Archivo de la categoría: IoT

GE, Harel Kodesh, Internet of Things, IoT, Jeffrey Immelt, News & Analysis, Pitney Bowes, Predix

GE reveals Predix-based cloud for industrial Internet of Things applications

GE is launching a cloud service aimed at industrial IoT

GE is launching a cloud service aimed at industrial IoT

GE has launched a cloud service based on its industrial equipment monitoring and analytics platform, Predix, which it is aiming at industrial IoT applications in most of the verticals it already serves – aviation, manufacturing, automotive, energy and healthcare.

The cloud service will hoover up and analyse data generated by IoT sensors embedded in industrial equipment and can use the insights to optimise operations and proactively manage the equipment’s health by suggesting tailored maintenance regimes, whether an energy infrastructure asset or a jet engine.

While GE has offered these kinds of services for years this is the first time it has decided to offer them directly via the cloud to customers. The company is pitching Predix as an on-demand “cloud platform for the industrial internet.”

“Cloud computing has enabled incredible innovation across the consumer world. With Predix Cloud, GE is providing a new level of service and results across the industrial world,” said Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive of GE.

“A more digital hospital means better, faster healthcare. A more digital manufacturing plant means more products are made faster. A more digital oil company means better asset management and more productivity at every well. We look forward to partnering with our customers to develop customized solutions that will help transform their business,” he said.

The service includes a range of tools to help customers manage security, compliance and data governance, and GE claims that it can integrate seamless with other services running in on a broad range of cloud platforms.

“A cloud built exclusively to capture and analyse machine data will make unforeseen problems and missed opportunities increasingly a complication of the past,” said Harel Kodesh, vice president, general manager of Predix at GE Software. “GE’s Predix Cloud will unlock an industrial app economy that delivers more value to machines, fleets and factories – and enable a thriving developer community to collaborate and rapidly deploy industrial applications in a highly protected environment.”

The reveal comes less than a month after what was effectively a softer Predix launch. In July GE announced it is partnering with Pitney Bowes to develop a custom asset performance management (APM) application that analyses the data Pitney Bowes generates from its production mailing and shipping machines to improve the efficiency of its equipment. That partnership saw the companies adapt GE’s Predix software analytics platform to its mail handing and shipping environment.

Both companies have already partnered with one another elsewhere in the IoT ecosystem. Pitney Bowes and GE are members of the Industrial Internet Consortium, a membership group of telcos, research institutes and technology manufacturers formed last year and focused on developing interoperability standards and common architectures to bridge smart devices, machines, mobile devices and the data they create.

Features, Internet of Things, Interviews, IoT

Lighting and the Internet of Things

Philips is experimenting with using connected lights to for everything from keeping us abreast of important messages to making video games more interactive and impactful on our senses

Philips is experimenting with using connected lights to for everything from keeping us abreast of important messages to making video games more interactive and impactful on our senses

When was the last time you thought about your lights? Whether you are outside or in, you will probably see 4, 5 or more sources of artificial light within view. There is an estimated 50 billion individual light points in the world today – seven or so per person; of all technology, the light bulb is arguably the most ubiquitous.

It is perhaps because of this ubiquity that light has all but disappeared from our conscious minds. We utilise it with minimal thought, though sometimes its complexities are impossible to ignore. If we were preparing a romantic dinner, for instance, we would tailor the lighting accordingly. We do this because lighting doesn’t merely reflect mood, but dictates it, something connectivity is increasingly enabling us to take advantage of.

“We’ve evolved for the last however many millions of years to expect light from the sun,” says George Yianni, head of technology at Philips Lighting Home Systems. “If there’s a bright, cool white light at midday from the sun, our brain is hardwired to be awake and alert. If there is a very warm dim light such as you get around sunset, our brain is hardwired to start winding down and relaxing.”

Yianni is a technological evangelist. In a very literal way he has seen the light, and he wants to harness this physiological sensitivity to light (among other responses) to help us to relax, to deal with jet lag, to concentrate better and much more. Due to the degree to which we take lighting for granted, however, it’s an area that poses obvious challenges to innovators:  “As a consumer, the only time you think about a light bulb inside your house is when one breaks and you have to try to find one that fits in the same socket and gives the same light output. But actually it is amazing how light can transform how a space looks, how you feel in a space.”

