehicles after hackers showed
they were able to use its internet connection to immobilise the car remotely on a highway
VolhaHannaKanashyts/Shutterstock
It’s surprising how lax some
very big manufacturers are about
their products
MOST SIGNIFICANT IoT SECURITY CONCERNS FOR
UK ENTERPRISES
ISACA 2015
Vulnerabilities
in the device
themselves
Data leakage
Access controlAsset management
Other
41%
6%
3%
36%
14%
THE FUTURE CFO RACONTEUR.NET2 06 / 12 / 2016
I
n the rush to develop the internet
of things (IoT), device makers have
focused on how their own prod-
ucts get online and there has been
little standardisation.
The danger is that the default solu-
tion is to have complex hardware
and software systems that require a
central unit to act as both controller
and translator, often relying on the
cloud to link devices that are just a
few metres apart.
Lemonbeat believes there is an al-
ternative and has devised a universal
software framework – a set of build-
ing blocks or services – for microcon-
trollers that allows users to develop
smart devices swiftly and easily. A
common language enables those
smart devices to interact with each
other directly and independently, al-
lowing the IoT to operate as simply
and effectively as possible.
The benefits of direct device inter-
action are increased speed, reduced
need for infrastructure, less disrup-
tion from internet downtime and high
levels of security.
This ability to bring intelligence out
of the cloud and on to even the sim-
plest devices – sometimes referred to
as an edge-based solution – eases
the burden on the network and ac-
celerates the performance of the
whole system.
The ability to adopt a common
language has huge implications and
potential benefits for a wide range of
applications, including smart homes,
smart buildings, smart energy and
industry 4.0.
Started in 2015, Lemonbeat is a
subsidiary of European energy group
innogy. It calls its language Lemon-
beat Smart Device Language (LsDL)
and even though it boasts that it
is groundbreaking, it believes it will
prove popular because it is based
on the XML language familiar to pro-
grammers and developers.
The technology is already used in
the SmartHome product range of
Innogy, and in the garden water-
ing systems and robot lawnmowers
made by Gardena.
This year Lemonbeat announced
a collaboration with electrical com-
ponents maker Phoenix Contact to
work on building automation tech-
nology, with a focus on reducing the
amount and complexity of hard-
ware to increase efficiency and bring
down costs.
Devising a common
language so that
things can ‘talk’
The dream of an internet of things could turn into a nightmare
without a common language to avoid it being drowned out
by a babel of voices connecting billions of devices
Other areas where it sees a take-
up in the near future include smart
meters for utilities and electric vehi-
cle charging points.
Lemonbeat managing director
Oliver van der Mond likens their con-
cept of universal building blocks to the
genotype or working instructions that
living organisms carry. “It’s like the DNA
for the IoT. Communication is con-
trolled in a decentralised manner, sim-
ilar to a biological organism,” he says.
To make sure devices can communi-
cate, it can be used on LoRa, wi-fi and
ethernet networks, but the company
has also developed its own Lemon-
beat Radio product for transmitting on
the sub-GHz radio spectrum on which
many IoT devices will run. In general it
uses standard internet technologies
such as IPv6.
It consumes very little energy, so is
particularly useful for so-called con-
strained devices such as sensors that
rely on battery power.
Lemonbeat is determined not to
work on the development of its frame-
work in isolation and is keen to fuel a
debate on how a common language
can be used to the benefit of all users
of the IoT, from manufacturers of de-
vices and equipment, to commercial
building managers and production
line operators.
It is working with Web of Things In-
terest Group, part of World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C,) to develop
a common web standard and is a
member of Europe’s EEBus initiative
to focus on standardisation in the
IoT across sectors including energy,
homes and buildings, and connected
devices such as domestic appliances.
Mr van der Mond concludes: “A
common standard for developing
smart things for the IoT will serve
users better, just as HTML does for
building websites. We think it is im-
portant to collaborate so that we
can share our know-how and ex-
pertise with others. Therefore, we
engage with partners across a wide
range of backgrounds.”
For more information please visit
www.lemonbeat.com
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
IoT NETWORK ARCHITECTURE
Current classical network architecture
Incompatable, isolated, inflexable, expensive, insecure
Future IoT networks
Interoperable, intergated, adaptive, low-cost, secure
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET12 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 1309 / 03 / 2017
People are the
most important
part of the digital
organization.
conduce.com/peoplematter
Conduce is the
human interface
for the enterprise.
conduce.com
www.arkessa.com/euicc
The embedded SIM (eSIM) is fast
becoming the most common
choice for cellular IoT applications.
CombiningCombining the eSIM with eUICC
technology creates a solution for
large scale international IoT
deployments based on a single
factory installed SKU.
Going global with eSIM
Connected tech is just the thing for the NHS
H
ealthcare systems all over
the world are struggling
with two fundamental
concerns – how to afford
the rising cost of delivering care
and how to integrate ever-changing
new technologies?
These twin challenges are intrinsi-
cally connected, for emerging tech-
nologies offer the promise of making
care more affordable as well as more
effective. The rewards for successful
implementation will be significant,
for patients as well as for those re-
sponsible for the sustainability of
healthcare systems.
In healthcare, the internet of
things (IoT) is changing the way we
think about looking after people. At
the heart of this technological rev-
olution is a focus on connectivity.
Drug discovery and greater under-
standing of disease are critical. But
these must go hand in hand with
the way we exploit information and
data, using internet-connected de-
vices to process and inform the way
we manage care.
It is a huge number, but consid-
er the extraordinary range of IoT
applications in healthcare, en-
compassing systems and software,
medical devices and services. The
IoT in healthcare market includes
implanted, wearable and stationary
medical devices used in clinical re-
search and by diagnostic laborato-
ries, hospitals and medical centres.
In the healthcare industry, IoT has
a wide range of applications, includ-
ing clinical operations and workflow
management, in-patient monitor-
ing, telemedicine, connected imag-
ing and medication management.
Bluetooth low energy, ZigBee, satel-
lite, wi-fi, near-field communication
and cellular are some of the key con-
nectivity technologies involved in
IoT in healthcare.
One of the biggest challenges is
how to connect this vast amount of
health information, which is scat-
tered and siloed, and make it acces-
sible, using a common language that
can understood and trusted by all.
At a very personal level, you may
find the information you collect
and hold via an app on your mobile
phone about your lifestyle or the
management of a health condition
may be admired by your GP, but he
probably has to conduct his own
tests because the data is unlikely
to be compatible with information
systems, or considered to be a trust-
ed source.
At a global level, healthcare pro-
viders, payers and manufacturers
are often seeing a different ver-
sion of the healthcare universe,
which takes them in different, and
sometimes conflicting, directions.
Overcoming this incompatibility is
critical. For example, a connected
healthcare ecosystem that spans
from research and development
through to commercialisation
and treatment adherence could be
just the solution for life sciences
companies and payers seeking to
demonstrate value from new treat-
ment outcomes.
An ecosystem in which patients
can harness data from diverse con-
nected devices will create a deluge
of new data. Healthcare practition-
ers will be able to monitor a patient’s
health, activity and reaction to
treatments in real time. If a patient
suffers a cardiac event or hypogly-
caemic episode, for example, data
can be used by the specialist to take
immediate action.
This can include elements that
are often out of the view of treating
physicians, such as dietary informa-
tion, which may impact outcomes.
These indicators have a cumulative
impact on the outcome derived from
standard medical interventions. So,
for the first time, healthcare systems
will have a complete picture and be
able to optimise treatments and en-
vironments for better outcomes.
The significant amount of data
generated by a connected ecosys-
tem can also influence the future
trajectory of research and devel-
opment. Real-world evidence pro-
vides significant insight into how
a drug or drug class performs, or is
used in real-world medical settings.
The ability to transform real-world
data sources quickly into evidence
can improve health outcomes for
patients by helping pharmaceu-
tical groups be more efficient in
drug development and smarter
in commercialisation.
There are an
extraordinary
number of
applications in
healthcare for the
internet of things
which will eventually
be at the heart of
patient care delivery
MARTIN BARROW
of research and development initi-
atives in IoT.
But, increasingly, the Asia-Pa-
cific region looks to be an excit-
ing market, supported by strong
economic growth and rising dis-
posable income, together with the
emergence of IT-enabled health-
care services and the penetration
of smartphones and wearable med-
ical devices.
The internet of
things is changing
the way we think
about looking
after people
The scale of investment under-
way in healthcare IoT is colossal.
MarketResearch.com, the mar-
kets intelligence specialists, es-
timate that globally investment
could reach $117 billion by 2020.
North America will continue as
the most significant market, with
rapid growth on the back of the
region’s advanced healthcare in-
frastructure and increased levels
CONNECTED HEALTHCARE
Is the NHS able to capitalise on
IoT? It is one of its biggest challeng-
es as UK health authorities take
steps to reconfigure the health ser-
vice to make it affordable and sus-
tainable. Last year’s Wachter Review
of Information Technology in the
NHS said creating a fully digitised
health service was likely to be the
most difficult reform. The NHS has
a toxic legacy of IT failures, particu-
larly in the hospitals sector where,
tantalisingly, the potential for IoT
transformation is greatest.
Robert Wachter, who led the re-
view, advised that it was better to
get digitisation right than to do
it quickly. Return on investment
should also be measured in terms of
improvements in safety and quality,
with cost-savings likely to take ten
years or more to emerge.
One of the review’s recommenda-
tions was hospital trusts that were
ready to digitise should be prompt-
ed to do so, with others encouraged
and supported over a number of
years. The result is NHS England’s
Test Beds Initiative, launched in
January 2016 with evaluation likely
to take up to three years.
Two of the seven test beds are
focused on IoT and form part of
IoTUK, an integrated £40-million
government programme that seeks
to advance the UK’s global leader-
ship in IoT. These comprise a di-
abetes digital coach, a project led
by the West of England Academic
Health Science Network in partner-
ship with Diabetes UK and technol-
ogy companies including Hewlett
Packard and Technology Integrated
Health Management, a collabora-
tion between Surrey and Borders
Partnership NHS Foundation Trust,
and an array of health technology
providers which will help people
with dementia to live in their own
homes for longer.
The devolved nature of the NHS
in England means trusts are free to
pursue their own IoT developments.
The aspiration is that as systems be-
come embedded, they will be adopt-
ed and implemented by other trusts.
This approach will reduce the risk of
repeating the major IT infrastruc-
ture failures of the past. What is cer-
tain is, sooner or later, the internet
of things will be at the heart of the
delivery of care across the NHS.
The internet of things is being
deployed to improve the lives
of people with dementia. A
project has been launched
in Surrey and North-East
Hampshire to test how
technology can help them
remain in their homes
for longer.
The Technology Integrated
Health Management project
will provide people with
dementia and their carers with
sensors, wearable technology
and other devices to monitor
their health at home. These
devices can, for example,
detect if someone has left
the house, had a fall, is not
eating or drinking normally or
has used the bathroom more
than usual. If the technology
identifies a problem, an alert
is issued that is followed up by
a clinician or carer.
The two-year project will
involve around 700 patients
and their carers, with a view to
scaling IoT for dementia across
the area’s 1.3 million population.
Almost 250 people have come
forward so far, with another 50
homes a month expected to be
added through 2017.
Dr Helen Rostill, director of
innovation and development
at Surrey and Borders
Partnership, who leads the
study, says: “It is clear that
people are desperate for a
new approach to help support
them to manage this condition
and can already see how this
study can benefit them.”
Ray Ledge, a carer from
Farnham who looks after
his wife Carol, adds: “The
greatest thing about this
study is it could develop into
something very positive for
the future and will give the
medical community greater
insight into the condition.”
CASE STUDY
HELPING WITH DEMENTIA
HEALTHCARE
RezaEstakhrian/GettyImages
13k+
additional healthcare jobs
expected to be created in the
UK from 2015 to 2020 as a
result of IoT
£4.8bn
estimated economic
benefit to UK healthcare
from the use of IoT
between 2015 and 2020
SAS Institute/Cebr 2016
INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET12 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 1309 / 03 / 2017
People are the
most important
part of the digital
organization.
conduce.com/peoplematter
Conduce is the
human interface
for the enterprise.
conduce.com
www.arkessa.com/euicc
The embedded SIM (eSIM) is fast
becoming the most common
choice for cellular IoT applications.
CombiningCombining the eSIM with eUICC
technology creates a solution for
large scale international IoT
deployments based on a single
factory installed SKU.
Going global with eSIM
Connected tech is just the thing for the NHS
H
ealthcare systems all over
the world are struggling
with two fundamental
concerns – how to afford
the rising cost of delivering care
and how to integrate ever-changing
new technologies?
These twin challenges are intrinsi-
cally connected, for emerging tech-
nologies offer the promise of making
care more affordable as well as more
effective. The rewards for successful
implementation will be significant,
for patients as well as for those re-
sponsible for the sustainability of
healthcare systems.
In healthcare, the internet of
things (IoT) is changing the way we
think about looking after people. At
the heart of this technological rev-
olution is a focus on connectivity.
Drug discovery and greater under-
standing of disease are critical. But
these must go hand in hand with
the way we exploit information and
data, using internet-connected de-
vices to process and inform the way
we manage care.
It is a huge number, but consid-
er the extraordinary range of IoT
applications in healthcare, en-
compassing systems and software,
medical devices and services. The
IoT in healthcare market includes
implanted, wearable and stationary
medical devices used in clinical re-
search and by diagnostic laborato-
ries, hospitals and medical centres.
In the healthcare industry, IoT has
a wide range of applications, includ-
ing clinical operations and workflow
management, in-patient monitor-
ing, telemedicine, connected imag-
ing and medication management.
Bluetooth low energy, ZigBee, satel-
lite, wi-fi, near-field communication
and cellular are some of the key con-
nectivity technologies involved in
IoT in healthcare.
One of the biggest challenges is
how to connect this vast amount of
health information, which is scat-
tered and siloed, and make it acces-
sible, using a common language that
can understood and trusted by all.
At a very personal level, you may
find the information you collect
and hold via an app on your mobile
phone about your lifestyle or the
management of a health condition
may be admired by your GP, but he
probably has to conduct his own
tests because the data is unlikely
to be compatible with information
systems, or considered to be a trust-
ed source.
At a global level, healthcare pro-
viders, payers and manufacturers
are often seeing a different ver-
sion of the healthcare universe,
which takes them in different, and
sometimes conflicting, directions.
Overcoming this incompatibility is
critical. For example, a connected
healthcare ecosystem that spans
from research and development
through to commercialisation
and treatment adherence could be
just the solution for life sciences
companies and payers seeking to
demonstrate value from new treat-
ment outcomes.
An ecosystem in which patients
can harness data from diverse con-
nected devices will create a deluge
of new data. Healthcare practition-
ers will be able to monitor a patient’s
health, activity and reaction to
treatments in real time. If a patient
suffers a cardiac event or hypogly-
caemic episode, for example, data
can be used by the specialist to take
immediate action.
This can include elements that
are often out of the view of treating
physicians, such as dietary informa-
tion, which may impact outcomes.
These indicators have a cumulative
impact on the outcome derived from
standard medical interventions. So,
for the first time, healthcare systems
will have a complete picture and be
able to optimise treatments and en-
vironments for better outcomes.
The significant amount of data
generated by a connected ecosys-
tem can also influence the future
trajectory of research and devel-
opment. Real-world evidence pro-
vides significant insight into how
a drug or drug class performs, or is
used in real-world medical settings.
The ability to transform real-world
data sources quickly into evidence
can improve health outcomes for
patients by helping pharmaceu-
tical groups be more efficient in
drug development and smarter
in commercialisation.
There are an
extraordinary
number of
applications in
healthcare for the
internet of things
which will eventually
be at the heart of
patient care delivery
MARTIN BARROW
of research and development initi-
atives in IoT.
But, increasingly, the Asia-Pa-
cific region looks to be an excit-
ing market, supported by strong
economic growth and rising dis-
posable income, together with the
emergence of IT-enabled health-
care services and the penetration
of smartphones and wearable med-
ical devices.
The internet of
things is changing
the way we think
about looking
after people
The scale of investment under-
way in healthcare IoT is colossal.
MarketResearch.com, the mar-
kets intelligence specialists, es-
timate that globally investment
could reach $117 billion by 2020.
North America will continue as
the most significant market, with
rapid growth on the back of the
region’s advanced healthcare in-
frastructure and increased levels
CONNECTED HEALTHCARE
Is the NHS able to capitalise on
IoT? It is one of its biggest challeng-
es as UK health authorities take
steps to reconfigure the health ser-
vice to make it affordable and sus-
tainable. Last year’s Wachter Review
of Information Technology in the
NHS said creating a fully digitised
health service was likely to be the
most difficult reform. The NHS has
a toxic legacy of IT failures, particu-
larly in the hospitals sector where,
tantalisingly, the potential for IoT
transformation is greatest.
Robert Wachter, who led the re-
view, advised that it was better to
get digitisation right than to do
it quickly. Return on investment
should also be measured in terms of
improvements in safety and quality,
with cost-savings likely to take ten
years or more to emerge.
One of the review’s recommenda-
tions was hospital trusts that were
ready to digitise should be prompt-
ed to do so, with others encouraged
and supported over a number of
years. The result is NHS England’s
Test Beds Initiative, launched in
January 2016 with evaluation likely
to take up to three years.
Two of the seven test beds are
focused on IoT and form part of
IoTUK, an integrated £40-million
government programme that seeks
to advance the UK’s global leader-
ship in IoT. These comprise a di-
abetes digital coach, a project led
by the West of England Academic
Health Science Network in partner-
ship with Diabetes UK and technol-
ogy companies including Hewlett
Packard and Technology Integrated
Health Management, a collabora-
tion between Surrey and Borders
Partnership NHS Foundation Trust,
and an array of health technology
providers which will help people
with dementia to live in their own
homes for longer.
The devolved nature of the NHS
in England means trusts are free to
pursue their own IoT developments.
The aspiration is that as systems be-
come embedded, they will be adopt-
ed and implemented by other trusts.
This approach will reduce the risk of
repeating the major IT infrastruc-
ture failures of the past. What is cer-
tain is, sooner or later, the internet
of things will be at the heart of the
delivery of care across the NHS.
The internet of things is being
deployed to improve the lives
of people with dementia. A
project has been launched
in Surrey and North-East
Hampshire to test how
technology can help them
remain in their homes
for longer.
The Technology Integrated
Health Management project
will provide people with
dementia and their carers with
sensors, wearable technology
and other devices to monitor
their health at home. These
devices can, for example,
detect if someone has left
the house, had a fall, is not
eating or drinking normally or
has used the bathroom more
than usual. If the technology
identifies a problem, an alert
is issued that is followed up by
a clinician or carer.
The two-year project will
involve around 700 patients
and their carers, with a view to
scaling IoT for dementia across
the area’s 1.3 million population.
Almost 250 people have come
forward so far, with another 50
homes a month expected to be
added through 2017.
Dr Helen Rostill, director of
innovation and development
at Surrey and Borders
Partnership, who leads the
study, says: “It is clear that
people are desperate for a
new approach to help support
them to manage this condition
and can already see how this
study can benefit them.”
Ray Ledge, a carer from
Farnham who looks after
his wife Carol, adds: “The
greatest thing about this
study is it could develop into
something very positive for
the future and will give the
medical community greater
insight into the condition.”
