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March - 2014 - issue > CXO View Point
The Transition to the Industrial Internet of Things
Durgesh Prakash
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Many companies that are building devices participate in the Internet of Things (IoT). These devices can measure information, control various objects and actively communicate to each other. Companies are also in the process of building software applications surrounding these devices in order to make decisions and thus enabling these devices to be a part of the communicating community around the IoT. Device makers for the IoT have a great opportunity in building products that add value. This can be done by building the type of chips they intend to use in the device, the software and protocols to run on the device or directly buy technology from the vendor making things a little easier. This results in "build versus buy" decision for the device maker.

For device makers focused on a segment of IoT, technology vendors such as Echelon have been innovating and putting best foot forward to cater to the industry by providing a platform for the device makers and helping them reduce a lot of expense in terms of time and money. There are two parts to the IoT which can answer the challenges of the current industry.

The Human IOT (HIoT): In HIoT, the user is very much involved with a device in collecting information and providing it back to the cloud in making decisions. The advantage of a human involvement in the HIoT in the process of decision making and analyzing is that it enables one to reconfigure the set up or the process if something goes wrong. An example to demonstrate this would be a simple wrist band (smart device) which can collect and transmit information from a centralized cloud based service where human involvement is much evident.

The Industrial IOT (IIoT) - In the past, the terms such as control networking and industrial controls were prominent as the newly coined term IIoT. The human involvement in the IIoT as a mere start up makes the IIoT exciting. Here, human is involved in only initiating the things, and once the operation starts, the process turns autonomous and gets going all by itself. A few years back, when internet became more popular and after the first wave of computing and mobile phones, people started thinking of having all devices on a network, communicating to each other just as mobile phones. These industrial controlled devices were all Pre-IP networks at the device level having a typical architecture of connected device networks to the internet through gateways. The challenge that presented later was to eliminate the use of gateways and use the native IP all the way to the end device. The transition to the IoT made it easy to connect things together enabling people to take control of their networks and migrate them to the IP oriented environment. Now, with IP connected all the way to the device, creates an opportunity for all the other apps and devices to be enabled. Empowered by LonWorks, a networking platform created by Echelon, applications are built to monitor and control interoperable self-installation devices like in-home displays and controllers to companies working on IIoT (mainly industrial control), building devices for control networking. However, the new change or challenge is to migrate from LonWorks to a new platform called IzoTTM, the next generation platform incorporating new IP, which incorporates wireless, cloud technologies which is still in practice in industrial environments.

Keeping pace with the Transition

This is an interesting area in the IIoT space for the entrepreneurs to target. According to Gartner, looking at 2020, the expectations are for a long halt, as more than half of the total numbers of industrial things are to be built by companies that do not exist today. This is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to cater to the need of the industry by using the right technology that allows you to bring your products to the market very fast, and making the right kind of build versus buy decisions to quickly target the IIoT market segment and bring out its true value.

The challenge, though, for the product development, product marketing and sales is to adapt to a way of defining new changes against the transitioning market. To be able to participate in the change in a positive way is to lead your existing customers to adapt to new technologies that make up the IIoT.. Another challenge is to acquire new industry domains that are already in their comfort space dealing with customers in a relatively stable market, to try and educate them to participate in the IIoT market which could be a new proposition.

Attracting the 'Makers' and Convincing your Customers

The critical part is to attract the makers (Engineers), young developers who are unaware of control networks that existed more than a decade ago, to be a part of the transition. The internal challenge, however, is to motivate people, educate them on updating technology and influencing them to be technologically equipped like converting from the LonWorks platform to a sophisticated IzoTTM platform at a faster rate.

The most important part is enabling a tight customer engagement and looking at their product roadmap, and looking at ways in which technology can be incorporated into their product roadmap for the next few years.. We are in a path where customer needs to be convinced in the product delivery as promised through the roadmap. So, making promises and delivering them is critical.

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