One of the first projects Yianni was involved in was the use of tunable white light in some German schools, giving teachers the ability to modify the lighting by changing the colour temperature, to calm students down, help them wake up, or enhance concentration (Yanni says their test scores improved significantly as a result). It was after working on a succession of such projects – including outdoor street lighting, office lighting, football stadiums, and more – that he accepted the challenge of introducing these kinds of effects and improvements into the home in the form of Philips Hue connected lighting for the home. “I wanted to make this kind of lighting accessible, understandable and impactful for normal people. I wanted people to think about lighting more than just when it’s broken.”

Some of the results and available use cases will be familiar to anyone with an eye open to contemporary commercial IoT. Lighting that knows when you’ve come home, for example, and can ensure that you don’t step into a dark, inhospitable house after a trip or long day at work. By the same token, remotely controllable or programmable lighting that can give people added peace of mind when they’re away – by making it look like they’re not.

Familiar as this latter use case might be, it also points towards another intriguing capacity of lighting. Usually, we turn lighting on and off according to whether we need it: but a house burglar may translate this as whether we are at home or out. Far from being oblivious to lighting, lighting speaks volumes to would-be burglars.

The potential of lighting to communicate in other, less nefarious contexts is something Phillips is encouraging its customers to exploit.

“We’re enabling people to use Philips Hue lights inside their homes and by extension the homes themselves to communicate simple notifications,” says Yianni. “So, in the morning, if the Philips Hue light in your porch is blue you know it’s going to rain that day, if it’s yellow you know it’s not so you can plan whether to bring a umbrella or not. Other customers are using Philips Hue lights to notify them about important email messages. There’s a wide range of way where people are actually using connected lighting in their homes to keep them informed in a less distracting way than an alarm or a buzzer.”

Another popular use case for smarter lighting concerns home entertainment. Whether we’re watching movies or TV, playing video games, or listening to music, Philips Hue is unique in that it can greatly enhance the experience through more than 300 third-party apps. Philips Hue launched the first video game, movies and TV shows with ‘scripted’ lighting programmed by the content creators to sync with their lights delivering a more immersive experience in the home. Yianni provides some examples: “As your health is dropping down in the video game Chariot, the Philips Hue lights turn red in your lounge. As a protagonist enters a dark cave in a movie, the Philips Hue lights will dim down.”

“For the last hundred years, people have been used to expecting nothing more on and off from a light bulb,” says Yianni. “We are changing that.”

In September Yianni will be appearing at Internet of Things World Europe in Berlin, where he’ll be using lighting to really illuminate the potential for IoT to revolutionise some of the most fundamental and taken-for-granted details of our day-to-day lives, as well as the central importance of communicating this to consumers. 

Asia Pacific, Internet of Things, IoT, News & Analysis, NTT Com

NTT Com sets up IoT practice

NTT Com is setting up an IoT practice

NTT Com is setting up an IoT practice

NTT Com is setting up an office to target the development, sales and marketing of Internet of Things solutions.

The ICT-focused subsidiary of NTT Group said it will leverage its expertise in cloud computing, software development and telecoms to design and sell IoT solutions to clients, solutions that make use of the company’s 130 cloud datacentres and global network.

It plans to offer a one-stop application platform that can store, analyse and visualise data generated from IoT sensors.

The company is already working with a number of companies in Japan and Indonesia on a series of IoT trials.

In August this year for instance it announced a partnership with Kanazawa Nishi Hospital in Japan to test sensors deployed in electric appliances to help monitor elderly people living alone. In April it announced a partnership with TOCHU Corporation to test a smart streetlighting network at a complex in Indonesia to help optimise power consumption.

AllSeen Alliance, Internet of Things, IoT, Liat Ben-Zur, News & Analysis, Open Interconnect Consortium, Philips

Philips throws weight behind AllSeen in IoT standards push

Philips is backing the AllSeen Alliance

Philips is backing the AllSeen Alliance

One of the largest Internet of Things (IoT) solution providers, Philips, announced this week that it would support the AllJoyn standards initiative.

AllJoyn, an open source software connectivity and services framework for IoT devices, is being coordinated by the AllSeen Alliance, a 170-member organisation focused on developing cross-sector IoT standards.

Its members include Electrolux, Haier, LG, Microsoft, Panasonic, Qeo, Qualcomm Connected Experiences, Sharp, and Sony.

Philips is one of the world’s largest IoT vendors, offering a range of services around healthcare linking medical devices and sensors to a cloud-based platform that can be used to analyse and generate medical advice from the data they generate.

“Healthcare will change substantially in the coming years, with a growing role for health self-management. Addressing the needs of personal health requires a new perspective and innovative technologies like the AllJoyn software framework,” said Liat Ben-Zur, senior vice president and head of digital technology at Philips.