CASE STUDY
HELPING WITH DEMENTIA
HEALTHCARE
RezaEstakhrian/GettyImages
13k+
additional healthcare jobs
expected to be created in the
UK from 2015 to 2020 as a
result of IoT
£4.8bn
estimated economic
benefit to UK healthcare
from the use of IoT
between 2015 and 2020
SAS Institute/Cebr 2016
INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET14 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 1509 / 03 / 2017
JIM McCLELLAND
H
eralding a new dawn of digi-
tal disruption, the industri-
al internet of things (IIoT),
like the sun, is rising in the
East. For manufacturing, its applica-
tion is opening up hot prospects and
prompting something akin to a glob-
al tech gold rush. Opportunity beck-
ons and the race is on.
It is not, however, a race Europe
currently leads, Daniel Keely, man-
ufacturing director, Europe, Middle
East, Africa and Russia, at Cisco’s
manufacturing practice digital
transformation group, concedes.
“Manufacturing is undoubtedly a
key engine for growth across Eu-
rope, with more than two thirds
of all EU exports coming from the
sector. However, in some critical as-
pects of digital innovation, Europe
is lagging behind its Asian compet-
itors,” he says.
IIoT is transforming manufactur-
ing in Asia, right now, delivering
dynamic competitive advantage,
IBM internet of things (IoT) dis-
tinguished engineer Andy Stan-
ford-Clark concurs. “We are seeing
a huge take-up of advanced factory
automation in the Far East, particu-
larly in China and Taiwan. They are
realising the efficiency benefits that
can be gained by the use of general
purpose robot arm technology on a
production line.”
Rather than designing and build-
ing a complex piece of machinery
specifically for the purpose of a
particular task, manufacturers
can take an off-the-shelf six-axis
robot arm and program it to suit.
With the advent of software-de-
fined hardware, the same robot
arm can then be deployed to a dif-
ferent task, just by reprogramming
it, making production fast, cheap
and agile.
Advances in other areas as seeming-
ly mundane as maintenance can also
build a business case for IIoT, adds
Mr Stanford-Clark. “Predictive main-
tenance, combined with traditional
schedules, enables expensive down-
timetobeminimisedandelimination
of certain fault conditions. Savings
due to predictive maintenance have
on their own justified companies’ in-
vestment in IIoT,” he points out.
Western firms are keen to cash in
on these emerging export opportu-
nities, not least in the East. GE, for
instance, has been creating what
it calls digital foundries, starting
in California then opening in Paris
and Shanghai.
While the rate of growth might be
slowing in terms of sheer output, the
scale of industrial activity in China
still represents a huge attraction for
global tech players.
China remains the world’s largest
manufacturer and also leads on con-
nected things. Accenture estimates
that fully embracing IoT in manu-
facturing could deliver economic
value up to $736 billion in total for
the period 2015 to 2030.
We are seeing a huge take-up
of advanced factory automation
in the Far East, particularly in China
and Taiwan
With a strategy dubbed Made in
China 2025, the country’s serial five-
year plans are already prioritising
advanced automation with a vision
of becoming the world leader in
precision manufacturing by 2050.
Behind this trend actually lies a dy-
namic shift in the nature of work, as
China faces up to the challenge of
transitioning away from a business
model based on cheap labour, says
Mr Stanford-Clark.
He says: “Part of this initiative is
to enable human workers, engaged
in what are referred to as the 3D
– dull, dirty, dangerous – jobs, to
move to more fulfilling and less
monotonous roles, often working
alongside ‘people-safe’ or ‘compli-
ant’ robotic devices.”
So with evidence for efficiency and
agility mounting in the East, why is
Europe not accelerating progress on
IIoT to match?
It is not that Europe does not un-
derstand the threat of disruption
and need for innovation, argues Mr
Keely. “Countries across Europe are
undoubtedly adopting IIoT technolo-
gies and responding to the challenge
Industrial complex
near Mount Fuji
in Shizouka City,
Japan
of digital disruption in proactive
ways,” he says. “The Industrie 4.0 or
i4.0 incentive is an example being
driven by the German government
together with manufacturers such as
Bosch and Siemens, while the UK In-
dustrial Strategy places digital at the
core of manufacturing.”
The problem is their global com-
petitors simply threaten to outpace
them. There is a steep learning curve,
says Mr Keely. “While some Euro-
pean manufacturers have begun
to connect industrial machines on
the plant floor, sharing data among
makers, end-users, third parties and
so forth is complex. One reason is
proprietary protocols, which hinder
interoperability,” he says.
“Additionally, in Europe, many
manufacturers are small and medi-
um-sized enterprises that lack some
of the broader digital capabilities
that will be critical moving forward.”
There is, though, cause for opti-
mism around IIoT uptake in Europe,
contends Andrew Minturn, business
development and strategic prod-
uct manager at Bosch Rexroth. “It’s
picking up speed with major manu-
facturers now looking to adopt the
cyber-physical systems approach to
productivity,” he says. “Hardware
and software are connected to en-
sure we can react quicker to prod-
uct-mix one-offs, with improvement
in quality and costs, also delivery.
“We are starting to see the connect-
ed value stream which ensures prod-
ucts are delivered at the right time, at
the right place, and in the right type
and quantities. Uptake will increase
tenfold in the next few years.”
Rather less convinced about uptake
is Frank Piller, professor of technolo-
gy management at RWTH Aachen
University, Germany. “We see plen-
ty of pilots and little large-scale de-
ployment,” he says. “The number of
truly digital, data-driven factories
is very low. In Germany, leaders like
Siemens with the Amberg factory, or
Festo with the Scharnhausen plant,
show what can be possible.”
Professor Piller, who heads up the
Leading the Smart Factory of the Fu-
ture programme, identifies standardi-
sationasanareathathasbeenholding
back progress with what he describes
as a “zoo of competing industry, pub-
lic and company standards”.
However, this is one roadblock
that is about to be removed. Final-
ly, Europe and America are co-op-
erating on a major cross-industry
initiative with the launch by Ger-
man industry of Standardization
Council i4.0. “This will become a
game-changer and enabler,” Pro-
fessor Piller concludes.
AUTOMATION
The West is playing catch-up as
manufacturers in the Far East race ahead
with the industrial internet of things,
delivering a competitive edge through
advanced factory automation
TomohiroOhsumi/BloombergviaGettyImages
The sun is rising
in the East
82%
of manufacturers that
have implemented smart
manufacturing technologies
have seen an increase
in efficiency
Motorola Solutions 2017
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
RACONTEUR.NET
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
Q&A Connectivity
at the heart of the
internet of things
It’s well known that the internet of things is enabled by
innovation from large chip makers in the United States and
Asia. Less known, however, is the small British firm working
with them. Mike Sims, chief executive at LM Technologies,
reveals how his company is shaking up the market
Why is connectivity so vital to the
industrial sector in coming years?
The number of devices connected to
the internet of things (IoT) continues
to grow rapidly. According to Ericsson,
it is growing at a rate of 23 per cent
annually and of the 28 billion devices
it predicts will be connected by 2021,
16 billion will be IoT devices. For the
industrial sector to take advantage
of that, strong connectivity is critical.
The IoT encompasses many tech-
nologies, but wi-fi and Bluetooth will
account for a massive portion of the
estimated market. As a Qualcomm
manufacturing partner, LM Technol-
ogies is in the right position to take
advantage of the IoT growth due to
the range of integrated circuits (ICs)
supported by the chip maker. We also
have access to other chip makers,
such as Cypress Semiconductor and
Realtek, offering our company a wide
selection of chipsets focused on
Bluetooth and wi-fi technologies.
What is the most suitable IoT
development option for
industrial companies?
LM offers a very high level of devel-
opment support to its customers to
ensure they are aware of the options
available. With our close ties to the
IC vendors, we tend to work with ear-
ly-silicon and are designing products
with ICs that are not yet in the market.
This year we release the world’s first
dual mode module embedded stack
using Qualcomm’s CSRb534x range of
ICs, keeping our research and devel-
opment focus at the very forefront of
the latest technology.
What new innovations are in the
pipeline in this space?
With our first Qualcomm Ath-
eros-based module, we are aiming
to offer a sub-$10 wi-fi module with
its own editable stack, which we see
as the perfect platform for custom-
ers’ application development. Being
the only Qualcomm Atheros module
partner in Europe, we believe our
new Atheros-based range of mod-
ules will enable multiple IoT com-
panies to advance their products’
capabilities. All the Atheros chipsets
are -40C rated and offer low-power
consumption. This year, LM will also
release the first Bluetooth 4.1 serial
adapter, which will be able to com-
municate with Apple devices without
the need for an Apple authentication
chipset, negating any Apple prod-
uct commission. The current EPOS
market is using more Apple devices
than ever before and being able to
interface with non-Apple authenti-
cation devices is key to expanding
the device choice in this market.
What competitors do you have
in Europe?
There may be several other wireless
module companies, but LM’s links with
ICvendorsandthecustomer-support-
ed design process we offer is unique in
Europe. Some similar companies may
have access to one or even two of the
top IC vendors, but no other company
has the same ICs within their modules.
We are also the only company to offer
customers a dedicated solutions team
that supports them throughout the life
cycle of their product.
Why is energy efficiency so impor-
tant to wi-fi connectivity in the
industrial IoT?
While the IoT includes devices across
all wireless platforms, the majority
of IoT devices are battery powered.
Therefore, energy consumption is a key
factor when companies are selecting
the technology for their IoT device. A
good example of the difference that
LM offers is within one of our recent
developments, where we developed a
key fob that needed to send data to a
connected device every two seconds.
The customer wanted the product to
last 12 months using only a 200mA coin
cell battery and initial testing indicat-
ed it wasn’t possible. However, our
team’s application development was
able to reduce consumption beyond
the original design parameters of the
chipset to meet the customer’s spec-
ification. This development epitomises
the close customer collaboration that
stands LM apart from its competitors,
as well as our commitment to custom-
ers’ target specifications.
For more information please visit
www.lm-technologies.com
LM offers a
very high level of
development support to
its customers to ensure
they are aware of the
options available
01
Bluetooth 4.1 Low
Energy GATT
LM93x Series
02
Bluetooth 4.1 Dual
Mode SPP GATT
LM96x Series
03
Bluetooth 4.0
Audio A2DP, HSP,
PBAP, SPP HFP
LM74x Series
04
Qualcomm-Based
Wi-Fi & Bluetooth -
Low Energy Modules
Coming Soon
01
02
03
04
TECHNOLOGIES
INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET14 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 1509 / 03 / 2017
JIM McCLELLAND
H
eralding a new dawn of digi-
tal disruption, the industri-
al internet of things (IIoT),
like the sun, is rising in the
East. For manufacturing, its applica-
tion is opening up hot prospects and
prompting something akin to a glob-
al tech gold rush. Opportunity beck-
ons and the race is on.
It is not, however, a race Europe
currently leads, Daniel Keely, man-
ufacturing director, Europe, Middle
East, Africa and Russia, at Cisco’s
manufacturing practice digital
transformation group, concedes.
“Manufacturing is undoubtedly a
key engine for growth across Eu-
rope, with more than two thirds
of all EU exports coming from the
sector. However, in some critical as-
pects of digital innovation, Europe
is lagging behind its Asian compet-
itors,” he says.
IIoT is transforming manufactur-
ing in Asia, right now, delivering
dynamic competitive advantage,
IBM internet of things (IoT) dis-
tinguished engineer Andy Stan-
ford-Clark concurs. “We are seeing
a huge take-up of advanced factory
automation in the Far East, particu-
larly in China and Taiwan. They are
realising the efficiency benefits that
can be gained by the use of general
purpose robot arm technology on a
production line.”
Rather than designing and build-
ing a complex piece of machinery
specifically for the purpose of a
particular task, manufacturers
can take an off-the-shelf six-axis
robot arm and program it to suit.
With the advent of software-de-
fined hardware, the same robot
arm can then be deployed to a dif-
ferent task, just by reprogramming
it, making production fast, cheap
and agile.
Advances in other areas as seeming-
ly mundane as maintenance can also
build a business case for IIoT, adds
Mr Stanford-Clark. “Predictive main-
tenance, combined with traditional
schedules, enables expensive down-
timetobeminimisedandelimination
of certain fault conditions. Savings
due to predictive maintenance have
on their own justified companies’ in-
vestment in IIoT,” he points out.
Western firms are keen to cash in
on these emerging export opportu-
nities, not least in the East. GE, for
instance, has been creating what
it calls digital foundries, starting
in California then opening in Paris
and Shanghai.
While the rate of growth might be
slowing in terms of sheer output, the
scale of industrial activity in China
still represents a huge attraction for
global tech players.
China remains the world’s largest
manufacturer and also leads on con-
nected things. Accenture estimates
that fully embracing IoT in manu-
facturing could deliver economic
value up to $736 billion in total for
the period 2015 to 2030.
We are seeing a huge take-up
of advanced factory automation
in the Far East, particularly in China
and Taiwan
With a strategy dubbed Made in
China 2025, the country’s serial five-
year plans are already prioritising
advanced automation with a vision
of becoming the world leader in
precision manufacturing by 2050.
Behind this trend actually lies a dy-
namic shift in the nature of work, as
China faces up to the challenge of
transitioning away from a business
model based on cheap labour, says
Mr Stanford-Clark.
He says: “Part of this initiative is
to enable human workers, engaged
in what are referred to as the 3D
– dull, dirty, dangerous – jobs, to
move to more fulfilling and less
monotonous roles, often working
alongside ‘people-safe’ or ‘compli-
ant’ robotic devices.”
So with evidence for efficiency and
agility mounting in the East, why is
Europe not accelerating progress on
IIoT to match?
It is not that Europe does not un-
derstand the threat of disruption
and need for innovation, argues Mr
Keely. “Countries across Europe are
undoubtedly adopting IIoT technolo-
gies and responding to the challenge
Industrial complex
near Mount Fuji
in Shizouka City,
Japan
of digital disruption in proactive
ways,” he says. “The Industrie 4.0 or
i4.0 incentive is an example being
driven by the German government
together with manufacturers such as
Bosch and Siemens, while the UK In-
dustrial Strategy places digital at the
core of manufacturing.”
The problem is their global com-
petitors simply threaten to outpace
them. There is a steep learning curve,
says Mr Keely. “While some Euro-
pean manufacturers have begun
to connect industrial machines on
the plant floor, sharing data among
makers, end-users, third parties and
so forth is complex. One reason is
proprietary protocols, which hinder
interoperability,” he says.
“Additionally, in Europe, many
manufacturers are small and medi-
um-sized enterprises that lack some
of the broader digital capabilities
that will be critical moving forward.”
There is, though, cause for opti-
mism around IIoT uptake in Europe,
contends Andrew Minturn, business
development and strategic prod-
uct manager at Bosch Rexroth. “It’s
picking up speed with major manu-
facturers now looking to adopt the
cyber-physical systems approach to
productivity,” he says. “Hardware
and software are connected to en-
sure we can react quicker to prod-
uct-mix one-offs, with improvement
in quality and costs, also delivery.
“We are starting to see the connect-
ed value stream which ensures prod-
ucts are delivered at the right time, at
the right place, and in the right type
and quantities. Uptake will increase
tenfold in the next few years.”
Rather less convinced about uptake
is Frank Piller, professor of technolo-
gy management at RWTH Aachen
University, Germany. “We see plen-
ty of pilots and little large-scale de-
ployment,” he says. “The number of
truly digital, data-driven factories
is very low. In Germany, leaders like
Siemens with the Amberg factory, or
Festo with the Scharnhausen plant,
show what can be possible.”
Professor Piller, who heads up the
Leading the Smart Factory of the Fu-
ture programme, identifies standardi-
sationasanareathathasbeenholding
back progress with what he describes
as a “zoo of competing industry, pub-
lic and company standards”.
However, this is one roadblock
that is about to be removed. Final-
ly, Europe and America are co-op-
erating on a major cross-industry
initiative with the launch by Ger-
man industry of Standardization
Council i4.0. “This will become a
game-changer and enabler,” Pro-
fessor Piller concludes.
AUTOMATION
The West is playing catch-up as
manufacturers in the Far East race ahead
with the industrial internet of things,
delivering a competitive edge through
advanced factory automation
TomohiroOhsumi/BloombergviaGettyImages
The sun is rising
in the East
82%
of manufacturers that
have implemented smart
manufacturing technologies
have seen an increase
in efficiency
Motorola Solutions 2017
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
RACONTEUR.NET
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
Q&A Connectivity
at the heart of the
internet of things
It’s well known that the internet of things is enabled by
innovation from large chip makers in the United States and
Asia. Less known, however, is the small British firm working
with them. Mike Sims, chief executive at LM Technologies,
reveals how his company is shaking up the market
Why is connectivity so vital to the
industrial sector in coming years?
The number of devices connected to
the internet of things (IoT) continues
to grow rapidly. According to Ericsson,
it is growing at a rate of 23 per cent
annually and of the 28 billion devices
it predicts will be connected by 2021,
16 billion will be IoT devices. For the
industrial sector to take advantage
of that, strong connectivity is critical.
The IoT encompasses many tech-
nologies, but wi-fi and Bluetooth will
account for a massive portion of the
estimated market. As a Qualcomm
manufacturing partner, LM Technol-
ogies is in the right position to take
advantage of the IoT growth due to
the range of integrated circuits (ICs)
supported by the chip maker. We also
have access to other chip makers,
such as Cypress Semiconductor and
Realtek, offering our company a wide
selection of chipsets focused on
Bluetooth and wi-fi technologies.
What is the most suitable IoT
development option for
industrial companies?
LM offers a very high level of devel-
opment support to its customers to
ensure they are aware of the options
available. With our close ties to the
IC vendors, we tend to work with ear-
ly-silicon and are designing products
with ICs that are not yet in the market.
This year we release the world’s first
dual mode module embedded stack
using Qualcomm’s CSRb534x range of
ICs, keeping our research and devel-
opment focus at the very forefront of
the latest technology.
What new innovations are in the
pipeline in this space?
With our first Qualcomm Ath-
eros-based module, we are aiming
to offer a sub-$10 wi-fi module with
its own editable stack, which we see
as the perfect platform for custom-
ers’ application development. Being
the only Qualcomm Atheros module
partner in Europe, we believe our
new Atheros-based range of mod-
ules will enable multiple IoT com-
panies to advance their products’
capabilities. All the Atheros chipsets
are -40C rated and offer low-power
consumption. This year, LM will also
release the first Bluetooth 4.1 serial
adapter, which will be able to com-
municate with Apple devices without
the need for an Apple authentication
chipset, negating any Apple prod-
uct commission. The current EPOS
market is using more Apple devices
than ever before and being able to
interface with non-Apple authenti-
cation devices is key to expanding
the device choice in this market.
What competitors do you have
in Europe?
There may be several other wireless
module companies, but LM’s links with
ICvendorsandthecustomer-support-
ed design process we offer is unique in
Europe. Some similar companies may
have access to one or even two of the
top IC vendors, but no other company
has the same ICs within their modules.
We are also the only company to offer
customers a dedicated solutions team
that supports them throughout the life
cycle of their product.
Why is energy efficiency so impor-
tant to wi-fi connectivity in the
industrial IoT?
While the IoT includes devices across
all wireless platforms, the majority
of IoT devices are battery powered.
Therefore, energy consumption is a key
factor when companies are selecting
the technology for their IoT device. A
good example of the difference that
LM offers is within one of our recent
developments, where we developed a
key fob that needed to send data to a
connected device every two seconds.
The customer wanted the product to
last 12 months using only a 200mA coin
cell battery and initial testing indicat-
ed it wasn’t possible. However, our
team’s application development was
able to reduce consumption beyond
the original design parameters of the
chipset to meet the customer’s spec-
ification. This development epitomises
the close customer collaboration that
stands LM apart from its competitors,
as well as our commitment to custom-
ers’ target specifications.