“Philips also values the potential of collaborative partnerships to advance markets and improve consumer experiences forever. We look forward to working with the other members of the AllSeen Alliance to advance connectivity and digitalization in the personal health area based on AllJoyn as part of a truly connected world,” Ben-Zur said.

The company is a big player in the healthcare space and the move may give a massive boost to AllSeen, which is rivaled by the Intel-backed Open Interconnect Consoritum – a cross-industry consortium pushing IoTivity, its answer to AllJoyn.

Philip DesAutels, senior director IoT for the AllSeen Alliance said: “With a global leader with expertise connecting technology between home and healthcare, we’re in a position to advance AllJoyn as the software leveraged by all healthcare solutions.”

Enterprise IT, Features, Healthcare, Internet of Things, Interviews, IoT, medical services

IoT security and the world of US medicine

IoT in healthcare faces its fair share of challenges

IoT in healthcare faces its fair share of challenges

Internet of Things security is anything but a homogenous concept. It is, rather, extremely dependent on the type of products being developed and – in many cases – the sort of regulatory restrictions they are subject to.

Of all the sectors where IoT is proliferating, however, it is arguably medical that is the most fraught. In medical IT, developers have to operate in a minefield of intense regulation, life and death safety issues, and an unusually high (and of course very much unwelcome) degree of scrutiny from hackers.

The hacking of medical data is a popular criminal enterprise, particularly in the US, where just last week UCLA Health hospitals say hackers may have accessed personal information and medical records of as many as 4.5 million patients.

However, while no-one would be overjoyed at the thought of something as intimate as their medical records falling into the hands of digital crooks, it is arguably the patient who has the least to worry about here. The main targets of medical data theft are US insurance companies and the institutions that administer Medicare. In the US, patients usually collect medication and leave it to pharmacists to bill the insurance companies.

A single refill for five months’ medication can easily add up to a few thousand dollars, so the rewards for effective fraud – with hackers posing as pharmacists – are large. Insurance companies, of course, foot the bill, while for those impersonated the results can cost time, stress, and in worst case scenarios a potentially dangerous delay in securing their medication.

It’s just one example of why security around medical data – medical IoT’s bread and butter – has to be so tight.

Someone extremely familiar with the territory is Sridhar Iyengar, one of the founders of AgaMatrix. At AgaMatrix, Iyengar  helped develop the first iPhone –connected medical device, a glucose monitor called iBGStar, then a revolutionary innovation for diabetes sufferers.

Nowadays Iyengar’s focus is on Misfit, a wearables company focussing on fitness rather than illness, but he is still deeply involved with issues surrounding IoT, health, and security. In September, he will attend Internet of Things Security conference in Boston as a keynote speaker, where he will draw on his expertise in diabetes to illustrate the wider challenges confronted by developers in the realm of medical IoT.

“The Holy Grail in this world of diabetes is what they call an artificial pancreas,” he says, “meaning that, if you can sense how much glucose is in your blood, you can pump in the right amount of insulin to automatically regulate it. Nobody has made a commercial version of that. Partly because the folks who make a glucose sensor are different to the folks that make the pumps and it has been  difficult for the two to cooperate due to trade secrets and the complexities of sharing the liability of devices from different manufacturers that must work in unison. The patients are left to suffer.”

In one famous incident, this frustrating discontinuity was first overcome by a “citizen scientist,” a father who hacked his diabetic child’s separate devices and was able to link the two together. While this was never marketed, it signalled that the race for a commercially viable artificial pancreas was very much on. However, while no-one would resent such intrepid ingenuity on the part of the “citizen scientist,” Iyengar points out that it is also demonstrates the devices in question were very much hackable.

“If somebody hacks into an insulin pump you could kill someone,” he says. “They overdose, they go into a coma, they die. None of these insulin pump manufacturers are going to open source anything: they can’t, because of the deadly consequences of someone hacking it.”

Ultimately, it will prove an interesting challenge to future regulators to establish precisely where to draw the line on issue such as this. Still, the capacity for others to easily take control of (for instance) a connected pacemaker is bound to generate a degree of concern.

Many of these issues are complicated by existing regulations. The US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements state that medical data can only be shared after it has been completely anonymised, which presents something of a paradox to medical IoT, and frequently requires complex architectures and dual databases, with pointers enabling healthcare professionals to blend the two together and actually make sense of them.

Issues like this mean developers can’t rely on industry standard architectures.

“You can’t rely on this network immune system that exists in the consumer software space where many different parties are vigilant in monitoring breaches and bugs because multiple vendors’ code is used by a product,” says Sridhar, picking an apt metaphor. “If you want to develop security related features you kind of have to do it yourself.”  In turn this means that, if there are breaches, you have to address them yourself. “It raises this interesting dilemma,” he says. “On the one hand the way that software’s written in the medical field, it’s supposed to be more safe. But in some situations it may backfire and the entire industry suffers.”

Database, Datacentre, EnterpriseDB, Internet of Things, IoT, Opinion, Pierre Fricke, RDBMS

Will datacentre economics paralyse the Internet of Things?

The way data and datacentres are managed may need to change drastically in the IoT era

The way data and datacentres are managed may need to change drastically in the IoT era

The statistics predicting what the Internet of Things (IoT) will look like and when it will take shape vary widely. Whether you believe there will be 25 billion or 50 billion Internet-enabled devices by 2050, there will certainly be far more devices than there are today. Forrester has predicted 82% of companies will be using Internet of Things (IoT) applications by 2017. But unless CIOs pay close attention to the economics of the datacentre, they will struggle to be successful. The sheer volume of data we expect to manage across these IoT infrastructures could paralyse companies and their investments in technology.

The Value of Information is Relative

ABI Research has calculated that there will be 16 Zettabytes of data by 2020. Consider this next to another industry estimate that there will be 44 Zettabytes by 2020.  While others have said that humanity only produced 2.7 Zettabytes up to 2013. Bottom line: the exponential growth in data is huge.

The natural first instinct for any datacentre manager or CIO is to consider where he or she will put that data. Depending on the industry sector there are regulatory and legal requirements, which mean companies will have to be able to collect, process and analyse runaway amounts of data.  By 2019 another estimate suggests that means processing 2 Zettabytes a month!

One way to react is to simply buy more hardware. From a database perspective the traditional approach would be to create more clusters in order to manage such huge stores of data. However, a critical element of IoT is that it’s based on low-cost technology, and although the individual pieces of data have a value, there is a limit to that value. For example, you do not need to be told every hour by your talking fridge that you need more milk or be informed by your smart heating system what the temperature is at home.  While IoT will lead to smart devices everywhere, its value is relative to the actionable insight it offers.

A key element of the cost benefit equation that needs more consideration is the impact of investment requirements at the backend of an IoT data infrastructure. As the IoT is creating a world of smart devices distributed across networks CIOs have to make a decision about whether the collection, storage and analytics happens locally near the device or is driven to a centralised management system.  There could be some logic to keeping the intelligence locally, depending on the application, because it could speed up the process of providing actionable insight. The company could use low-cost, commoditised devices to collect information but it will still become prohibitively expensive if the company has to buy vast numbers of costly database licenses to ensure the system performs efficiently – never mind the cost of integrating data from such a distributed architecture.

As a result, the Internet of Things represents a great opportunity for open source software thanks to the cost effectiveness of open source versus traditional database solutions. Today, open source-based databases have the functionality, scalability and reliability to cope with the explosion in data that comes with the IoT while transforming the economics of the datacentre. A point which Gartner’s recent Open Source Database Management report endorsed when it said:  “Open source RDBMSs have matured and today can be considered by information leaders, DBAs and application development management as a standard infrastructure choice for a large majority of new enterprise applications.”

The Cost of Integrating Structured and Unstructured

There are other key considerations when calculating the economic impact of the IoT on the datacentre. The world of IoT will be made up of a wide variety of data, structured and unstructured. Already, the need for working with unstructured data has given rise to NoSQL-only niche solutions. The deployment of these types of databases, spurred on by the rise of Internet-based applications and their popularity with developers, is proliferating because they offer the affordability of open source. Yet, their use is leading to operational and integration headaches as data silos spring up all around the IT infrastructure due to limitations in these NoSQL-only solutions. In some cases, such as where ACID properties are required and robust DBA tools are available, it may be more efficient to use a relational database with NoSQL capabilities built in and get the best of both worlds rather than create yet another data silo.  In other cases, such has for very high velocity data streams, keeping the data in these newer data stores and integrating them may be optimal.

A key priority for every CIO is integrating information as economically as possible so organizations can create a complete picture of its business and its customers.  The Postgres community has been at the forefront of addressing this challenge with the creation of Foreign Data Wrappers (FDWs), which can integrate data from disparate sources, likes MongoDB, Hadoop and MySQL. FDWs link external data stores to Postgres databases so users access and manipulate data from foreign sources as if it were part of the native Postgres tables. Such simple, inexpensive solutions for connecting new data streams emerging along with the Internet of Everything will be critical to unlocking value from data.