For more information please visit
www.lm-technologies.com
LM offers a
very high level of
development support to
its customers to ensure
they are aware of the
options available
01
Bluetooth 4.1 Low
Energy GATT
LM93x Series
02
Bluetooth 4.1 Dual
Mode SPP GATT
LM96x Series
03
Bluetooth 4.0
Audio A2DP, HSP,
PBAP, SPP HFP
LM74x Series
04
Qualcomm-Based
Wi-Fi & Bluetooth -
Low Energy Modules
Coming Soon
01
02
03
04
TECHNOLOGIES
Industrial internet of things (IIOT) - special report-2017

Industrial internet of things (IIOT) - special report-2017

  • 1.
    09 / 03/ 2017INDEPENDENT PUBLICATION BY #0438raconteur.net INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS CONNECTED MACHINES WILL CREATE BETTER JOBS Connected industry will require a shift in skills towards services Five top applications that are helping to launch the industrial internet of things SQUADRONS OF DRONES AND MINUTE SENSORS06 CAUTION AS THE SUN IS RISING IN THE EAST The West is playing catch-up as factories in the Far East race ahead 14
  • 2.
    1 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNETOF THINGS 0309 / 03 / 2017 /industrial-iot-2017 Although this publication is funded through advertising and sponsorship, all editorial is without bias and sponsored features are clearly labelled. For an upcoming schedule, partnership inquiries or feedback, please call +44 (0)20 3877 3800 or e-mail [email protected] Raconteur is a leading publisher of special-interest content and research. Its publications and articles cover a wide range of topics, including business, finance, sustainability, healthcare, lifestyle and technology. Raconteur special reports are published exclusively in The Times and The Sunday Times as well as online at raconteur.net The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources the Proprietors believe to be correct. However, no legal liability can be accepted for any errors. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the Publisher. © Raconteur Media RACONTEUR Industrial IoT represents a revolution in how products are designed, manufactured and operated. Companies with bold digital ambitions understand its objectives and extraordinary potential. But the choices faced are far from simple: EITHER retain sovereignty over your data, innovations and digital skills development OR concede, and with it the essence of your competitive advantage. EITHER tap into new leading-edge, cloud neutral, pay-as-you-go digital accelerators OR stick with the legacy, lock-in approaches of hitherto trusted software incumbents. EITHER empower your line experts in fast cycle, co-creation of new digital products and services OR continue to outsource innovation. If you believe in sovereignty, a savvy approach and the power of your engineers then consider QiO as your digital partner. We can provide the secure platform, toolkit and Industrial SaaS applications you need to drive your own digital programme and all at a highly attractive cost to value ratio. We help some of the most respected industrial firms, including Rolls-Royce plc and Lloyd’s Register, unlock trapped productivity and accelerate their Industrial IoT transformation. For more information, visit us at qio.io MARTIN BARROW Former health editor, news editor, foreign news editor and business news editor at The Times, he is now a freelance writer. WENDY M. GROSSMAN Freelance technology writer, specialising in computers, freedom and privacy, she won the 2013 BT Enigma Award for lifetime achievement in information security journalism. LEO KING Writer and editor, he works with the Financial Times, The Sunday Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Economist and The Daily Telegraph. JIM McCLELLAND Sustainable futurist, his specialisms include built environment, corporate social responsibility and ecosystem services. BEN ROSSI Editorial director at Vitesse Media and formerly editor of Information Age and Computer News Middle East, he writes for national newspapers and business publications. FINBARR TOESLAND Freelance journalist, he specialises in technology, business and economic issues, and contributes to a wide range of publications. CONTRIBUTORS PUBLISHING MANAGER Frank Monaghan DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER Jessica McGreal HEAD OF PRODUCTION Natalia Rosek DESIGN Samuele Motta Grant Chapman Kellie Jerrard PRODUCTION EDITOR Benjamin Chiou MANAGING EDITOR Peter Archer DISTRIBUTED IN INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS @raconteur /raconteur.net @raconteur_london T he internet of things or IoT, which can connect any de- vice to the web, has been a boon for owners of manufac- turing firms. By providing data from multiple machines, factory perfor- mance can be monitored, goods can be tracked and maintenance needs predicted – all for greater efficiency. Those on the factory floor have been less supportive of the change, understandably fearing their jobs will be replaced by robots and ma- chines that “speak” to each other. The reality, however, is more nu- anced. Rather than eliminating all roles, the IoT is creating demand for a different set of skills. Many of these jobs will come from the ser- vice sector, supporting customers, and also the technology sector that supports the systems. By 2020, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Re- search and technology firm SAS, some 182,000 jobs will be created in the UK by the IoT and big data in a range of areas. The IoT allows traditional prod- uct businesses to become services firms. Instead of simply manu- facturing and selling goods, the industry can now maintain and upgrade them, something the tech- nology sector rather awkwardly labels “servitisation”. IoT-connected devices link con- sumer goods to manufacturers’ systems, advising of maintenance and upgrade needs, the same way factory devices are connected. Washing machines or heating control systems, for example, can be fitted with sensors to detect when they are going wrong, alert- ing manufacturers to send an engineer. The same concept can be applied to the business world, and to a water utility’s pipes and control systems. Numerous predictions demon- strate the enormous services oppor- tunity. Gartner expects 8.4 billion IoT-connected devices to be in use worldwide this year, with 5.2 billion of them in consumers’ hands and 3.2 billion of them in businesses. Some $1.2 trillion will have been spent on IoT by 2020, says analyst IDC, with manufacturing lead- ing the way last year with a cool $187 billion. The change creates demand for a raft of new talent. “To capture the bigger opportunities presented by the industrial IoT,” according to management firm Accenture, “com- panies will especially need to look for skills in data science, software development, hardware engineer- ing, testing, operations, marketing and sales.” The smartest firms have recog- nised this shift. Among them is General Electric, whose chief ex- ecutive Jeff Immelt says industrial companies are “in the information business whether they want to be or not”. The most positive aspects of the new service model are that it pro- vides a deeper customer relation- ship and a reliable revenue stream for manufacturers. Goods makers can record customer details from which to develop loyalty and they can look forward to recurring ser- vice revenue, repairing the devices themselves or taking a cut of their contractors’ income. Home and heating management from the Google Nest and Brit- ish Gas Hive systems accumulate user data, becoming increasingly invaluable to people as they link automated services to recorded habits, making a brand switch less appealing. For their makers, both data analysis and marketing skills are essential. This thinking is being taken a step further by expanded teams of mar- keting and technology personnel, who are using the IoT for immediate promotions. Drinks maker Pernod Ricard has fitted sensors to bottles that enable smartphone users to simply tap their device on the ves- sels to reveal recipes for cocktails and ways to buy more products. Competitor Diageo designs and runs internet-connected bottles so users can share their own videos. An entire workforce will grow to create, sell and support the new business. In addition to sales and marketing, Accenture notes in its research, new employees “will in- clude product managers, software developers to create and test new information services, hardware de- signers to develop the products, data scientists to create and interpret an- alytics, and user-interface and expe- rience designers”. Business buyers are adding to the scale of these skills demands. Rolls-Royce and General Electric have manufactured jet engines that can be sold as a service, rather than simply a product. Packaged into regular costs for airline buyers are maintenance and upgrades, with IoT systems telling them when to take action. Meanwhile, Michelin uses sensors on customers’ deliv- ery trucks to help human experts suggest more efficient travel and sell tyres based on the number of miles driven. As these services become the key proposition for sales forces, manu- facturers can use them to drive up- take of add-on or upgrade products. The data from all of these services can also be applied by expanded research teams to influence fresh product design. As businesses move their humans away from manual tasks, workers will equally be required to oper- ate, design, monitor or service the IoT-linked machines they have purchased. Then there is the new demand for staff educators to help them use the systems and process engineers to make sure they fit prop- erly into existing operations, Accen- ture notes. Of course, with all these sys- tems connecting business net- works to the wider internet, secu- rity personnel will be paramount. Gartner expects that the “scarce” IoT security specialists will be in ever-higher demand and figures from freelance database Upwork show a 194 per cent increase in 2015 in demand for security infra- structure specialists. While the IoT may reduce the need for some manual jobs in factories, it will also create a huge new demand for service skills to maintain, create and market the systems. There is no doubt that such a colossal shift will be uncomfortable for some, but the power of people will remain strong in the new world. Connected machines will create better jobs ChrisRatcliffe/BloombergviaGettyImages 3.2bn of the 8.4 billion IoT connected devices are for business use LEO KING $1.2trn will have been spent on IoT by 2020 Gartner/IDC $187bn will have been spent on IoT within manufacturing by 2020 Negative stories have surrounded the internet of things and job losses have been their focus, but a more accurate analysis reveals a shift in the skills needed towards services OVERVIEW Rolls-Royce’s IoT systems notify the engineering company when maintenance and upgrades are due PUBLISHED IN ASSOCIATION WITH
  • 3.
    1 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNETOF THINGS 0309 / 03 / 2017 /industrial-iot-2017 Although this publication is funded through advertising and sponsorship, all editorial is without bias and sponsored features are clearly labelled. For an upcoming schedule, partnership inquiries or feedback, please call +44 (0)20 3877 3800 or e-mail [email protected] Raconteur is a leading publisher of special-interest content and research. Its publications and articles cover a wide range of topics, including business, finance, sustainability, healthcare, lifestyle and technology. Raconteur special reports are published exclusively in The Times and The Sunday Times as well as online at raconteur.net The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources the Proprietors believe to be correct. However, no legal liability can be accepted for any errors. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the Publisher. © Raconteur Media RACONTEUR Industrial IoT represents a revolution in how products are designed, manufactured and operated. Companies with bold digital ambitions understand its objectives and extraordinary potential. But the choices faced are far from simple: EITHER retain sovereignty over your data, innovations and digital skills development OR concede, and with it the essence of your competitive advantage. EITHER tap into new leading-edge, cloud neutral, pay-as-you-go digital accelerators OR stick with the legacy, lock-in approaches of hitherto trusted software incumbents. EITHER empower your line experts in fast cycle, co-creation of new digital products and services OR continue to outsource innovation. If you believe in sovereignty, a savvy approach and the power of your engineers then consider QiO as your digital partner. We can provide the secure platform, toolkit and Industrial SaaS applications you need to drive your own digital programme and all at a highly attractive cost to value ratio. We help some of the most respected industrial firms, including Rolls-Royce plc and Lloyd’s Register, unlock trapped productivity and accelerate their Industrial IoT transformation. For more information, visit us at qio.io MARTIN BARROW Former health editor, news editor, foreign news editor and business news editor at The Times, he is now a freelance writer. WENDY M. GROSSMAN Freelance technology writer, specialising in computers, freedom and privacy, she won the 2013 BT Enigma Award for lifetime achievement in information security journalism. LEO KING Writer and editor, he works with the Financial Times, The Sunday Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Economist and The Daily Telegraph. JIM McCLELLAND Sustainable futurist, his specialisms include built environment, corporate social responsibility and ecosystem services. BEN ROSSI Editorial director at Vitesse Media and formerly editor of Information Age and Computer News Middle East, he writes for national newspapers and business publications. FINBARR TOESLAND Freelance journalist, he specialises in technology, business and economic issues, and contributes to a wide range of publications. CONTRIBUTORS PUBLISHING MANAGER Frank Monaghan DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER Jessica McGreal HEAD OF PRODUCTION Natalia Rosek DESIGN Samuele Motta Grant Chapman Kellie Jerrard PRODUCTION EDITOR Benjamin Chiou MANAGING EDITOR Peter Archer DISTRIBUTED IN INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS @raconteur /raconteur.net @raconteur_london T he internet of things or IoT, which can connect any de- vice to the web, has been a boon for owners of manufac- turing firms. By providing data from multiple machines, factory perfor- mance can be monitored, goods can be tracked and maintenance needs predicted – all for greater efficiency. Those on the factory floor have been less supportive of the change, understandably fearing their jobs will be replaced by robots and ma- chines that “speak” to each other. The reality, however, is more nu- anced. Rather than eliminating all roles, the IoT is creating demand for a different set of skills. Many of these jobs will come from the ser- vice sector, supporting customers, and also the technology sector that supports the systems. By 2020, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Re- search and technology firm SAS, some 182,000 jobs will be created in the UK by the IoT and big data in a range of areas. The IoT allows traditional prod- uct businesses to become services firms. Instead of simply manu- facturing and selling goods, the industry can now maintain and upgrade them, something the tech- nology sector rather awkwardly labels “servitisation”. IoT-connected devices link con- sumer goods to manufacturers’ systems, advising of maintenance and upgrade needs, the same way factory devices are connected. Washing machines or heating control systems, for example, can be fitted with sensors to detect when they are going wrong, alert- ing manufacturers to send an engineer. The same concept can be applied to the business world, and to a water utility’s pipes and control systems. Numerous predictions demon- strate the enormous services oppor- tunity. Gartner expects 8.4 billion IoT-connected devices to be in use worldwide this year, with 5.2 billion of them in consumers’ hands and 3.2 billion of them in businesses. Some $1.2 trillion will have been spent on IoT by 2020, says analyst IDC, with manufacturing lead- ing the way last year with a cool $187 billion. The change creates demand for a raft of new talent. “To capture the bigger opportunities presented by the industrial IoT,” according to management firm Accenture, “com- panies will especially need to look for skills in data science, software development, hardware engineer- ing, testing, operations, marketing and sales.” The smartest firms have recog- nised this shift. Among them is General Electric, whose chief ex- ecutive Jeff Immelt says industrial companies are “in the information business whether they want to be or not”. The most positive aspects of the new service model are that it pro- vides a deeper customer relation- ship and a reliable revenue stream for manufacturers. Goods makers can record customer details from which to develop loyalty and they can look forward to recurring ser- vice revenue, repairing the devices themselves or taking a cut of their contractors’ income. Home and heating management from the Google Nest and Brit- ish Gas Hive systems accumulate user data, becoming increasingly invaluable to people as they link automated services to recorded habits, making a brand switch less appealing. For their makers, both data analysis and marketing skills are essential. This thinking is being taken a step further by expanded teams of mar- keting and technology personnel, who are using the IoT for immediate promotions. Drinks maker Pernod Ricard has fitted sensors to bottles that enable smartphone users to simply tap their device on the ves- sels to reveal recipes for cocktails and ways to buy more products. Competitor Diageo designs and runs internet-connected bottles so users can share their own videos. An entire workforce will grow to create, sell and support the new business. In addition to sales and marketing, Accenture notes in its research, new employees “will in- clude product managers, software developers to create and test new information services, hardware de- signers to develop the products, data scientists to create and interpret an- alytics, and user-interface and expe- rience designers”. Business buyers are adding to the scale of these skills demands. Rolls-Royce and General Electric have manufactured jet engines that can be sold as a service, rather than simply a product. Packaged into regular costs for airline buyers are maintenance and upgrades, with IoT systems telling them when to take action. Meanwhile, Michelin uses sensors on customers’ deliv- ery trucks to help human experts suggest more efficient travel and sell tyres based on the number of miles driven. As these services become the key proposition for sales forces, manu- facturers can use them to drive up- take of add-on or upgrade products. The data from all of these services can also be applied by expanded research teams to influence fresh product design. As businesses move their humans away from manual tasks, workers will equally be required to oper- ate, design, monitor or service the IoT-linked machines they have purchased. Then there is the new demand for staff educators to help them use the systems and process engineers to make sure they fit prop- erly into existing operations, Accen- ture notes. Of course, with all these sys- tems connecting business net- works to the wider internet, secu- rity personnel will be paramount. Gartner expects that the “scarce” IoT security specialists will be in ever-higher demand and figures from freelance database Upwork show a 194 per cent increase in 2015 in demand for security infra- structure specialists. While the IoT may reduce the need for some manual jobs in factories, it will also create a huge new demand for service skills to maintain, create and market the systems. There is no doubt that such a colossal shift will be uncomfortable for some, but the power of people will remain strong in the new world. Connected machines will create better jobs ChrisRatcliffe/BloombergviaGettyImages 3.2bn of the 8.4 billion IoT connected devices are for business use LEO KING $1.2trn will have been spent on IoT by 2020 Gartner/IDC $187bn will have been spent on IoT within manufacturing by 2020 Negative stories have surrounded the internet of things and job losses have been their focus, but a more accurate analysis reveals a shift in the skills needed towards services OVERVIEW Rolls-Royce’s IoT systems notify the engineering company when maintenance and upgrades are due PUBLISHED IN ASSOCIATION WITH
  • 4.
    INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OFTHINGS RACONTEUR.NET04 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0509 / 03 / 2017 INDUSTRIAL ANALYTICS Choosing the right model for industry Industrial companies face a difficult call when deciding the best model for dealing with, analysing and acting on the plethora of data in the industrial internet of things F or many people, getting stuck in a lift is their worst night- mare. But thanks to the inter- net of things (IoT), it could be a thing of the past. German manufacturer ThyssenK- rupp, which runs more than a million elevators around the world, is using intelligent IoT algorithms to predict when a lift is about to breakdown and then prevent it from doing so. The IoT is driven by the ability to make any object a device by at- taching sensors to it and connect- ing it to the internet. The devices are then able to communicate with each other to improve processes. “Businesses need to find a way to keep up with the rapid pace of change that 21st-century life brings,” says Andreas Schieren- beck, chief executive at ThyssenK- rupp Elevator. “IoT systems that are integrated into industry in an in- telligent and practical way can pro- vide the solution to this challenge.” Connecting and carrying out ana- lytics for more than a million eleva- tors requires an enormous amount of computational power. ThyssenK- rupp uses cloud, where computing BEN ROSSI resources are delivered over the in- ternet on a pay-per-use basis. But cloud is just one of three prominent models, the others be- ing edge computing and fog com- puting. Choosing the right one can define the success or failure of any IoT project. Edge computing is the opposite of cloud, processing and storing data at the data sources themselves. It uses local processing power and storage to carry out low-level, low-value tasks based on the data it is collecting, such as switching things on and off or sending alerts based on trigger events. Analyst firm IDC predicts that by 2019, 45 per cent of IoT-created data will be stored, processed, analysed and acted upon close to, or at the edge of, the network. “If we want to capture the opportunities of the in- dustrial IoT, it’s not enough to rely on today’s big central data centres and clouds,” says Colin I’Anson, chief technologist for IoT at HPE. Fog is the middle ground. It com- putes at the edge but includes el- ements of aggregation with local resource pools in close proximity to end-users. Devices act as gateways by using distributed nodes linked to the cloud, sending and receiving data and additional compute power when needed. Rentokil Initial, a pest control com- pany, is harnessing fog computing to connectitsrodentcontainmentdevic- estogatewaysthatcollectinformation and trigger alerts to technicians when the devices need to be emptied or serviced. These gateways are also connect- ed to a cloud-based command cen- tre where employees and customers can analyse data relevant to them. The company works with software firm Qlik to visualise that data, making it easier to act on. Another example of fog is the use of blockchain as a decentralised distributed system for device and data provenance. “This is not edge computing as it refers to the whole system state and not cloud as it is not held on one server,” says ana- lyst Ian Hughes of 451 Research. Cloud, edge and fog each come with their own advantages and disadvantages. For all the scal- ability and flexibility benefits of cloud, security is an enduring concern when data is handed over to a third party. Edge ensures only useful data is sent over the net- work, but it can get costly when more powerful devices are re- quired to cope with extra process- ing. And while fog optimises the amount of data that is sent across the network, deploying more in- termediate processing increases the burden of managing it. However, industrial organisations shouldn’t see any of the models in an- yway exclusive; each is appropriate to different deployment scenarios. A smart city lighting project, for example, requires a more central- ised system, while an oil refinery will have lots of edge processing for parts of the process, but an aggre- gated, cloud-based digital twin rep- resentation of the entire refinery. A train may have an on-board edge processor to optimise fuel usage as it travels, but incorporates a cloud- based system to apply predictive maintenance to tracks to aggregate information with other trains. “For simple localised monitoring, you could just send the data to a lo- cal device to process it,” says Gary Barnett, head of enterprise adviso- ry at analyst firm GlobalData. “In more complex environments, like facilities management, the data may be sent to an intermediate server on your site so you can man- Cloud, edge and fog each come with their own advantages and disadvantages age it locally, with alerts or aggre- gated data sent to the cloud.” There is no one size fits all. “The best solution may involve a com- bination of all three approaches,” says Graeme Wright, IoT director at Fujitsu UK and Ireland. American conglomerate General Electric is a good example of a com- pany deploying all three models. Its industrial internet platform syncs with every physical device to create a complete continuum from assets at the edge to gateways in the facto- ry and all the way to the cloud. Applying this approach has driv- en productivity increases of up to 20 per cent in GE’s factories, resulting in $730 million in productivity gains in 2016 alone. The company is aiming for an additional $700 million in 2017. “The cloud plays an essential role in the industrial internet of things,” says Deborah Sherry, general man- ager at GE Digital Europe, “but it’s not enough on its own for industrial companies looking to optimise their assets and operations.” BuenaVistaImages/GettyImages INDUSTRIAL DATA ANALYTICS APPLICATIONS ANALYTICS PROFESSIONALS AND DECISION-MAKERS IN GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL COMPANIES RANKED THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FOLLOWING APPLICATIONS OVER THE NEXT THREE YEARS IoT Analytics/Digital Analytics Association Germany 2016 Trains have on-board edge processors to optimise fuel usage, but incorporate cloud- based predictive maintenance to aggregate information with other trains COMMERCIAL FEATURECOMMERCIAL FEATURE We’re using the vibration to power the smart monitoring of that vibration Good vibrations: how the industrial internet of things is creating the ‘intelligent train’ Vibration in train bogies has always been regarded as a problem to be managed. Now a new technology is harnessing it to provide a self-powered monitoring system bringing improvements in cost of ownership, reliability of service and safety enhancement E ven a casual glance at recent newspaper headlines reveals how pressures on the UK rail network are increasing. Office of Rail and Road figures show the number of passenger journeys on franchised rail services in Brit- ain increased by 69.5 per cent be- tween 2002 and 2015. Meanwhile, train companies are under growing pressure to manage costs, increase reliability and ensure they get maxi- mum usage out of all of their assets. Modern trains are complex pieces of equipment and even a small fault can bring them, and a large part of the entire network, to a grinding halt. Most current rail maintenance re- gimes are mileage or time based, which means maintenance is done regardless of condition, resulting in both massive waste and unpredicta- ble breakdowns. With condition mon- itoring, train operators can do main- tenance only when necessary. They’re not risking being caught out because damage is reported in real time before it causes danger or delays. In other words, they get no surprises. Now innovative British company Perpetuum has developed and im- plemented a new technology that can exploit a key feature of the in- dustrial internet of things (IIoT) to provide this kind of constant, re- al-time “in-flight” monitoring and diagnostics. An approach that’s al- ready commonplace in aircraft can now be transferred to trains. “It means that the train opera- tors don’t have any unpleasant surprises caused by key pieces of equipment failing or wearing out unexpectedly because the system predicts outages,” explains Dr Steve Turley, chief executive of Per- petuum, a business which was spun out of Southampton University and has developed award-winning, self-powered monitoring systems for both rolling stock and track. An exceptionally important fea- ture of the system is that it uses the vibrations in the train to generate enough power for the sensors, mi- croprocessors and wireless trans- mitters. So it’s very simple, low cost and quick to install in minutes with just a few bolts. Perpetuum has shipped many thousands of its sensors globally and its clients already include six UK rail operators. It has three elsewhere in Europe, three in North Ameri- ca and one in Australia, with many more globally placing orders. As Dr Turley explains, if a train op- erator is constantly kept informed about the trains’ condition, it can identify and plan any maintenance requirements ahead of time. The system monitors key components such as wheels, bearings, gearboxes and now the track itself. As a result, “in-service” failures can be more or less eliminated leading to better safety and reliability, and lower main- tenance costs for trains and track. It gives operators the ability to do what Perpetuum describes as “maintain on condition”. Dr Turley says: “If the maintenance team of a train operator knows what condition a train is in, they don’t waste time and money putting it through an un- necessary upkeep and repair pro- gramme. ‘Condition-based main- tenance’ means that trains spend more time on the track, improved customer service and increased profitability of the train operator.” This “intelligent train,” overcomes another key challenge facing train operators of balancing essential safety requirements with the need to remain commercially viable. Now they can improve both as one leads to the other. Key to Perpetuum’s success is its expertise in vibration engineering. “We’re using the vibration to power the smart monitoring of that vibra- tion. Vibration is something that hap- pens naturally with trains, but we’ve developed technologies that can take this hitherto ignored by-prod- uct of a moving train bogie and use it to develop valuable, actionable information,” explains Dr Turley. For example, if a defect is devel- oping in a physical system such as a train, it will create a specific vibration signature, which Perpetuum’s tech- nology can identify and isolate from all the other vibration going on in the background. The company calls this “information from vibration”. Exploiting the IIoT’s key features of connectivity and reduced need for human intervention, this data is turned into clear actionable infor- mation about the “health” of the train on a daily basis by Perpetuum’s software algorithms, which alert train operators of impending prob- lems many months in advance. “As a result of this very early warning, we’ve never had a failure in service for the components that it moni- tors,” says Justin Southcombe, Per- petuum’s commercial director. Perpetuum is unique among play- ers in this sector in that it’s vertically integrated. “Most IIoT developers extract information from other peo- ple’s data, but we have the hardware – that’s sensors – plus the com- munications, software, algorithms and the information display. This knowledge of the complete systems means we can deliver better infor- mation in a more co-ordinated, more cost-effective manner,” he says. Another aspect of Perpetuum’s technology that appeals to its cus- tomers is that its patented sensor nodes are powered by the compa- ny’s proprietary energy harvesters, which convert the ambient vibration from a train into electrical energy, known as “power from vibration”. The absence of batteries and their issues of replacement and disposal make the sensor nodes more envi- ronmentally friendly. Customers love this approach as it makes the sensor system very easy and fast to in- stall without wiring, and the system maintenance free. “All communications are com- pletely wireless. Wires aren’t a good mix with bogies because they get in the way and can become disconnected because of vibration. That means the signal becomes an intermittent and unreliable data source. People like the fact that what we offer really is a ‘fit-and- forget’ self-contained solution,” says Mr Southcombe. With all these advantages for cost-saving, increased reliabili- ty and safety, plus improved green credentials that Perpetuum is al- ready delivering for its customers, it’s not surprising that more and more rail operators around the world are selecting Perpetuum’s groundbreaking vibration condition monitoring system. IIoT benefits are best achieved with sensors that are self-powered. Perpetuum achieves this and does it on a mobile platform. For more information please visit perpetuum.com 01 Perpetuum delivers clear, actionable information to enable improvements in cost of ownership, reliability of service and enhancement of safety 02 Southeastern has deployed the Perpetuum system across a number of fleets since it pioneered the innovation five years ago 01 02 CONDITION-BASED MAINTENANCE MAINTAIN ON CONDITION MAJOR COST REDUCTIONS NO SURPRISES IMPROVED SAFETY IMPROVED RELIABILITY Predictive/prescriptive maintenance of machines Customer/marketing-related analytics Analysis of product usage in the field Visual analytics Research/development-related analytics Data-driven quality control of product Decision-support systems Cyber security analytics Smart grid Industrial data analytics applications Extremely important Very important Moderately important Slightly important Not at all important
  • 5.
    INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OFTHINGS RACONTEUR.NET04 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0509 / 03 / 2017 INDUSTRIAL ANALYTICS Choosing the right model for industry Industrial companies face a difficult call when deciding the best model for dealing with, analysing and acting on the plethora of data in the industrial internet of things F or many people, getting stuck in a lift is their worst night- mare. But thanks to the inter- net of things (IoT), it could be a thing of the past. German manufacturer ThyssenK- rupp, which runs more than a million elevators around the world, is using intelligent IoT algorithms to predict when a lift is about to breakdown and then prevent it from doing so. The IoT is driven by the ability to make any object a device by at- taching sensors to it and connect- ing it to the internet. The devices are then able to communicate with each other to improve processes. “Businesses need to find a way to keep up with the rapid pace of change that 21st-century life brings,” says Andreas Schieren- beck, chief executive at ThyssenK- rupp Elevator. “IoT systems that are integrated into industry in an in- telligent and practical way can pro- vide the solution to this challenge.” Connecting and carrying out ana- lytics for more than a million eleva- tors requires an enormous amount of computational power. ThyssenK- rupp uses cloud, where computing BEN ROSSI resources are delivered over the in- ternet on a pay-per-use basis. But cloud is just one of three prominent models, the others be- ing edge computing and fog com- puting. Choosing the right one can define the success or failure of any IoT project. Edge computing is the opposite of cloud, processing and storing data at the data sources themselves. It uses local processing power and storage to carry out low-level, low-value tasks based on the data it is collecting, such as switching things on and off or sending alerts based on trigger events. Analyst firm IDC predicts that by 2019, 45 per cent of IoT-created data will be stored, processed, analysed and acted upon close to, or at the edge of, the network. “If we want to capture the opportunities of the in- dustrial IoT, it’s not enough to rely on today’s big central data centres and clouds,” says Colin I’Anson, chief technologist for IoT at HPE. Fog is the middle ground. It com- putes at the edge but includes el- ements of aggregation with local resource pools in close proximity to end-users. Devices act as gateways by using distributed nodes linked to the cloud, sending and receiving data and additional compute power when needed. Rentokil Initial, a pest control com- pany, is harnessing fog computing to connectitsrodentcontainmentdevic- estogatewaysthatcollectinformation and trigger alerts to technicians when the devices need to be emptied or serviced. These gateways are also connect- ed to a cloud-based command cen- tre where employees and customers can analyse data relevant to them. The company works with software firm Qlik to visualise that data, making it easier to act on. Another example of fog is the use of blockchain as a decentralised distributed system for device and data provenance. “This is not edge computing as it refers to the whole system state and not cloud as it is not held on one server,” says ana- lyst Ian Hughes of 451 Research. Cloud, edge and fog each come with their own advantages and disadvantages. For all the scal- ability and flexibility benefits of cloud, security is an enduring concern when data is handed over to a third party. Edge ensures only useful data is sent over the net- work, but it can get costly when more powerful devices are re- quired to cope with extra process- ing. And while fog optimises the amount of data that is sent across the network, deploying more in- termediate processing increases the burden of managing it. However, industrial organisations shouldn’t see any of the models in an- yway exclusive; each is appropriate to different deployment scenarios. A smart city lighting project, for example, requires a more central- ised system, while an oil refinery will have lots of edge processing for parts of the process, but an aggre- gated, cloud-based digital twin rep- resentation of the entire refinery. A train may have an on-board edge processor to optimise fuel usage as it travels, but incorporates a cloud- based system to apply predictive maintenance to tracks to aggregate information with other trains. “For simple localised monitoring, you could just send the data to a lo- cal device to process it,” says Gary Barnett, head of enterprise adviso- ry at analyst firm GlobalData. “In more complex environments, like facilities management, the data may be sent to an intermediate server on your site so you can man- Cloud, edge and fog each come with their own advantages and disadvantages age it locally, with alerts or aggre- gated data sent to the cloud.” There is no one size fits all. “The best solution may involve a com- bination of all three approaches,” says Graeme Wright, IoT director at Fujitsu UK and Ireland. American conglomerate General Electric is a good example of a com- pany deploying all three models. Its industrial internet platform syncs with every physical device to create a complete continuum from assets at the edge to gateways in the facto- ry and all the way to the cloud. Applying this approach has driv- en productivity increases of up to 20 per cent in GE’s factories, resulting in $730 million in productivity gains in 2016 alone. The company is aiming for an additional $700 million in 2017. “The cloud plays an essential role in the industrial internet of things,” says Deborah Sherry, general man- ager at GE Digital Europe, “but it’s not enough on its own for industrial companies looking to optimise their assets and operations.” BuenaVistaImages/GettyImages INDUSTRIAL DATA ANALYTICS APPLICATIONS ANALYTICS PROFESSIONALS AND DECISION-MAKERS IN GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL COMPANIES RANKED THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FOLLOWING APPLICATIONS OVER THE NEXT THREE YEARS IoT Analytics/Digital Analytics Association Germany 2016 Trains have on-board edge processors to optimise fuel usage, but incorporate cloud- based predictive maintenance to aggregate information with other trains COMMERCIAL FEATURECOMMERCIAL FEATURE We’re using the vibration to power the smart monitoring of that vibration Good vibrations: how the industrial internet of things is creating the ‘intelligent train’ Vibration in train bogies has always been regarded as a problem to be managed. Now a new technology is harnessing it to provide a self-powered monitoring system bringing improvements in cost of ownership, reliability of service and safety enhancement E ven a casual glance at recent newspaper headlines reveals how pressures on the UK rail network are increasing. Office of Rail and Road figures show the number of passenger journeys on franchised rail services in Brit- ain increased by 69.5 per cent be- tween 2002 and 2015. Meanwhile, train companies are under growing pressure to manage costs, increase reliability and ensure they get maxi- mum usage out of all of their assets. Modern trains are complex pieces of equipment and even a small fault can bring them, and a large part of the entire network, to a grinding halt. Most current rail maintenance re- gimes are mileage or time based, which means maintenance is done regardless of condition, resulting in both massive waste and unpredicta- ble breakdowns. With condition mon- itoring, train operators can do main- tenance only when necessary. They’re not risking being caught out because damage is reported in real time before it causes danger or delays. In other words, they get no surprises. Now innovative British company Perpetuum has developed and im- plemented a new technology that can exploit a key feature of the in- dustrial internet of things (IIoT) to provide this kind of constant, re- al-time “in-flight” monitoring and diagnostics. An approach that’s al- ready commonplace in aircraft can now be transferred to trains. “It means that the train opera- tors don’t have any unpleasant surprises caused by key pieces of equipment failing or wearing out unexpectedly because the system predicts outages,” explains Dr Steve Turley, chief executive of Per- petuum, a business which was spun out of Southampton University and has developed award-winning, self-powered monitoring systems for both rolling stock and track. An exceptionally important fea- ture of the system is that it uses the vibrations in the train to generate enough power for the sensors, mi- croprocessors and wireless trans- mitters. So it’s very simple, low cost and quick to install in minutes with just a few bolts. Perpetuum has shipped many thousands of its sensors globally and its clients already include six UK rail operators. It has three elsewhere in Europe, three in North Ameri- ca and one in Australia, with many more globally placing orders. As Dr Turley explains, if a train op- erator is constantly kept informed about the trains’ condition, it can identify and plan any maintenance requirements ahead of time. The system monitors key components such as wheels, bearings, gearboxes and now the track itself. As a result, “in-service” failures can be more or less eliminated leading to better safety and reliability, and lower main- tenance costs for trains and track. It gives operators the ability to do what Perpetuum describes as “maintain on condition”. Dr Turley says: “If the maintenance team of a train operator knows what condition a train is in, they don’t waste time and money putting it through an un- necessary upkeep and repair pro- gramme. ‘Condition-based main- tenance’ means that trains spend more time on the track, improved customer service and increased profitability of the train operator.” This “intelligent train,” overcomes another key challenge facing train operators of balancing essential safety requirements with the need to remain commercially viable. Now they can improve both as one leads to the other. Key to Perpetuum’s success is its expertise in vibration engineering. “We’re using the vibration to power the smart monitoring of that vibra- tion. Vibration is something that hap- pens naturally with trains, but we’ve developed technologies that can take this hitherto ignored by-prod- uct of a moving train bogie and use it to develop valuable, actionable information,” explains Dr Turley. For example, if a defect is devel- oping in a physical system such as a train, it will create a specific vibration signature, which Perpetuum’s tech- nology can identify and isolate from all the other vibration going on in the background. The company calls this “information from vibration”. Exploiting the IIoT’s key features of connectivity and reduced need for human intervention, this data is turned into clear actionable infor- mation about the “health” of the train on a daily basis by Perpetuum’s software algorithms, which alert train operators of impending prob- lems many months in advance. “As a result of this very early warning, we’ve never had a failure in service for the components that it moni- tors,” says Justin Southcombe, Per- petuum’s commercial director. Perpetuum is unique among play- ers in this sector in that it’s vertically integrated. “Most IIoT developers extract information from other peo- ple’s data, but we have the hardware – that’s sensors – plus the com- munications, software, algorithms and the information display. This knowledge of the complete systems means we can deliver better infor- mation in a more co-ordinated, more cost-effective manner,” he says. Another aspect of Perpetuum’s technology that appeals to its cus- tomers is that its patented sensor nodes are powered by the compa- ny’s proprietary energy harvesters, which convert the ambient vibration from a train into electrical energy, known as “power from vibration”. The absence of batteries and their issues of replacement and disposal make the sensor nodes more envi- ronmentally friendly. Customers love this approach as it makes the sensor system very easy and fast to in- stall without wiring, and the system maintenance free. “All communications are com- pletely wireless. Wires aren’t a good mix with bogies because they get in the way and can become disconnected because of vibration. That means the signal becomes an intermittent and unreliable data source. People like the fact that what we offer really is a ‘fit-and- forget’ self-contained solution,” says Mr Southcombe. With all these advantages for cost-saving, increased reliabili- ty and safety, plus improved green credentials that Perpetuum is al- ready delivering for its customers, it’s not surprising that more and more rail operators around the world are selecting Perpetuum’s groundbreaking vibration condition monitoring system. IIoT benefits are best achieved with sensors that are self-powered. Perpetuum achieves this and does it on a mobile platform. For more information please visit perpetuum.com 01 Perpetuum delivers clear, actionable information to enable improvements in cost of ownership, reliability of service and enhancement of safety 02 Southeastern has deployed the Perpetuum system across a number of fleets since it pioneered the innovation five years ago 01 02 CONDITION-BASED MAINTENANCE MAINTAIN ON CONDITION MAJOR COST REDUCTIONS NO SURPRISES IMPROVED SAFETY IMPROVED RELIABILITY Predictive/prescriptive maintenance of machines Customer/marketing-related analytics Analysis of product usage in the field Visual analytics Research/development-related analytics Data-driven quality control of product Decision-support systems Cyber security analytics Smart grid Industrial data analytics applications Extremely important Very important Moderately important Slightly important Not at all important
  • 6.
    INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OFTHINGS RACONTEUR.NET06 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0709 / 03 / 2017 The concept of tiny sensors the size of a grain of sand, with the ability to detect everything from chemicals to vi- brations, was first thought up in the early-1990s, but little progress was made in the following years turning this intriguing idea into a reality. However, interest in this nascent technology has grown recently, with research firm Gartner predicting smart dust will trend in the next five to ten years. SMART DUST Applications of these connected smart dust particles in the IIoT are virtually endless, from oil explo- ration companies spreading smart dust to monitor rock movements to small sensors all over factory equip- ment continually looking out for changes and problems. At the moment smart dust sen- sors are still out of reach, primar- ily due to the difficulty in min- iaturisation and the prohibitive cost of producing huge quantities. However, they are slowly but sure- ly becoming cheaper to manufac- ture, so it may not be long before billions upon billions of minis- cule smart dust particles populate the world. The industrial internet of things is poised for take-off and will be given trajectory by innovative ideas. Here are five of the best Minute sensors like dust and squadrons of drones Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have quickly be- come one of the most talked about products in the tech space, thanks to their many useful applications. In the near future these machines could play a significant part in the IIoT by acting as either a sensor or by pro- viding a connection between sensors and data collection points. Drones may not yet be seen as a fully fledged connected IIoT de- vice, but they can carry all range of sensors and are autonomous ma- chines capable of gathering massive amounts of valuable data. Construc- tion companies can use drones to undertake daily land surveys and feed this data into software to en- sure construction is on schedule and send an alert if anything looks out of place or improperly built. But drones are no mere data col- lectors, with the devices potentially being able to quickly act on the data they collect and communicate with other drones in the IIoT to work to- gether to overcome problems. DRONES Far from the facto- ry floor, in count- less farms around the world, is where the IIoT could make the biggest difference. Utilis- ing the latest tech- nologies is nothing new for the agri- culture industry, but implementing smart, connected IIoT projects enables farmers to make use of the massive amounts of data generated on their farms. The large size of many farms makes manual surveys ineffective and diffi- cult, leading farmers to turn to IIoT solutions. Oyster farmer Ward Aqua- farms, with the help of telecoms firm Verizon, deployed an IIoT program to maximise productivity and en- sure the quality of food in the supply chain, using satellite imaging and IIoT track-and-trace technology to monitor farming operations all the FUTURISTIC FARMING way from harvest to delivery. “Agriculture presents perhaps the perfect business case for IoT imple- mentation, so we are likely to see a much greater extension of its ap- plications over the next five years,” says Tony Judd, managing director for Verizon in the UK. “In areas like precision agriculture, real-time data about soil, weather, air quality and hydration levels can help farmers make better decisions about the planting and harvesting of crops.” save a significant amount of man- hours and money for airlines. Taleris, a joint venture by Gener- al Electric and Accenture, is at the forefront of developing IoT solu- tions for airlines, aimed at min- imising delays and disruptions by analysing data collected from sensors on aeroplanes. Uptake of these IoT technologies in the aerospace sector has been slow, as cost-savings are not easy to estimate, but as the benefits of these systems become appar- ent, interest from airlines will grow. The widespread usage of analytics programs that have the ability to monitor aircraft proac- tively not only improves turn- around times for airlines but also helps meet customer needs more effectively. Aerospace companies have mainly introduced IIoT solutions on the fac- tory floor for tracking tools and parts, with some beginning to expand the number of on-board IoT devices. An aeroplane that knows when it’s going to encounter maintenance problems before they actually happen would AEROSPACE Energy companies can expect to see their operations f u n d a m e n t a l l y altered when IoT is fully embraced in their sector. Spikes in ener- gy consumption around major TV broadcasts and weather events have long troubled utility firms. But with effective energy demand manage- ment through the IIoT, the need for investment in both energy networks and power plants is reduced. Smart meters are one example of the industry’s move towards IoT technologies, although at the moment they only record usage amounts and timings. Utility firms could potentially provide price in- formation to these meters, which could in turn interact with other IoT devices to use energy at the most ef- ficient time. ENERGY NETWORKS New oil and gas pipelines are fit- ted with sensors that detect leaks and alert repair teams, so issues are fixed before they can cause prob- lems and the number of blackouts and brownouts are kept to a mini- mum. Any improvements the IoT can achieve in energy supply man- agement will become increasingly valuable as utility companies look for the most effective ways to deal with multiple energy sources in a decentralised network. T he growth of the internet of things (IoT) is drastically changing how consumers interact with their cars, homes and appliances, but the aptly named second digital revolution has major implications for industry too. From machine-learning, machine-to-machine com- munication to artificial intelligence, the industrial internet of things (IIoT) takes IoT technologies and directly applies them to industrial concerns and in the process improves efficiency and productivity. While consumer-focused IoT solutions have dominated headlines in re- cent years and the relatively long life cycles of industrial equipment has limited growth in this sector so far, major firms and manufacturers are be- ginning to embrace IIoT on a big scale, attracted by the opportunity to drive down costs and increase competitiveness. Developments in the IIoT environment over the next few years can be ex- pected to increase adoption further, leaving few companies ignoring its fu- ture, with a survey by software company Infor finding that 52 per cent of manufactures believe IoT is a priority for their business. FINBARR TOESLAND The industrial internet of things (IIoT) may be a new term to most businesses, but it is creating signif- icantly more soci- etal and economic valuethanisderived from simply “consid- ering the cloud”. IIoT accelerates this value by integrating opera- tional practices, in every industry, with big data and machine-learning. IIoT affects a wide range of technol- ogies at both the systems and device levels to include industrial automa- tion systems, communication tech- nology, cloud-based data analytics and related infrastructure. While many think of manufac- turing as the “industrial” in IIoT, the IIoT impact is in fact pervasive across industries, with early appli- cations in transportation, health- care, power, process control, build- ings and smart cities. True connectivity is redefining businesses in nearly every vertical segment globally. Connected build- ing systems can improve power man- agement, which enhances building safety and reliability. On a larger scale, intelligent electrical grids al- low businesses to both analyse op- erational data for better efficiency of current plants and integrate renewa- ble sources to support green environ- mental initiatives globally. The need for connectivity and improved efficiency is paramount in creating greater value. A shift to- wards tighter systems integration en- ables enterprises to not only be more efficient, but also more profitable due to greater flexibility and responsive- ness to changing conditions. Connec- tivity contributes to environmental sustainability objectives too. With greater connectivity comes an accelerating need for greater cy- ber security practices and technol- ogies in industrial control systems. The complexity of IIoT dictates that IIoT-focused cyber security meas- ures be designed into business prac- tices, automation systems and com- ponents to ensure the security of individual assets and related larger, holistic systems. Companies that first optimise and then digitise their operations through IIoT solutions are seeing immediate value from real-time data, dramatically improving oper- ations, creating value both within the business and for their end-use customers. When managed well, this data can apply such value as predic- tive analytics to stave off unplanned downtime, often identifying the sources of potential equipment issues and catastrophic risks before they hap- pen. Companies are also benefiting from safety and se- curity measures. For businesses to achieve maximum value from IIoT systems, best practices are essential. The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) has three main objectives – build community, provide industry guidance and prove with testbeds. OurIICcommunityofmorethan270 companies represents today’s larg- est IIoT ecosystem of experts in IIoT. StakeholderswithintheIICcomefrom every segment globally, including pri- vate industry, governments and aca- demia. Our testbed programme is the industry’s most comprehensive, with more than 25 testbeds and growing. We are releasing practical guidance on how to build IIoT systems. The IIC published a set of reference docu- ments. The Industrial Internet Refer- ence Architecture provides a strategic treatment of how to build an IIoT system. The Industrial Internet Secu- rityFramework extends the reference architecture to consider IIoT securi- ty concerns. The Industrial Internet Connectivity Framework provides a deep understanding of IIoT connec- tivity issues and best practices. The Business Strategy and Innova- tion Framework provides high-level identification and analysis of issues enterprises will need to capitalise on with opportunities emerging from the IIoT. These deliverables are key enablers of IIoT, creating a roadmap for businesses to enter the IIoT ecosystem. The potential of IIoT is to cre- ate new applications that were not possible before the combination of intelligence and networking, including innovations such as au- tonomous cars for safe, efficient transportation, optimised agricul- ture, medical devices and systems that can connect and work together to care for patients, and integrated central and distributed power gen- eration that will transform the core infrastructure of the planet, opti- mising and creating industries. These IIoT applications will be the primary economic growth drivers of the next several years. Although most IIoT systems take time to de- sign, build and deploy, they are rap- idly becoming the infrastructure for a new generation of systems ben- efiting both business and society mutually. As we say within the IIC, “Things are coming together.” JOHN TUCCILLO Steering committee chair Industrial Internet Consortium OPINION COLUMN ‘True connectivity is redefining businesses in nearly every vertical segment globally’ COMMERCIAL FEATURE THE FUTURE CFO RACONTEUR.NET2 06 / 12 / 2016 A s they move on the football field, NFL players have car- ried more than just a ball over the last few seasons. The Zebra Sports Solution tracks players’ movement on the field, which enables coaches to gather performance data including speed, distance travelled, acceleration and location. Coaches then use this data to con- duct deeper analysis into formations and player tendencies. In addition, broadcasters can use it to show player statistics as part of NFL Next Gen Stats. The Zebra Sports Solution leverag- es the same identity, tracking and location technologies that strategic enterprise internet of things adviser Zebra Technologies implements glob- ally for multinational corporations in healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and transportation and logistics to give real-time visibility to an organisation’s assets, people and processes. “Sensing technology has delivered huge benefits to enterprises globally, especially when the data created by those sensors is analysed effectively,” says Zebra chief technology officer Tom Bianculli. “But all too often this data is used to generate reports or statistics long after it can be used to impact operations in the moment. We are now entering a new phase in which we’re helping a wide range of organisations to act on their data in near real time. Today it’s about sens- ing and analysing, and then taking that next best action right at the point of activity whenever and wher- ever possible.” For example, Zebra is helping re- tailers to gain greater visibility of their stock and their customers, and to act based on that new dig- ital picture. “Big data is essential for longer-term forecasting and our technology takes full advantage of what it offers,” says Mr Bianculli. “And we help organisations to use small data as well. Just as coaches can use the data they receive from the field of play, retail sensor tags can sense that a display of jeans in a shop is down to its last three pairs. The system can then trigger a work- flow to have another dozen brought up from the stock room in minutes.” To help retailers co-ordinate the information available to them and make the best use of it, Zebra Tech- Transform enterprise operations in three simple steps... More organisations are capturing more data while a growing number are improving their analysis of it. True value will come to those who sense, analyse and act on this data in real time, before the resulting benefits perish nologies recently launched Smart- Sense™ for Retail. This solution turns an entire physical store into a smart online store by automatically sens- ing and recording the location and movement of virtually everything in the space, including merchandise, staff, shoppers and products. “For example, sensor tags can in- dicate how much of which stock is available while video analytics can identify merchandise and people in motion, and all of that sensor data can be fused together to identify the next best action for store associates. Whether that be aiding a customer looking to make a purchase decision or being dispatched to replenish a shelf with stock from the back room,” says Mr Bianculli. Enabling employees to act quick- ly and easily with this data enables companies to gain a competitive edge and deploy their valuable re- sources most effectively. “In health- care, a smart wristband informs the hospital system of the location of patients which, when combined with other data sources, can be used to enhance the care-flow journey, reducing waiting times and errors, and improving patient care and throughput,” he says. “Technology is creating an ocean of data that, with the advent of machine-learning, can be distilled down to actionable insight not just for managers but for every em- ployee. However, it’s not just about quantity of data anymore. Today the important aspect is how quickly and easily you can turn that data into real-time, actionable informa- tion that allows you to make smart- er business decisions which result in operational and customer-experi- ence benefit.” For more information please visit www.zebra.com We are now entering a new phase in which we’re helping a wide range of organisations to act on their data in near real time COMMERCIAL FEATUREFIVE TOP APPLICATIONS
  • 7.
    INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OFTHINGS RACONTEUR.NET06 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0709 / 03 / 2017 The concept of tiny sensors the size of a grain of sand, with the ability to detect everything from chemicals to vi- brations, was first thought up in the early-1990s, but little progress was made in the following years turning this intriguing idea into a reality. However, interest in this nascent technology has grown recently, with research firm Gartner predicting smart dust will trend in the next five to ten years. SMART DUST Applications of these connected smart dust particles in the IIoT are virtually endless, from oil explo- ration companies spreading smart dust to monitor rock movements to small sensors all over factory equip- ment continually looking out for changes and problems. At the moment smart dust sen- sors are still out of reach, primar- ily due to the difficulty in min- iaturisation and the prohibitive cost of producing huge quantities. However, they are slowly but sure- ly becoming cheaper to manufac- ture, so it may not be long before billions upon billions of minis- cule smart dust particles populate the world. The industrial internet of things is poised for take-off and will be given trajectory by innovative ideas. Here are five of the best Minute sensors like dust and squadrons of drones Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have quickly be- come one of the most talked about products in the tech space, thanks to their many useful applications. In the near future these machines could play a significant part in the IIoT by acting as either a sensor or by pro- viding a connection between sensors and data collection points. Drones may not yet be seen as a fully fledged connected IIoT de- vice, but they can carry all range of sensors and are autonomous ma- chines capable of gathering massive amounts of valuable data. Construc- tion companies can use drones to undertake daily land surveys and feed this data into software to en- sure construction is on schedule and send an alert if anything looks out of place or improperly built. But drones are no mere data col- lectors, with the devices potentially being able to quickly act on the data they collect and communicate with other drones in the IIoT to work to- gether to overcome problems. DRONES Far from the facto- ry floor, in count- less farms around the world, is where the IIoT could make the biggest difference. Utilis- ing the latest tech- nologies is nothing new for the agri- culture industry, but implementing smart, connected IIoT projects enables farmers to make use of the massive amounts of data generated on their farms. The large size of many farms makes manual surveys ineffective and diffi- cult, leading farmers to turn to IIoT solutions. Oyster farmer Ward Aqua- farms, with the help of telecoms firm Verizon, deployed an IIoT program to maximise productivity and en- sure the quality of food in the supply chain, using satellite imaging and IIoT track-and-trace technology to monitor farming operations all the FUTURISTIC FARMING way from harvest to delivery. “Agriculture presents perhaps the perfect business case for IoT imple- mentation, so we are likely to see a much greater extension of its ap- plications over the next five years,” says Tony Judd, managing director for Verizon in the UK. “In areas like precision agriculture, real-time data about soil, weather, air quality and hydration levels can help farmers make better decisions about the planting and harvesting of crops.” save a significant amount of man- hours and money for airlines. Taleris, a joint venture by Gener- al Electric and Accenture, is at the forefront of developing IoT solu- tions for airlines, aimed at min- imising delays and disruptions by analysing data collected from sensors on aeroplanes. Uptake of these IoT technologies in the aerospace sector has been slow, as cost-savings are not easy to estimate, but as the benefits of these systems become appar- ent, interest from airlines will grow. The widespread usage of analytics programs that have the ability to monitor aircraft proac- tively not only improves turn- around times for airlines but also helps meet customer needs more effectively. Aerospace companies have mainly introduced IIoT solutions on the fac- tory floor for tracking tools and parts, with some beginning to expand the number of on-board IoT devices. An aeroplane that knows when it’s going to encounter maintenance problems before they actually happen would AEROSPACE Energy companies can expect to see their operations f u n d a m e n t a l l y altered when IoT is fully embraced in their sector. Spikes in ener- gy consumption around major TV broadcasts and weather events have long troubled utility firms. But with effective energy demand manage- ment through the IIoT, the need for investment in both energy networks and power plants is reduced. Smart meters are one example of the industry’s move towards IoT technologies, although at the moment they only record usage amounts and timings. Utility firms could potentially provide price in- formation to these meters, which could in turn interact with other IoT devices to use energy at the most ef- ficient time. ENERGY NETWORKS New oil and gas pipelines are fit- ted with sensors that detect leaks and alert repair teams, so issues are fixed before they can cause prob- lems and the number of blackouts and brownouts are kept to a mini- mum. Any improvements the IoT can achieve in energy supply man- agement will become increasingly valuable as utility companies look for the most effective ways to deal with multiple energy sources in a decentralised network. T he growth of the internet of things (IoT) is drastically changing how consumers interact with their cars, homes and appliances, but the aptly named second digital revolution has major implications for industry too. From machine-learning, machine-to-machine com- munication to artificial intelligence, the industrial internet of things (IIoT) takes IoT technologies and directly applies them to industrial concerns and in the process improves efficiency and productivity. While consumer-focused IoT solutions have dominated headlines in re- cent years and the relatively long life cycles of industrial equipment has limited growth in this sector so far, major firms and manufacturers are be- ginning to embrace IIoT on a big scale, attracted by the opportunity to drive down costs and increase competitiveness. Developments in the IIoT environment over the next few years can be ex- pected to increase adoption further, leaving few companies ignoring its fu- ture, with a survey by software company Infor finding that 52 per cent of manufactures believe IoT is a priority for their business. FINBARR TOESLAND The industrial internet of things (IIoT) may be a new term to most businesses, but it is creating signif- icantly more soci- etal and economic valuethanisderived from simply “consid- ering the cloud”. IIoT accelerates this value by integrating opera- tional practices, in every industry, with big data and machine-learning. IIoT affects a wide range of technol- ogies at both the systems and device levels to include industrial automa- tion systems, communication tech- nology, cloud-based data analytics and related infrastructure. While many think of manufac- turing as the “industrial” in IIoT, the IIoT impact is in fact pervasive across industries, with early appli- cations in transportation, health- care, power, process control, build- ings and smart cities. True connectivity is redefining businesses in nearly every vertical segment globally. Connected build- ing systems can improve power man- agement, which enhances building safety and reliability. On a larger scale, intelligent electrical grids al- low businesses to both analyse op- erational data for better efficiency of current plants and integrate renewa- ble sources to support green environ- mental initiatives globally. The need for connectivity and improved efficiency is paramount in creating greater value. A shift to- wards tighter systems integration en- ables enterprises to not only be more efficient, but also more profitable due to greater flexibility and responsive- ness to changing conditions. Connec- tivity contributes to environmental sustainability objectives too. With greater connectivity comes an accelerating need for greater cy- ber security practices and technol- ogies in industrial control systems. The complexity of IIoT dictates that IIoT-focused cyber security meas- ures be designed into business prac- tices, automation systems and com- ponents to ensure the security of individual assets and related larger, holistic systems. Companies that first optimise and then digitise their operations through IIoT solutions are seeing immediate value from real-time data, dramatically improving oper- ations, creating value both within the business and for their end-use customers. When managed well, this data can apply such value as predic- tive analytics to stave off unplanned downtime, often identifying the sources of potential equipment issues and catastrophic risks before they hap- pen. Companies are also benefiting from safety and se- curity measures. For businesses to achieve maximum value from IIoT systems, best practices are essential. The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) has three main objectives – build community, provide industry guidance and prove with testbeds. OurIICcommunityofmorethan270 companies represents today’s larg- est IIoT ecosystem of experts in IIoT. StakeholderswithintheIICcomefrom every segment globally, including pri- vate industry, governments and aca- demia. Our testbed programme is the industry’s most comprehensive, with more than 25 testbeds and growing. We are releasing practical guidance on how to build IIoT systems. The IIC published a set of reference docu- ments. The Industrial Internet Refer- ence Architecture provides a strategic treatment of how to build an IIoT system. The Industrial Internet Secu- rityFramework extends the reference architecture to consider IIoT securi- ty concerns. The Industrial Internet Connectivity Framework provides a deep understanding of IIoT connec- tivity issues and best practices. The Business Strategy and Innova- tion Framework provides high-level identification and analysis of issues enterprises will need to capitalise on with opportunities emerging from the IIoT. These deliverables are key enablers of IIoT, creating a roadmap for businesses to enter the IIoT ecosystem. The potential of IIoT is to cre- ate new applications that were not possible before the combination of intelligence and networking, including innovations such as au- tonomous cars for safe, efficient transportation, optimised agricul- ture, medical devices and systems that can connect and work together to care for patients, and integrated central and distributed power gen- eration that will transform the core infrastructure of the planet, opti- mising and creating industries. These IIoT applications will be the primary economic growth drivers of the next several years. Although most IIoT systems take time to de- sign, build and deploy, they are rap- idly becoming the infrastructure for a new generation of systems ben- efiting both business and society mutually. As we say within the IIC, “Things are coming together.” JOHN TUCCILLO Steering committee chair Industrial Internet Consortium OPINION COLUMN ‘True connectivity is redefining businesses in nearly every vertical segment globally’ COMMERCIAL FEATURE THE FUTURE CFO RACONTEUR.NET2 06 / 12 / 2016 A s they move on the football field, NFL players have car- ried more than just a ball over the last few seasons. The Zebra Sports Solution tracks players’ movement on the field, which enables coaches to gather performance data including speed, distance travelled, acceleration and location. Coaches then use this data to con- duct deeper analysis into formations and player tendencies. In addition, broadcasters can use it to show player statistics as part of NFL Next Gen Stats. The Zebra Sports Solution leverag- es the same identity, tracking and location technologies that strategic enterprise internet of things adviser Zebra Technologies implements glob- ally for multinational corporations in healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and transportation and logistics to give real-time visibility to an organisation’s assets, people and processes. “Sensing technology has delivered huge benefits to enterprises globally, especially when the data created by those sensors is analysed effectively,” says Zebra chief technology officer Tom Bianculli. “But all too often this data is used to generate reports or statistics long after it can be used to impact operations in the moment. We are now entering a new phase in which we’re helping a wide range of organisations to act on their data in near real time. Today it’s about sens- ing and analysing, and then taking that next best action right at the point of activity whenever and wher- ever possible.” For example, Zebra is helping re- tailers to gain greater visibility of their stock and their customers, and to act based on that new dig- ital picture. “Big data is essential for longer-term forecasting and our technology takes full advantage of what it offers,” says Mr Bianculli. “And we help organisations to use small data as well. Just as coaches can use the data they receive from the field of play, retail sensor tags can sense that a display of jeans in a shop is down to its last three pairs. The system can then trigger a work- flow to have another dozen brought up from the stock room in minutes.” To help retailers co-ordinate the information available to them and make the best use of it, Zebra Tech- Transform enterprise operations in three simple steps... More organisations are capturing more data while a growing number are improving their analysis of it. True value will come to those who sense, analyse and act on this data in real time, before the resulting benefits perish nologies recently launched Smart- Sense™ for Retail. This solution turns an entire physical store into a smart online store by automatically sens- ing and recording the location and movement of virtually everything in the space, including merchandise, staff, shoppers and products. “For example, sensor tags can in- dicate how much of which stock is available while video analytics can identify merchandise and people in motion, and all of that sensor data can be fused together to identify the next best action for store associates. Whether that be aiding a customer looking to make a purchase decision or being dispatched to replenish a shelf with stock from the back room,” says Mr Bianculli. Enabling employees to act quick- ly and easily with this data enables companies to gain a competitive edge and deploy their valuable re- sources most effectively. “In health- care, a smart wristband informs the hospital system of the location of patients which, when combined with other data sources, can be used to enhance the care-flow journey, reducing waiting times and errors, and improving patient care and throughput,” he says. “Technology is creating an ocean of data that, with the advent of machine-learning, can be distilled down to actionable insight not just for managers but for every em- ployee. However, it’s not just about quantity of data anymore. Today the important aspect is how quickly and easily you can turn that data into real-time, actionable informa- tion that allows you to make smart- er business decisions which result in operational and customer-experi- ence benefit.” For more information please visit www.zebra.com We are now entering a new phase in which we’re helping a wide range of organisations to act on their data in near real time COMMERCIAL FEATUREFIVE TOP APPLICATIONS
  • 8.