The Internet of Things promises a great transformation in the ability of enterprises to holistically understand their business and customer environment in real time and deliver superior customer engagement.  It is critical, though, that CIOs understand the economic impact on their datacentre investments.  The IoT creates a number of new challenges, which can be addressed using the right technology strategy.

Written by Pierre Fricke, vice president of product, EnterpriseDB

Americas, connected cars, Denso, Ford, General Motors, Internet of Things, IoT, Iteris, M2M, Navistar, News & Analysis, Qualcomm, Verizon, Xerox

Verizon, Qualcomm among Mcity partners testing IoT, automated cars

Verizon is teaming up with the University of Michigan to test connected and automated cars

Verizon is teaming up with the University of Michigan to test connected and automated cars

Verizon and Qualcomm are among 15 partners launching Mcity at the University of Michigan this week, a controlled testing environment for connected and automated vehicles that the project participants claim could clear the path for mass-market adoption of driverless cars.

The facility will allow researchers to simulate environments where connected and automated vehicles will be most challenged – for instance where road signs may be defaced by graffiti, or when traffic lights become faulty or break.

“There are many challenges ahead as automated vehicles are increasingly deployed on real roadways,” said Peter Sweatman, director of the University of Michigan Mobility Transformation Center. “Mcity is a safe, controlled, and realistic environment where we are going to figure out how the incredible potential of connected and automated vehicles can be realized quickly, efficiently and safely.”

Michigan – particularly the City of Detroit – has a longstanding (and to some extent troubled) history in automotive, but the University said the facility will help the State regain its leadership in the sector. The project builds on a 3,000 vehicle connected car project launched three years ago and co-funded by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation

As part of its participation with the project Verizon will be contributing its telematics technology, In-Drive, and is offering its own research into vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure technologies. It will also help explore various ways to combine mobility, telematics and IoT services.

Other project partners include Iteris, Navistar, Denso, Ford, General Motors, Qualcomm and Xerox; each partner is investing about $1m into the project over the next three years.

Amit Jain, director of corporate strategy, IoT verticals at Verizon said the project will help create new vendor-agnostic and OEM-agnostic services that could improve road and pedestrian safety.

“Placing the onus on OEMs only to deploy technologies such as Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), for example, could take up to 37 years according to the National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA). That’s why creating opportunities like Mcity to pool research and share best practices to expedite innovation is so important,” Jain said.

“Consider the fact that there are more than 30,000 fatalities in the US annually caused by vehicle accidents – of which 14 percent of those fatalities involve pedestrians. As part of our participation in Mcity, we will be involved in tailored research to explore how smart phones can be used to further enhance vehicle-to-pedestrian communications.”

Verizon has moved over the past few years to bolster its legacy M2M portfolio (industrial M2M, telematics) with the addition of new IoT services, which according to the telco now constitute a growing portion of its overall revenues – particularly connected cars. In a Q2 2015 earnings call with journalists and analysts this week Verizon’s chief financial officer Francis Shammo said that although IoT is still quite a nascent sector it raked in about $165m for the quarter and $320m year-to-date.

“As far as Internet of Things, we think that the transportation, healthcare, and energy industries in particular present great opportunities for us and we are very active fostering innovation in these areas,” Shammo said. “We are very well-positioned to capitalize on these new growth opportunities and we will continue to develop business models to monetize usage on our network and at the platform level.”

Cisco, Frost Data Capital, Internet of Things, IoT, Jeff Scheel, John Vigouroux, News & Analysis, startups, Symantec

Symantec, Frost Data Capital to incubate startups solving IoT security challenges

Symantec and FDC are to incubate ten IoT security startups per year

Symantec and FDC are to incubate ten IoT security startups per year

Symantec is teaming up with venture capital firm Frost Data Capital to incubate startups primarily developing solutions to secure the Internet of Things.

The companies initially plan to create and seed up to ten early-stage startups with funding, resources and expertise, with Symantec offerings access to its own security technologies and Frost Data Capital its data analytics platforms.

“We’re taking a fresh look at driving innovation in the market and this partnership will enable Symantec to transform raw ideas and concepts into meaningful security companies,” said Jeff Scheel, senior vice president, strategy, alliances and corporate development at Symantec. “By collaborating with Frost Data Capital, we create an environment primed to incubate new, innovative and disruptive startups in cyber security – especially in the realm of IoT technologies where verticals like process control, automotive, health care and energy require specialized skills.”