    Forrester 2016 Accenture 2015 Accenture/FrontierEconomics 2015 $7.1trn $1.8trn $0.5trn $0.7trn INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET08 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0909 / 03 / 2017 CONNECTED CAPABILITIES IoT OPPORTUNITIES BY INDUSTRY AND APPLICATION INDUSTRIAL IoT ENABLING FACTORS BY SELECTED COUNTRY EACH COUNTRY IS RANKED BY ITS NATIONAL ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY, SCORED OUT OF 100, BASED ON A NUMBER OF SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ENABLING FACTORS The internet of things (IoT) has the potential to transform almost every function of every industry, from retail and healthcare to transportation and oil and gas. Here are the sectors and countries leading the charge VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL IoT IN 2030 WHAT INDUSTRIAL IoT COULD BE WORTH TO THE FOLLOWING ECONOMIES CHINA GERMANY UK UNITED STATES 64 54.4 61.8 50.9 UNITED STATES JAPAN NORWAY CANADA 63.9 54.3 59 47.1 SWITZERLAND GERMANY NETHERLANDS CHINA 63.2 54.1 58.8 45.7 FINLAND AUSTRALIA DENMARK FRANCE 62.4 52.2 55 33 SWEDEN SOUTH KOREA UK SPAIN Facility management APPLICATION Security and surveillance Supply chain management Inventory and warehouse Customer order/ delivery tracking Industrial asset management Smart products Energy management Fleet management SECTOR RANKING OF OPPORTUNITIES Cool Warm Hot Hotter Hottest Primary manufacturing High-tech and industrial production Transportation and logistics Retail and wholesale Utilities and telecommunications Media, entertainment and leisure Healthcare Consumer packaged goods and pharmaceuticals Chemicals, oil and gas Financial services and insurance Government, education and social services
  • 9.
    Forrester 2016 Accenture 2015 Accenture/FrontierEconomics 2015 $7.1trn $1.8trn $0.5trn $0.7trn INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS RACONTEUR.NET08 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 0909 / 03 / 2017 CONNECTED CAPABILITIES IoT OPPORTUNITIES BY INDUSTRY AND APPLICATION INDUSTRIAL IoT ENABLING FACTORS BY SELECTED COUNTRY EACH COUNTRY IS RANKED BY ITS NATIONAL ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY, SCORED OUT OF 100, BASED ON A NUMBER OF SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ENABLING FACTORS The internet of things (IoT) has the potential to transform almost every function of every industry, from retail and healthcare to transportation and oil and gas. Here are the sectors and countries leading the charge VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL IoT IN 2030 WHAT INDUSTRIAL IoT COULD BE WORTH TO THE FOLLOWING ECONOMIES CHINA GERMANY UK UNITED STATES 64 54.4 61.8 50.9 UNITED STATES JAPAN NORWAY CANADA 63.9 54.3 59 47.1 SWITZERLAND GERMANY NETHERLANDS CHINA 63.2 54.1 58.8 45.7 FINLAND AUSTRALIA DENMARK FRANCE 62.4 52.2 55 33 SWEDEN SOUTH KOREA UK SPAIN Facility management APPLICATION Security and surveillance Supply chain management Inventory and warehouse Customer order/ delivery tracking Industrial asset management Smart products Energy management Fleet management SECTOR RANKING OF OPPORTUNITIES Cool Warm Hot Hotter Hottest Primary manufacturing High-tech and industrial production Transportation and logistics Retail and wholesale Utilities and telecommunications Media, entertainment and leisure Healthcare Consumer packaged goods and pharmaceuticals Chemicals, oil and gas Financial services and insurance Government, education and social services
  • 10.
    INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OFTHINGS RACONTEUR.NET10 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 1109 / 03 / 2017 A ll we need is for one of us – just one, sooner or later – to have the thing we’re all hoping for... one… good... day.” Fans of the hit TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer may recognise that – it’s the vampire Spike explain- ing to Buffy why her life expectancy is irredeemably short. It also serves as a metaphor for cyber attackers and IT systems – there are an un- told number of them and one of you, London professor who leads the multi-university Research Insti- tute for Trustworthy Industrial Control Systems. He cites statistics from the US- based Industrial Control Systems Computer Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT), which show a steadily increasing number of inci- dents over the last five years. Their 2015 report tallied 295 reported inci- dents and, while that’s a small num- ber compared to today’s near-daily headlines about data breaches, the examples he cites are scary enough. WENDY M. GROSSMAN Inadequate security remains a concern with the industrial internet of things as the number of cyber attacks continues to rise Too many loopholes for cyber criminals The earliest example dates from 2000 in Australia, when an attack on Maroochy Shire Council’s com- puterised waste management sys- tem caused millions of litres of raw sewage to spill into rivers, parks and hotel grounds. In 2015 and 2016 Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek showed they could use a Jeep Cher- okee’s internet connection to im- mobilise it remotely on a highway, cause unintended acceleration, slam on the brakes and turn the steering wheel. Professor Carsten Maple, of the University of Warwick’s Cyber Se- curity Centre and the PETRAS In- ternet of Things Research Hub, adds a few more such tales. In 2014 the German Federal Office of Informa- tion revealed that an attack caused millions of pounds worth of damage by overheating the furnace in a Ger- man steel mill. Last year a ransomware attack spread across the computers belong- ing to San Francisco’s municipal transportation system; rather than pay the $73,000 the attackers de- manded, staff opened the gates and allowed passengers to ride for free for two days while they restored the system from backups. Also last year a former employee used a virtual private network to breach Georgia-Pacific and reach one of its paper towel factories, cost- ing an estimated $1.1 million in lost or spoiled production. In both 2015 and 2016 attacks on substations turned off power to tens of thousands of Ukrainian households. And let’s not forget Stuxnet, which attacked comput- er controls over the centrifuges used to refine uranium within Iranian nuclear facilities, dam- aging them and the country’s nu- clear programme. As harbingers of things to come, none of these is trivial. “If you look at the ICS-CERT an- nual report,” says Professor Hankin, “the major sector experiencing cy- ber incidents until 2014 was energy. Then in 2015 the largest was critical manufacturing, though energy was still quite big.” Scott Lester, principal researcher at Context Information Security, comments: “From our experience, all traditional manufacturers are struggling to keep up.” The desire for speed to market is a key issue, but he adds: “It’s surprising how lax some very big manufacturers are about their products. People aren’t even thinking about existing threats.” And, as Spike said, it just takes one successful exploit. A key element, says Professor Ma- ple, is understanding that in terms of security it’s not helpful to think separately about operational tech- nology, such as industrial control systems and enterprise IT. In many cases, such as the Jeep Cherokee, they may be linked because of poor design which failed to implement sandboxing to segment the driv- ing system from the entertain- ment system. In others, changes over time may open up undocu- mented connections. Professor Hankin agrees: “Al- most all of the case studies we know about seem to have start- ed off with some compromise of the enterprise IT system as a way of getting to the industrial con- trol system.” The anatomy of the attack is a bit different when a hybrid cyber-physical system is involved and the goal is substan- tially different, but separating them is meaningless when the vector for infection for something as sophisticated as Stuxnet begins with a phishing e-mail. The issue of safety adds complex- ity because one of the first things security people will tell you is to ensure that everything is patched and up to date. But, as Professor Hankin notes, changes to software should trigger a safety recheck, a much more expensive process and one companies do not typically ex- pect to undertake with anything like the frequency of today’s soft- ware patching. Worse, he adds, sometimes the two are in conflict. As a simple exam- ple, consider a tube station where something has gone wrong. Securi- ty might dictate closing the barriers and keeping people in, while safety might dictate opening the barriers to let them out. None of this is to downplay the usefulness of the industrial inter- net of things in terms of improving efficiency, reducing waste and add- ing flexibility. What’s crucial is to be aware of the security issues that come with adding communications capabilities to legacy systems. This will be even truer as consum- er-grade internet of things devices penetrate previously manual facto- ry areas. Even if the systems them- selves are air-gapped, workers in those areas may be wearing person- al health monitors, smart watches or augmented reality headgear and, of course, everyone might be carrying a smartphone. “When you put operational tech- nology into the cloud or connect in any way to the internet you have a problem,” says Professor Maple. “You have to do a proper threat as- sessment. Does it give you benefit, are you aware of all the risks?” Saverio Romeo, principal analyst at Beecham Research, recommends assuming the worst will happen, and developing strong remediation systems so you can recover quickly and safely. He also stresses the im- portance of designing in security from the beginning. In response to the exploits Miller and Valasek, Fiat-Chrysler eventually recalled 1.4 million cars, which was surely more expensive than starting with a sandboxed design that sepa- rated the automotive control systems from the entertainment systems. “Retrofitting is economically very expensive and difficult to do,” says Mr Romeo. “Design of a connect- ed system requires proper security strategy, which includes the ability to remediate.” He recommends con- sulting the guidelines published by the European Cyber Security Group, Internet of Things Consortium and Industrial Internet Consortium. To that list Professor Hankin adds the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the UK’s National Centre for Cyber Security. When you put operational technology into the cloud or connect in any way to the internet you have a problem SECURITY and all they have to do is have one good day. Protecting the industrial internet of things requires a mental shift from protecting enterprise IT. With enterprise IT, the biggest threat is typically to data that may be ex- filtrated, deleted, rendered inac- cessible – as in ransomware – or published. With industrial control systems, the threat shifts to physi- cal damage. “I don’t think these threats are over-hyped,” says Chris Hankin, the Imperial College Jeep’s owner Fiat-Chrysler recalled 1.4 million Cherokee vehicles after hackers showed they were able to use its internet connection to immobilise the car remotely on a highway VolhaHannaKanashyts/Shutterstock It’s surprising how lax some very big manufacturers are about their products MOST SIGNIFICANT IoT SECURITY CONCERNS FOR UK ENTERPRISES ISACA 2015 Vulnerabilities in the device themselves Data leakage Access controlAsset management Other 41% 6% 3% 36% 14% THE FUTURE CFO RACONTEUR.NET2 06 / 12 / 2016 I n the rush to develop the internet of things (IoT), device makers have focused on how their own prod- ucts get online and there has been little standardisation. The danger is that the default solu- tion is to have complex hardware and software systems that require a central unit to act as both controller and translator, often relying on the cloud to link devices that are just a few metres apart. Lemonbeat believes there is an al- ternative and has devised a universal software framework – a set of build- ing blocks or services – for microcon- trollers that allows users to develop smart devices swiftly and easily. A common language enables those smart devices to interact with each other directly and independently, al- lowing the IoT to operate as simply and effectively as possible. The benefits of direct device inter- action are increased speed, reduced need for infrastructure, less disrup- tion from internet downtime and high levels of security. This ability to bring intelligence out of the cloud and on to even the sim- plest devices – sometimes referred to as an edge-based solution – eases the burden on the network and ac- celerates the performance of the whole system. The ability to adopt a common language has huge implications and potential benefits for a wide range of applications, including smart homes, smart buildings, smart energy and industry 4.0. Started in 2015, Lemonbeat is a subsidiary of European energy group innogy. It calls its language Lemon- beat Smart Device Language (LsDL) and even though it boasts that it is groundbreaking, it believes it will prove popular because it is based on the XML language familiar to pro- grammers and developers. The technology is already used in the SmartHome product range of Innogy, and in the garden water- ing systems and robot lawnmowers made by Gardena. This year Lemonbeat announced a collaboration with electrical com- ponents maker Phoenix Contact to work on building automation tech- nology, with a focus on reducing the amount and complexity of hard- ware to increase efficiency and bring down costs. Devising a common language so that things can ‘talk’ The dream of an internet of things could turn into a nightmare without a common language to avoid it being drowned out by a babel of voices connecting billions of devices Other areas where it sees a take- up in the near future include smart meters for utilities and electric vehi- cle charging points. Lemonbeat managing director Oliver van der Mond likens their con- cept of universal building blocks to the genotype or working instructions that living organisms carry. “It’s like the DNA for the IoT. Communication is con- trolled in a decentralised manner, sim- ilar to a biological organism,” he says. To make sure devices can communi- cate, it can be used on LoRa, wi-fi and ethernet networks, but the company has also developed its own Lemon- beat Radio product for transmitting on the sub-GHz radio spectrum on which many IoT devices will run. In general it uses standard internet technologies such as IPv6. It consumes very little energy, so is particularly useful for so-called con- strained devices such as sensors that rely on battery power. Lemonbeat is determined not to work on the development of its frame- work in isolation and is keen to fuel a debate on how a common language can be used to the benefit of all users of the IoT, from manufacturers of de- vices and equipment, to commercial building managers and production line operators. It is working with Web of Things In- terest Group, part of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C,) to develop a common web standard and is a member of Europe’s EEBus initiative to focus on standardisation in the IoT across sectors including energy, homes and buildings, and connected devices such as domestic appliances. Mr van der Mond concludes: “A common standard for developing smart things for the IoT will serve users better, just as HTML does for building websites. We think it is im- portant to collaborate so that we can share our know-how and ex- pertise with others. Therefore, we engage with partners across a wide range of backgrounds.” For more information please visit www.lemonbeat.com COMMERCIAL FEATURE IoT NETWORK ARCHITECTURE Current classical network architecture Incompatable, isolated, inflexable, expensive, insecure Future IoT networks Interoperable, intergated, adaptive, low-cost, secure COMMERCIAL FEATURE
  • 11.
    INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OFTHINGS RACONTEUR.NET10 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 1109 / 03 / 2017 A ll we need is for one of us – just one, sooner or later – to have the thing we’re all hoping for... one… good... day.” Fans of the hit TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer may recognise that – it’s the vampire Spike explain- ing to Buffy why her life expectancy is irredeemably short. It also serves as a metaphor for cyber attackers and IT systems – there are an un- told number of them and one of you, London professor who leads the multi-university Research Insti- tute for Trustworthy Industrial Control Systems. He cites statistics from the US- based Industrial Control Systems Computer Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT), which show a steadily increasing number of inci- dents over the last five years. Their 2015 report tallied 295 reported inci- dents and, while that’s a small num- ber compared to today’s near-daily headlines about data breaches, the examples he cites are scary enough. WENDY M. GROSSMAN Inadequate security remains a concern with the industrial internet of things as the number of cyber attacks continues to rise Too many loopholes for cyber criminals The earliest example dates from 2000 in Australia, when an attack on Maroochy Shire Council’s com- puterised waste management sys- tem caused millions of litres of raw sewage to spill into rivers, parks and hotel grounds. In 2015 and 2016 Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek showed they could use a Jeep Cher- okee’s internet connection to im- mobilise it remotely on a highway, cause unintended acceleration, slam on the brakes and turn the steering wheel. Professor Carsten Maple, of the University of Warwick’s Cyber Se- curity Centre and the PETRAS In- ternet of Things Research Hub, adds a few more such tales. In 2014 the German Federal Office of Informa- tion revealed that an attack caused millions of pounds worth of damage by overheating the furnace in a Ger- man steel mill. Last year a ransomware attack spread across the computers belong- ing to San Francisco’s municipal transportation system; rather than pay the $73,000 the attackers de- manded, staff opened the gates and allowed passengers to ride for free for two days while they restored the system from backups. Also last year a former employee used a virtual private network to breach Georgia-Pacific and reach one of its paper towel factories, cost- ing an estimated $1.1 million in lost or spoiled production. In both 2015 and 2016 attacks on substations turned off power to tens of thousands of Ukrainian households. And let’s not forget Stuxnet, which attacked comput- er controls over the centrifuges used to refine uranium within Iranian nuclear facilities, dam- aging them and the country’s nu- clear programme. As harbingers of things to come, none of these is trivial. “If you look at the ICS-CERT an- nual report,” says Professor Hankin, “the major sector experiencing cy- ber incidents until 2014 was energy. Then in 2015 the largest was critical manufacturing, though energy was still quite big.” Scott Lester, principal researcher at Context Information Security, comments: “From our experience, all traditional manufacturers are struggling to keep up.” The desire for speed to market is a key issue, but he adds: “It’s surprising how lax some very big manufacturers are about their products. People aren’t even thinking about existing threats.” And, as Spike said, it just takes one successful exploit. A key element, says Professor Ma- ple, is understanding that in terms of security it’s not helpful to think separately about operational tech- nology, such as industrial control systems and enterprise IT. In many cases, such as the Jeep Cherokee, they may be linked because of poor design which failed to implement sandboxing to segment the driv- ing system from the entertain- ment system. In others, changes over time may open up undocu- mented connections. Professor Hankin agrees: “Al- most all of the case studies we know about seem to have start- ed off with some compromise of the enterprise IT system as a way of getting to the industrial con- trol system.” The anatomy of the attack is a bit different when a hybrid cyber-physical system is involved and the goal is substan- tially different, but separating them is meaningless when the vector for infection for something as sophisticated as Stuxnet begins with a phishing e-mail. The issue of safety adds complex- ity because one of the first things security people will tell you is to ensure that everything is patched and up to date. But, as Professor Hankin notes, changes to software should trigger a safety recheck, a much more expensive process and one companies do not typically ex- pect to undertake with anything like the frequency of today’s soft- ware patching. Worse, he adds, sometimes the two are in conflict. As a simple exam- ple, consider a tube station where something has gone wrong. Securi- ty might dictate closing the barriers and keeping people in, while safety might dictate opening the barriers to let them out. None of this is to downplay the usefulness of the industrial inter- net of things in terms of improving efficiency, reducing waste and add- ing flexibility. What’s crucial is to be aware of the security issues that come with adding communications capabilities to legacy systems. This will be even truer as consum- er-grade internet of things devices penetrate previously manual facto- ry areas. Even if the systems them- selves are air-gapped, workers in those areas may be wearing person- al health monitors, smart watches or augmented reality headgear and, of course, everyone might be carrying a smartphone. “When you put operational tech- nology into the cloud or connect in any way to the internet you have a problem,” says Professor Maple. “You have to do a proper threat as- sessment. Does it give you benefit, are you aware of all the risks?” Saverio Romeo, principal analyst at Beecham Research, recommends assuming the worst will happen, and developing strong remediation systems so you can recover quickly and safely. He also stresses the im- portance of designing in security from the beginning. In response to the exploits Miller and Valasek, Fiat-Chrysler eventually recalled 1.4 million cars, which was surely more expensive than starting with a sandboxed design that sepa- rated the automotive control systems from the entertainment systems. “Retrofitting is economically very expensive and difficult to do,” says Mr Romeo. “Design of a connect- ed system requires proper security strategy, which includes the ability to remediate.” He recommends con- sulting the guidelines published by the European Cyber Security Group, Internet of Things Consortium and Industrial Internet Consortium. To that list Professor Hankin adds the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the UK’s National Centre for Cyber Security. When you put operational technology into the cloud or connect in any way to the internet you have a problem SECURITY and all they have to do is have one good day. Protecting the industrial internet of things requires a mental shift from protecting enterprise IT. With enterprise IT, the biggest threat is typically to data that may be ex- filtrated, deleted, rendered inac- cessible – as in ransomware – or published. With industrial control systems, the threat shifts to physi- cal damage. “I don’t think these threats are over-hyped,” says Chris Hankin, the Imperial College Jeep’s owner Fiat-Chrysler recalled 1.4 million Cherokee vehicles after hackers showed they were able to use its internet connection to immobilise the car remotely on a highway VolhaHannaKanashyts/Shutterstock It’s surprising how lax some very big manufacturers are about their products MOST SIGNIFICANT IoT SECURITY CONCERNS FOR UK ENTERPRISES ISACA 2015 Vulnerabilities in the device themselves Data leakage Access controlAsset management Other 41% 6% 3% 36% 14% THE FUTURE CFO RACONTEUR.NET2 06 / 12 / 2016 I n the rush to develop the internet of things (IoT), device makers have focused on how their own prod- ucts get online and there has been little standardisation. The danger is that the default solu- tion is to have complex hardware and software systems that require a central unit to act as both controller and translator, often relying on the cloud to link devices that are just a few metres apart. Lemonbeat believes there is an al- ternative and has devised a universal software framework – a set of build- ing blocks or services – for microcon- trollers that allows users to develop smart devices swiftly and easily. A common language enables those smart devices to interact with each other directly and independently, al- lowing the IoT to operate as simply and effectively as possible. The benefits of direct device inter- action are increased speed, reduced need for infrastructure, less disrup- tion from internet downtime and high levels of security. This ability to bring intelligence out of the cloud and on to even the sim- plest devices – sometimes referred to as an edge-based solution – eases the burden on the network and ac- celerates the performance of the whole system. The ability to adopt a common language has huge implications and potential benefits for a wide range of applications, including smart homes, smart buildings, smart energy and industry 4.0. Started in 2015, Lemonbeat is a subsidiary of European energy group innogy. It calls its language Lemon- beat Smart Device Language (LsDL) and even though it boasts that it is groundbreaking, it believes it will prove popular because it is based on the XML language familiar to pro- grammers and developers. The technology is already used in the SmartHome product range of Innogy, and in the garden water- ing systems and robot lawnmowers made by Gardena. This year Lemonbeat announced a collaboration with electrical com- ponents maker Phoenix Contact to work on building automation tech- nology, with a focus on reducing the amount and complexity of hard- ware to increase efficiency and bring down costs. Devising a common language so that things can ‘talk’ The dream of an internet of things could turn into a nightmare without a common language to avoid it being drowned out by a babel of voices connecting billions of devices Other areas where it sees a take- up in the near future include smart meters for utilities and electric vehi- cle charging points. Lemonbeat managing director Oliver van der Mond likens their con- cept of universal building blocks to the genotype or working instructions that living organisms carry. “It’s like the DNA for the IoT. Communication is con- trolled in a decentralised manner, sim- ilar to a biological organism,” he says. To make sure devices can communi- cate, it can be used on LoRa, wi-fi and ethernet networks, but the company has also developed its own Lemon- beat Radio product for transmitting on the sub-GHz radio spectrum on which many IoT devices will run. In general it uses standard internet technologies such as IPv6. It consumes very little energy, so is particularly useful for so-called con- strained devices such as sensors that rely on battery power. Lemonbeat is determined not to work on the development of its frame- work in isolation and is keen to fuel a debate on how a common language can be used to the benefit of all users of the IoT, from manufacturers of de- vices and equipment, to commercial building managers and production line operators. It is working with Web of Things In- terest Group, part of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C,) to develop a common web standard and is a member of Europe’s EEBus initiative to focus on standardisation in the IoT across sectors including energy, homes and buildings, and connected devices such as domestic appliances. Mr van der Mond concludes: “A common standard for developing smart things for the IoT will serve users better, just as HTML does for building websites. We think it is im- portant to collaborate so that we can share our know-how and ex- pertise with others. Therefore, we engage with partners across a wide range of backgrounds.” For more information please visit www.lemonbeat.com COMMERCIAL FEATURE IoT NETWORK ARCHITECTURE Current classical network architecture Incompatable, isolated, inflexable, expensive, insecure Future IoT networks Interoperable, intergated, adaptive, low-cost, secure COMMERCIAL FEATURE
  • 12.
    INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OFTHINGS RACONTEUR.NET12 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 1309 / 03 / 2017 People are the most important part of the digital organization. conduce.com/peoplematter Conduce is the human interface for the enterprise. conduce.com www.arkessa.com/euicc The embedded SIM (eSIM) is fast becoming the most common choice for cellular IoT applications. CombiningCombining the eSIM with eUICC technology creates a solution for large scale international IoT deployments based on a single factory installed SKU. Going global with eSIM Connected tech is just the thing for the NHS H ealthcare systems all over the world are struggling with two fundamental concerns – how to afford the rising cost of delivering care and how to integrate ever-changing new technologies? These twin challenges are intrinsi- cally connected, for emerging tech- nologies offer the promise of making care more affordable as well as more effective. The rewards for successful implementation will be significant, for patients as well as for those re- sponsible for the sustainability of healthcare systems. In healthcare, the internet of things (IoT) is changing the way we think about looking after people. At the heart of this technological rev- olution is a focus on connectivity. Drug discovery and greater under- standing of disease are critical. But these must go hand in hand with the way we exploit information and data, using internet-connected de- vices to process and inform the way we manage care. It is a huge number, but consid- er the extraordinary range of IoT applications in healthcare, en- compassing systems and software, medical devices and services. The IoT in healthcare market includes implanted, wearable and stationary medical devices used in clinical re- search and by diagnostic laborato- ries, hospitals and medical centres. In the healthcare industry, IoT has a wide range of applications, includ- ing clinical operations and workflow management, in-patient monitor- ing, telemedicine, connected imag- ing and medication management. Bluetooth low energy, ZigBee, satel- lite, wi-fi, near-field communication and cellular are some of the key con- nectivity technologies involved in IoT in healthcare. One of the biggest challenges is how to connect this vast amount of health information, which is scat- tered and siloed, and make it acces- sible, using a common language that can understood and trusted by all. At a very personal level, you may find the information you collect and hold via an app on your mobile phone about your lifestyle or the management of a health condition may be admired by your GP, but he probably has to conduct his own tests because the data is unlikely to be compatible with information systems, or considered to be a trust- ed source. At a global level, healthcare pro- viders, payers and manufacturers are often seeing a different ver- sion of the healthcare universe, which takes them in different, and sometimes conflicting, directions. Overcoming this incompatibility is critical. For example, a connected healthcare ecosystem that spans from research and development through to commercialisation and treatment adherence could be just the solution for life sciences companies and payers seeking to demonstrate value from new treat- ment outcomes. An ecosystem in which patients can harness data from diverse con- nected devices will create a deluge of new data. Healthcare practition- ers will be able to monitor a patient’s health, activity and reaction to treatments in real time. If a patient suffers a cardiac event or hypogly- caemic episode, for example, data can be used by the specialist to take immediate action. This can include elements that are often out of the view of treating physicians, such as dietary informa- tion, which may impact outcomes. These indicators have a cumulative impact on the outcome derived from standard medical interventions. So, for the first time, healthcare systems will have a complete picture and be able to optimise treatments and en- vironments for better outcomes. The significant amount of data generated by a connected ecosys- tem can also influence the future trajectory of research and devel- opment. Real-world evidence pro- vides significant insight into how a drug or drug class performs, or is used in real-world medical settings. The ability to transform real-world data sources quickly into evidence can improve health outcomes for patients by helping pharmaceu- tical groups be more efficient in drug development and smarter in commercialisation. There are an extraordinary number of applications in healthcare for the internet of things which will eventually be at the heart of patient care delivery MARTIN BARROW of research and development initi- atives in IoT. But, increasingly, the Asia-Pa- cific region looks to be an excit- ing market, supported by strong economic growth and rising dis- posable income, together with the emergence of IT-enabled health- care services and the penetration of smartphones and wearable med- ical devices. The internet of things is changing the way we think about looking after people The scale of investment under- way in healthcare IoT is colossal. MarketResearch.com, the mar- kets intelligence specialists, es- timate that globally investment could reach $117 billion by 2020. North America will continue as the most significant market, with rapid growth on the back of the region’s advanced healthcare in- frastructure and increased levels CONNECTED HEALTHCARE Is the NHS able to capitalise on IoT? It is one of its biggest challeng- es as UK health authorities take steps to reconfigure the health ser- vice to make it affordable and sus- tainable. Last year’s Wachter Review of Information Technology in the NHS said creating a fully digitised health service was likely to be the most difficult reform. The NHS has a toxic legacy of IT failures, particu- larly in the hospitals sector where, tantalisingly, the potential for IoT transformation is greatest. Robert Wachter, who led the re- view, advised that it was better to get digitisation right than to do it quickly. Return on investment should also be measured in terms of improvements in safety and quality, with cost-savings likely to take ten years or more to emerge. One of the review’s recommenda- tions was hospital trusts that were ready to digitise should be prompt- ed to do so, with others encouraged and supported over a number of years. The result is NHS England’s Test Beds Initiative, launched in January 2016 with evaluation likely to take up to three years. Two of the seven test beds are focused on IoT and form part of IoTUK, an integrated £40-million government programme that seeks to advance the UK’s global leader- ship in IoT. These comprise a di- abetes digital coach, a project led by the West of England Academic Health Science Network in partner- ship with Diabetes UK and technol- ogy companies including Hewlett Packard and Technology Integrated Health Management, a collabora- tion between Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, and an array of health technology providers which will help people with dementia to live in their own homes for longer. The devolved nature of the NHS in England means trusts are free to pursue their own IoT developments. The aspiration is that as systems be- come embedded, they will be adopt- ed and implemented by other trusts. This approach will reduce the risk of repeating the major IT infrastruc- ture failures of the past. What is cer- tain is, sooner or later, the internet of things will be at the heart of the delivery of care across the NHS. The internet of things is being deployed to improve the lives of people with dementia. A project has been launched in Surrey and North-East Hampshire to test how technology can help them remain in their homes for longer. The Technology Integrated Health Management project will provide people with dementia and their carers with sensors, wearable technology and other devices to monitor their health at home. These devices can, for example, detect if someone has left the house, had a fall, is not eating or drinking normally or has used the bathroom more than usual. If the technology identifies a problem, an alert is issued that is followed up by a clinician or carer. The two-year project will involve around 700 patients and their carers, with a view to scaling IoT for dementia across the area’s 1.3 million population. Almost 250 people have come forward so far, with another 50 homes a month expected to be added through 2017. Dr Helen Rostill, director of innovation and development at Surrey and Borders Partnership, who leads the study, says: “It is clear that people are desperate for a new approach to help support them to manage this condition and can already see how this study can benefit them.” Ray Ledge, a carer from Farnham who looks after his wife Carol, adds: “The greatest thing about this study is it could develop into something very positive for the future and will give the medical community greater insight into the condition.” CASE STUDY HELPING WITH DEMENTIA HEALTHCARE RezaEstakhrian/GettyImages 13k+ additional healthcare jobs expected to be created in the UK from 2015 to 2020 as a result of IoT £4.8bn estimated economic benefit to UK healthcare from the use of IoT between 2015 and 2020 SAS Institute/Cebr 2016
  • 13.
    INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OFTHINGS RACONTEUR.NET12 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 1309 / 03 / 2017 People are the most important part of the digital organization. conduce.com/peoplematter Conduce is the human interface for the enterprise. conduce.com www.arkessa.com/euicc The embedded SIM (eSIM) is fast becoming the most common choice for cellular IoT applications. CombiningCombining the eSIM with eUICC technology creates a solution for large scale international IoT deployments based on a single factory installed SKU. Going global with eSIM Connected tech is just the thing for the NHS H ealthcare systems all over the world are struggling with two fundamental concerns – how to afford the rising cost of delivering care and how to integrate ever-changing new technologies? These twin challenges are intrinsi- cally connected, for emerging tech- nologies offer the promise of making care more affordable as well as more effective. The rewards for successful implementation will be significant, for patients as well as for those re- sponsible for the sustainability of healthcare systems. In healthcare, the internet of things (IoT) is changing the way we think about looking after people. At the heart of this technological rev- olution is a focus on connectivity. Drug discovery and greater under- standing of disease are critical. But these must go hand in hand with the way we exploit information and data, using internet-connected de- vices to process and inform the way we manage care. It is a huge number, but consid- er the extraordinary range of IoT applications in healthcare, en- compassing systems and software, medical devices and services. The IoT in healthcare market includes implanted, wearable and stationary medical devices used in clinical re- search and by diagnostic laborato- ries, hospitals and medical centres. In the healthcare industry, IoT has a wide range of applications, includ- ing clinical operations and workflow management, in-patient monitor- ing, telemedicine, connected imag- ing and medication management. Bluetooth low energy, ZigBee, satel- lite, wi-fi, near-field communication and cellular are some of the key con- nectivity technologies involved in IoT in healthcare. One of the biggest challenges is how to connect this vast amount of health information, which is scat- tered and siloed, and make it acces- sible, using a common language that can understood and trusted by all. At a very personal level, you may find the information you collect and hold via an app on your mobile phone about your lifestyle or the management of a health condition may be admired by your GP, but he probably has to conduct his own tests because the data is unlikely to be compatible with information systems, or considered to be a trust- ed source. At a global level, healthcare pro- viders, payers and manufacturers are often seeing a different ver- sion of the healthcare universe, which takes them in different, and sometimes conflicting, directions. Overcoming this incompatibility is critical. For example, a connected healthcare ecosystem that spans from research and development through to commercialisation and treatment adherence could be just the solution for life sciences companies and payers seeking to demonstrate value from new treat- ment outcomes. An ecosystem in which patients can harness data from diverse con- nected devices will create a deluge of new data. Healthcare practition- ers will be able to monitor a patient’s health, activity and reaction to treatments in real time. If a patient suffers a cardiac event or hypogly- caemic episode, for example, data can be used by the specialist to take immediate action. This can include elements that are often out of the view of treating physicians, such as dietary informa- tion, which may impact outcomes. These indicators have a cumulative impact on the outcome derived from standard medical interventions. So, for the first time, healthcare systems will have a complete picture and be able to optimise treatments and en- vironments for better outcomes. The significant amount of data generated by a connected ecosys- tem can also influence the future trajectory of research and devel- opment. Real-world evidence pro- vides significant insight into how a drug or drug class performs, or is used in real-world medical settings. The ability to transform real-world data sources quickly into evidence can improve health outcomes for patients by helping pharmaceu- tical groups be more efficient in drug development and smarter in commercialisation. There are an extraordinary number of applications in healthcare for the internet of things which will eventually be at the heart of patient care delivery MARTIN BARROW of research and development initi- atives in IoT. But, increasingly, the Asia-Pa- cific region looks to be an excit- ing market, supported by strong economic growth and rising dis- posable income, together with the emergence of IT-enabled health- care services and the penetration of smartphones and wearable med- ical devices. The internet of things is changing the way we think about looking after people The scale of investment under- way in healthcare IoT is colossal. MarketResearch.com, the mar- kets intelligence specialists, es- timate that globally investment could reach $117 billion by 2020. North America will continue as the most significant market, with rapid growth on the back of the region’s advanced healthcare in- frastructure and increased levels CONNECTED HEALTHCARE Is the NHS able to capitalise on IoT? It is one of its biggest challeng- es as UK health authorities take steps to reconfigure the health ser- vice to make it affordable and sus- tainable. Last year’s Wachter Review of Information Technology in the NHS said creating a fully digitised health service was likely to be the most difficult reform. The NHS has a toxic legacy of IT failures, particu- larly in the hospitals sector where, tantalisingly, the potential for IoT transformation is greatest. Robert Wachter, who led the re- view, advised that it was better to get digitisation right than to do it quickly. Return on investment should also be measured in terms of improvements in safety and quality, with cost-savings likely to take ten years or more to emerge. One of the review’s recommenda- tions was hospital trusts that were ready to digitise should be prompt- ed to do so, with others encouraged and supported over a number of years. The result is NHS England’s Test Beds Initiative, launched in January 2016 with evaluation likely to take up to three years. Two of the seven test beds are focused on IoT and form part of IoTUK, an integrated £40-million government programme that seeks to advance the UK’s global leader- ship in IoT. These comprise a di- abetes digital coach, a project led by the West of England Academic Health Science Network in partner- ship with Diabetes UK and technol- ogy companies including Hewlett Packard and Technology Integrated Health Management, a collabora- tion between Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, and an array of health technology providers which will help people with dementia to live in their own homes for longer. The devolved nature of the NHS in England means trusts are free to pursue their own IoT developments. The aspiration is that as systems be- come embedded, they will be adopt- ed and implemented by other trusts. This approach will reduce the risk of repeating the major IT infrastruc- ture failures of the past. What is cer- tain is, sooner or later, the internet of things will be at the heart of the delivery of care across the NHS. The internet of things is being deployed to improve the lives of people with dementia. A project has been launched in Surrey and North-East Hampshire to test how technology can help them remain in their homes for longer. The Technology Integrated Health Management project will provide people with dementia and their carers with sensors, wearable technology and other devices to monitor their health at home. These devices can, for example, detect if someone has left the house, had a fall, is not eating or drinking normally or has used the bathroom more than usual. If the technology identifies a problem, an alert is issued that is followed up by a clinician or carer. The two-year project will involve around 700 patients and their carers, with a view to scaling IoT for dementia across the area’s 1.3 million population. Almost 250 people have come forward so far, with another 50 homes a month expected to be added through 2017. Dr Helen Rostill, director of innovation and development at Surrey and Borders Partnership, who leads the study, says: “It is clear that people are desperate for a new approach to help support them to manage this condition and can already see how this study can benefit them.” Ray Ledge, a carer from Farnham who looks after his wife Carol, adds: “The greatest thing about this study is it could develop into something very positive for the future and will give the medical community greater insight into the condition.” CASE STUDY HELPING WITH DEMENTIA HEALTHCARE RezaEstakhrian/GettyImages 13k+ additional healthcare jobs expected to be created in the UK from 2015 to 2020 as a result of IoT £4.8bn estimated economic benefit to UK healthcare from the use of IoT between 2015 and 2020 SAS Institute/Cebr 2016
  • 14.
    INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OFTHINGS RACONTEUR.NET14 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 1509 / 03 / 2017 JIM McCLELLAND H eralding a new dawn of digi- tal disruption, the industri- al internet of things (IIoT), like the sun, is rising in the East. For manufacturing, its applica- tion is opening up hot prospects and prompting something akin to a glob- al tech gold rush. Opportunity beck- ons and the race is on. It is not, however, a race Europe currently leads, Daniel Keely, man- ufacturing director, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia, at Cisco’s manufacturing practice digital transformation group, concedes. “Manufacturing is undoubtedly a key engine for growth across Eu- rope, with more than two thirds of all EU exports coming from the sector. However, in some critical as- pects of digital innovation, Europe is lagging behind its Asian compet- itors,” he says. IIoT is transforming manufactur- ing in Asia, right now, delivering dynamic competitive advantage, IBM internet of things (IoT) dis- tinguished engineer Andy Stan- ford-Clark concurs. “We are seeing a huge take-up of advanced factory automation in the Far East, particu- larly in China and Taiwan. They are realising the efficiency benefits that can be gained by the use of general purpose robot arm technology on a production line.” Rather than designing and build- ing a complex piece of machinery specifically for the purpose of a particular task, manufacturers can take an off-the-shelf six-axis robot arm and program it to suit. With the advent of software-de- fined hardware, the same robot arm can then be deployed to a dif- ferent task, just by reprogramming it, making production fast, cheap and agile. Advances in other areas as seeming- ly mundane as maintenance can also build a business case for IIoT, adds Mr Stanford-Clark. “Predictive main- tenance, combined with traditional schedules, enables expensive down- timetobeminimisedandelimination of certain fault conditions. Savings due to predictive maintenance have on their own justified companies’ in- vestment in IIoT,” he points out. Western firms are keen to cash in on these emerging export opportu- nities, not least in the East. GE, for instance, has been creating what it calls digital foundries, starting in California then opening in Paris and Shanghai. While the rate of growth might be slowing in terms of sheer output, the scale of industrial activity in China still represents a huge attraction for global tech players. China remains the world’s largest manufacturer and also leads on con- nected things. Accenture estimates that fully embracing IoT in manu- facturing could deliver economic value up to $736 billion in total for the period 2015 to 2030. We are seeing a huge take-up of advanced factory automation in the Far East, particularly in China and Taiwan With a strategy dubbed Made in China 2025, the country’s serial five- year plans are already prioritising advanced automation with a vision of becoming the world leader in precision manufacturing by 2050. Behind this trend actually lies a dy- namic shift in the nature of work, as China faces up to the challenge of transitioning away from a business model based on cheap labour, says Mr Stanford-Clark. He says: “Part of this initiative is to enable human workers, engaged in what are referred to as the 3D – dull, dirty, dangerous – jobs, to move to more fulfilling and less monotonous roles, often working alongside ‘people-safe’ or ‘compli- ant’ robotic devices.” So with evidence for efficiency and agility mounting in the East, why is Europe not accelerating progress on IIoT to match? It is not that Europe does not un- derstand the threat of disruption and need for innovation, argues Mr Keely. “Countries across Europe are undoubtedly adopting IIoT technolo- gies and responding to the challenge Industrial complex near Mount Fuji in Shizouka City, Japan of digital disruption in proactive ways,” he says. “The Industrie 4.0 or i4.0 incentive is an example being driven by the German government together with manufacturers such as Bosch and Siemens, while the UK In- dustrial Strategy places digital at the core of manufacturing.” The problem is their global com- petitors simply threaten to outpace them. There is a steep learning curve, says Mr Keely. “While some Euro- pean manufacturers have begun to connect industrial machines on the plant floor, sharing data among makers, end-users, third parties and so forth is complex. One reason is proprietary protocols, which hinder interoperability,” he says. “Additionally, in Europe, many manufacturers are small and medi- um-sized enterprises that lack some of the broader digital capabilities that will be critical moving forward.” There is, though, cause for opti- mism around IIoT uptake in Europe, contends Andrew Minturn, business development and strategic prod- uct manager at Bosch Rexroth. “It’s picking up speed with major manu- facturers now looking to adopt the cyber-physical systems approach to productivity,” he says. “Hardware and software are connected to en- sure we can react quicker to prod- uct-mix one-offs, with improvement in quality and costs, also delivery. “We are starting to see the connect- ed value stream which ensures prod- ucts are delivered at the right time, at the right place, and in the right type and quantities. Uptake will increase tenfold in the next few years.” Rather less convinced about uptake is Frank Piller, professor of technolo- gy management at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. “We see plen- ty of pilots and little large-scale de- ployment,” he says. “The number of truly digital, data-driven factories is very low. In Germany, leaders like Siemens with the Amberg factory, or Festo with the Scharnhausen plant, show what can be possible.” Professor Piller, who heads up the Leading the Smart Factory of the Fu- ture programme, identifies standardi- sationasanareathathasbeenholding back progress with what he describes as a “zoo of competing industry, pub- lic and company standards”. However, this is one roadblock that is about to be removed. Final- ly, Europe and America are co-op- erating on a major cross-industry initiative with the launch by Ger- man industry of Standardization Council i4.0. “This will become a game-changer and enabler,” Pro- fessor Piller concludes. AUTOMATION The West is playing catch-up as manufacturers in the Far East race ahead with the industrial internet of things, delivering a competitive edge through advanced factory automation TomohiroOhsumi/BloombergviaGettyImages The sun is rising in the East 82% of manufacturers that have implemented smart manufacturing technologies have seen an increase in efficiency Motorola Solutions 2017 COMMERCIAL FEATURE RACONTEUR.NET COMMERCIAL FEATURE Q&A Connectivity at the heart of the internet of things It’s well known that the internet of things is enabled by innovation from large chip makers in the United States and Asia. Less known, however, is the small British firm working with them. Mike Sims, chief executive at LM Technologies, reveals how his company is shaking up the market Why is connectivity so vital to the industrial sector in coming years? The number of devices connected to the internet of things (IoT) continues to grow rapidly. According to Ericsson, it is growing at a rate of 23 per cent annually and of the 28 billion devices it predicts will be connected by 2021, 16 billion will be IoT devices. For the industrial sector to take advantage of that, strong connectivity is critical. The IoT encompasses many tech- nologies, but wi-fi and Bluetooth will account for a massive portion of the estimated market. As a Qualcomm manufacturing partner, LM Technol- ogies is in the right position to take advantage of the IoT growth due to the range of integrated circuits (ICs) supported by the chip maker. We also have access to other chip makers, such as Cypress Semiconductor and Realtek, offering our company a wide selection of chipsets focused on Bluetooth and wi-fi technologies. What is the most suitable IoT development option for industrial companies? LM offers a very high level of devel- opment support to its customers to ensure they are aware of the options available. With our close ties to the IC vendors, we tend to work with ear- ly-silicon and are designing products with ICs that are not yet in the market. This year we release the world’s first dual mode module embedded stack using Qualcomm’s CSRb534x range of ICs, keeping our research and devel- opment focus at the very forefront of the latest technology. What new innovations are in the pipeline in this space? With our first Qualcomm Ath- eros-based module, we are aiming to offer a sub-$10 wi-fi module with its own editable stack, which we see as the perfect platform for custom- ers’ application development. Being the only Qualcomm Atheros module partner in Europe, we believe our new Atheros-based range of mod- ules will enable multiple IoT com- panies to advance their products’ capabilities. All the Atheros chipsets are -40C rated and offer low-power consumption. This year, LM will also release the first Bluetooth 4.1 serial adapter, which will be able to com- municate with Apple devices without the need for an Apple authentication chipset, negating any Apple prod- uct commission. The current EPOS market is using more Apple devices than ever before and being able to interface with non-Apple authenti- cation devices is key to expanding the device choice in this market. What competitors do you have in Europe? There may be several other wireless module companies, but LM’s links with ICvendorsandthecustomer-support- ed design process we offer is unique in Europe. Some similar companies may have access to one or even two of the top IC vendors, but no other company has the same ICs within their modules. We are also the only company to offer customers a dedicated solutions team that supports them throughout the life cycle of their product. Why is energy efficiency so impor- tant to wi-fi connectivity in the industrial IoT? While the IoT includes devices across all wireless platforms, the majority of IoT devices are battery powered. Therefore, energy consumption is a key factor when companies are selecting the technology for their IoT device. A good example of the difference that LM offers is within one of our recent developments, where we developed a key fob that needed to send data to a connected device every two seconds. The customer wanted the product to last 12 months using only a 200mA coin cell battery and initial testing indicat- ed it wasn’t possible. However, our team’s application development was able to reduce consumption beyond the original design parameters of the chipset to meet the customer’s spec- ification. This development epitomises the close customer collaboration that stands LM apart from its competitors, as well as our commitment to custom- ers’ target specifications. For more information please visit www.lm-technologies.com LM offers a very high level of development support to its customers to ensure they are aware of the options available 01 Bluetooth 4.1 Low Energy GATT LM93x Series 02 Bluetooth 4.1 Dual Mode SPP GATT LM96x Series 03 Bluetooth 4.0 Audio A2DP, HSP, PBAP, SPP HFP LM74x Series 04 Qualcomm-Based Wi-Fi & Bluetooth - Low Energy Modules Coming Soon 01 02 03 04 TECHNOLOGIES
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    INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OFTHINGS RACONTEUR.NET14 09 / 03 / 2017 RACONTEUR.NET INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS 1509 / 03 / 2017 JIM McCLELLAND H eralding a new dawn of digi- tal disruption, the industri- al internet of things (IIoT), like the sun, is rising in the East. For manufacturing, its applica- tion is opening up hot prospects and prompting something akin to a glob- al tech gold rush. Opportunity beck- ons and the race is on. It is not, however, a race Europe currently leads, Daniel Keely, man- ufacturing director, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia, at Cisco’s manufacturing practice digital transformation group, concedes. “Manufacturing is undoubtedly a key engine for growth across Eu- rope, with more than two thirds of all EU exports coming from the sector. However, in some critical as- pects of digital innovation, Europe is lagging behind its Asian compet- itors,” he says. IIoT is transforming manufactur- ing in Asia, right now, delivering dynamic competitive advantage, IBM internet of things (IoT) dis- tinguished engineer Andy Stan- ford-Clark concurs. “We are seeing a huge take-up of advanced factory automation in the Far East, particu- larly in China and Taiwan. They are realising the efficiency benefits that can be gained by the use of general purpose robot arm technology on a production line.” Rather than designing and build- ing a complex piece of machinery specifically for the purpose of a particular task, manufacturers can take an off-the-shelf six-axis robot arm and program it to suit. With the advent of software-de- fined hardware, the same robot arm can then be deployed to a dif- ferent task, just by reprogramming it, making production fast, cheap and agile. Advances in other areas as seeming- ly mundane as maintenance can also build a business case for IIoT, adds Mr Stanford-Clark. “Predictive main- tenance, combined with traditional schedules, enables expensive down- timetobeminimisedandelimination of certain fault conditions. Savings due to predictive maintenance have on their own justified companies’ in- vestment in IIoT,” he points out. Western firms are keen to cash in on these emerging export opportu- nities, not least in the East. GE, for instance, has been creating what it calls digital foundries, starting in California then opening in Paris and Shanghai. While the rate of growth might be slowing in terms of sheer output, the scale of industrial activity in China still represents a huge attraction for global tech players. China remains the world’s largest manufacturer and also leads on con- nected things. Accenture estimates that fully embracing IoT in manu- facturing could deliver economic value up to $736 billion in total for the period 2015 to 2030. We are seeing a huge take-up of advanced factory automation in the Far East, particularly in China and Taiwan With a strategy dubbed Made in China 2025, the country’s serial five- year plans are already prioritising advanced automation with a vision of becoming the world leader in precision manufacturing by 2050. Behind this trend actually lies a dy- namic shift in the nature of work, as China faces up to the challenge of transitioning away from a business model based on cheap labour, says Mr Stanford-Clark. He says: “Part of this initiative is to enable human workers, engaged in what are referred to as the 3D – dull, dirty, dangerous – jobs, to move to more fulfilling and less monotonous roles, often working alongside ‘people-safe’ or ‘compli- ant’ robotic devices.” So with evidence for efficiency and agility mounting in the East, why is Europe not accelerating progress on IIoT to match? It is not that Europe does not un- derstand the threat of disruption and need for innovation, argues Mr Keely. “Countries across Europe are undoubtedly adopting IIoT technolo- gies and responding to the challenge Industrial complex near Mount Fuji in Shizouka City, Japan of digital disruption in proactive ways,” he says. “The Industrie 4.0 or i4.0 incentive is an example being driven by the German government together with manufacturers such as Bosch and Siemens, while the UK In- dustrial Strategy places digital at the core of manufacturing.” The problem is their global com- petitors simply threaten to outpace them. There is a steep learning curve, says Mr Keely. “While some Euro- pean manufacturers have begun to connect industrial machines on the plant floor, sharing data among makers, end-users, third parties and so forth is complex. One reason is proprietary protocols, which hinder interoperability,” he says. “Additionally, in Europe, many manufacturers are small and medi- um-sized enterprises that lack some of the broader digital capabilities that will be critical moving forward.” There is, though, cause for opti- mism around IIoT uptake in Europe, contends Andrew Minturn, business development and strategic prod- uct manager at Bosch Rexroth. “It’s picking up speed with major manu- facturers now looking to adopt the cyber-physical systems approach to productivity,” he says. “Hardware and software are connected to en- sure we can react quicker to prod- uct-mix one-offs, with improvement in quality and costs, also delivery. “We are starting to see the connect- ed value stream which ensures prod- ucts are delivered at the right time, at the right place, and in the right type and quantities. Uptake will increase tenfold in the next few years.” Rather less convinced about uptake is Frank Piller, professor of technolo- gy management at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. “We see plen- ty of pilots and little large-scale de- ployment,” he says. “The number of truly digital, data-driven factories is very low. In Germany, leaders like Siemens with the Amberg factory, or Festo with the Scharnhausen plant, show what can be possible.” Professor Piller, who heads up the Leading the Smart Factory of the Fu- ture programme, identifies standardi- sationasanareathathasbeenholding back progress with what he describes as a “zoo of competing industry, pub- lic and company standards”. However, this is one roadblock that is about to be removed. Final- ly, Europe and America are co-op- erating on a major cross-industry initiative with the launch by Ger- man industry of Standardization Council i4.0. “This will become a game-changer and enabler,” Pro- fessor Piller concludes. AUTOMATION The West is playing catch-up as manufacturers in the Far East race ahead with the industrial internet of things, delivering a competitive edge through advanced factory automation TomohiroOhsumi/BloombergviaGettyImages The sun is rising in the East 82% of manufacturers that have implemented smart manufacturing technologies have seen an increase in efficiency Motorola Solutions 2017 COMMERCIAL FEATURE RACONTEUR.NET COMMERCIAL FEATURE Q&A Connectivity at the heart of the internet of things It’s well known that the internet of things is enabled by innovation from large chip makers in the United States and Asia. Less known, however, is the small British firm working with them. Mike Sims, chief executive at LM Technologies, reveals how his company is shaking up the market Why is connectivity so vital to the industrial sector in coming years? The number of devices connected to the internet of things (IoT) continues to grow rapidly. According to Ericsson, it is growing at a rate of 23 per cent annually and of the 28 billion devices it predicts will be connected by 2021, 16 billion will be IoT devices. For the industrial sector to take advantage of that, strong connectivity is critical. The IoT encompasses many tech- nologies, but wi-fi and Bluetooth will account for a massive portion of the estimated market. As a Qualcomm manufacturing partner, LM Technol- ogies is in the right position to take advantage of the IoT growth due to the range of integrated circuits (ICs) supported by the chip maker. We also have access to other chip makers, such as Cypress Semiconductor and Realtek, offering our company a wide selection of chipsets focused on Bluetooth and wi-fi technologies. What is the most suitable IoT development option for industrial companies? LM offers a very high level of devel- opment support to its customers to ensure they are aware of the options available. With our close ties to the IC vendors, we tend to work with ear- ly-silicon and are designing products with ICs that are not yet in the market. This year we release the world’s first dual mode module embedded stack using Qualcomm’s CSRb534x range of ICs, keeping our research and devel- opment focus at the very forefront of the latest technology. What new innovations are in the pipeline in this space? With our first Qualcomm Ath- eros-based module, we are aiming to offer a sub-$10 wi-fi module with its own editable stack, which we see as the perfect platform for custom- ers’ application development. Being the only Qualcomm Atheros module partner in Europe, we believe our new Atheros-based range of mod- ules will enable multiple IoT com- panies to advance their products’ capabilities. All the Atheros chipsets are -40C rated and offer low-power consumption. This year, LM will also release the first Bluetooth 4.1 serial adapter, which will be able to com- municate with Apple devices without the need for an Apple authentication chipset, negating any Apple prod- uct commission. The current EPOS market is using more Apple devices than ever before and being able to interface with non-Apple authenti- cation devices is key to expanding the device choice in this market. What competitors do you have in Europe? There may be several other wireless module companies, but LM’s links with ICvendorsandthecustomer-support- ed design process we offer is unique in Europe. Some similar companies may have access to one or even two of the top IC vendors, but no other company has the same ICs within their modules. We are also the only company to offer customers a dedicated solutions team that supports them throughout the life cycle of their product. Why is energy efficiency so impor- tant to wi-fi connectivity in the industrial IoT? While the IoT includes devices across all wireless platforms, the majority of IoT devices are battery powered. Therefore, energy consumption is a key factor when companies are selecting the technology for their IoT device. A good example of the difference that LM offers is within one of our recent developments, where we developed a key fob that needed to send data to a connected device every two seconds. The customer wanted the product to last 12 months using only a 200mA coin cell battery and initial testing indicat- ed it wasn’t possible. However, our team’s application development was able to reduce consumption beyond the original design parameters of the chipset to meet the customer’s spec- ification. This development epitomises the close customer collaboration that stands LM apart from its competitors, as well as our commitment to custom- ers’ target specifications. For more information please visit www.lm-technologies.com LM offers a very high level of development support to its customers to ensure they are aware of the options available 01 Bluetooth 4.1 Low Energy GATT LM93x Series 02 Bluetooth 4.1 Dual Mode SPP GATT LM96x Series 03 Bluetooth 4.0 Audio A2DP, HSP, PBAP, SPP HFP LM74x Series 04 Qualcomm-Based Wi-Fi & Bluetooth - Low Energy Modules Coming Soon 01 02 03 04 TECHNOLOGIES