The goal is to encourage development of threat detection analytics services capable of being applied in IoT architectures, where data volume and velocity can be particularly acute challenges when it comes to security and performance.

“We’re seeing a huge opportunity in the IoT security market,” said John Vigouroux, managing partner and president of Frost Data Capital. “We’re excited to work with Symantec to bring cutting-edge, relevant security analytics solutions to market rapidly, in order to prevent next generation cyber attacks on corporate infrastructures. Symantec brings to the table world-class security technology, global presence and strategic relationships that will be instrumental to launching these startups.”

Symantec and FDC are not the only firms looking to incubate startups with a view towards developing IoT solutions that complement their own offerings. Cisco recently announced significant efforts to incubate French and UK startups innovating in the area of IoT networks, while Intel and Deutsche Telekom unveiled similar moves in Europe last year.

Andrew Cope, Internet of Things Telecoms, IoT, KT, News & Analysis, Nokia, Yun Kyoung-Lim

KT, Nokia launch Internet of Things lab

KT and Nokia said the lab will be a testing ground for IoT innovators

KT and Nokia said the lab will be a testing ground for IoT innovators

Korean telco KT, alongside Nokia Networks, has announced the launch of the country’s first dedicated lab for progressing the development of the internet of things, making good on its MoU pledge at MWC earlier this year, reports Telecoms.com.

Nokia Networks has slated the lab to be the bedrock of its targeted “Programmable World” project by utilising the convergence of IT and telecoms. It claims small and medium-sized IoT firms looking for advice, expertise and an environment in which to test new products and ideas will be able to make the best use of the lab.

The launch of the lab shows the progress being made in the IoT space, after KT and Nokia signed a memorandum of understanding to develop an IoT lab facility at Mobile World Congress in March. Andrew Cope, Nokia’s head of Korea, said LTE-M (the LTE network enabling M2M communications) is a key basis of the lab’s capabilities, and displayed his pleasure in having the lab ready so soon after the MoU announcement at MWC.

“Executing upon an agreement signed at MWC15, Nokia Networks and KT have taken another step forward on an exciting journey that will culminate in the creation of the ‘Programmable World’ in Korea and beyond,” he said. “After showcasing the world’s first LTE-M for interconnection of sensors, we have now created Korea’s first IoT lab – a solid-point of our commitment to standardise LTE-M and create a strong and sustainable ecosystem.”

Yun Kyoung-Lim, KT’s head of future convergence said the lab’s approach to collaboration in IoT is essential to its development and to seeing its potential realised.

“Together with Nokia Networks, we are leveraging upon the convergence of IT and Telecommunications to hasten our transformation into an ICT powerhouse,” he said. “Furthermore, this lab is a strong iteration of our vision to become the number one player in Korea’s IOT market. Our efforts are aimed at encouraging greater participation by domestic companies, which are a crucial factor in driving the change towards a creative IoT-based economy.”

IoT, White Papers

Cloud and the Internet of Things: How are developers using cloud to develop IoT services?

IoT_Outlook_2015_Survey_RepThe Internet of Things (IoT) is set to become one of the most transformative technological and commercial opportunities yet, with a range of IoT services already hitting the market. Some analyst houses are forecasting deployed connected devices to number in the tens of billions in just a few years, leading to the development of a new generation of interconnected solutions.

But this transformation brings with it a number of challenges. This next generation of solutions will require a level of security, interconnection, flexibility and scalability yet to be seen in the solutions offered in markets today. This means developers and IT departments will need to think hard about what IoT services require from an infrastructure, application and development platform perspective.

Cloud-based services, which are scalable, can be flexibly deployed, and architecturally complement IoT, have the potential to help make IoT services more performant and help overcome some of these challenges, but what is less clear is how cloud-services will fit into developers and IT departments’ IoT plans.

To that end, BCN and Telecoms.com surveyed over 650 IT professionals and developers on their IoT plans to learn more about how cloud-based services will be deployed in the IoT solutions they create, and their views on the issues and challenges they believe are likely to be encountered along the way.

  • Do IT departments and developers have the right skills and the right tools available to make the next generation of IoT services?
  • Are there still concerns over data security and data privacy in IoT?
  • How does the nature of IoT change the way applications need to be architected and developed?

Download the report now to find the answer to these questions among many others.