The ‘Why’ of IoT: an Executive Summary
Thesis: A primary role of technology companies in adopting IoT & Industry 4.0 is to provide increased access to the benefits of technology (reduce barrier to entry for customers), more than a fundamental creation of new technologies.
A wave of innovation is sweeping across the industrial landscape, affecting the technologies used in the plant floor and providing different ways to collect and store data, and potentially simplifying how customers obtain and respond to insights. Operations teams across the globe are experimenting and rolling out new, innovative ways to modernize and optimize their manufacturing and process systems. As an alternative to traditional controls implementation, purpose-built systems are becoming available that enable rapid data collection, direct integration into cloud-based analytics systems, and sometimes even feedback loops that automate process optimization.
This new wave of innovation has been given names such as IoT and Industry 4.0. However, what is often difficult is to reach the heart of what this technology disruption represents, since though these are ubiquitous terms, the proposed paths to get there - sensors? software? cloud? middleware? - are endless! What is the unifying theme of IoT and Industry 4.0, and how do technology companies take advantage of the disruption?
IoT and Industry 4.0 have taken different forms in different vertical markets, which sometimes seem so divergent it is hard to even categorize these different forms in the same topic. All manner of personal electronics now fit into the concept of IoT, being internet connected and making formerly complex tasks far simpler, such as an understanding of traffic expectations and navigation, along with health and fitness management. On the other end of the spectrum, software applications are now migrating from desktop and physical servers, to virtual servers and the cloud. Likewise, data storage is rapidly moving into cloud-based systems. There is also a transformation happening in how devices communicate, with personal devices using standards-based Bluetooth, WiFi and near-field technologies. Even further, an evolution in wireless communication services promises a future where every device has low-cost broadband cellular connection.
Though the above areas seem to be divergent, there is a relevance of each of these aspects of IoT that also points toward a unifying theme of this new technology revolution.
For example - with the transformation of personal electronics, now not only the technically literate, but everyone can take advantage of the capabilities that these intelligent devices provide. For example, implementation of a whole-house integrated audio system is now possible for hundreds of dollars with simple phone apps and IoT connected speakers, instead of the thousands of dollars required for an (admittedly, better) professional audio system implementation. Though ‘IoT’ may have gained fastest traction in the personal electronics space, this has already begun to cross into business and industrial markets, since it sets global expectations for all interaction with technology.
Also, cloud software implementation is being rapidly adopted since it virtually eliminates any expertise required for onsite server and storage maintenance, reduces risk of loss, and enables faster and more seamless implementation of new features, compared to local hosting and patch management.
In data transmission, changes from proprietary to open, standards-based communication provides for entirely new ways to interact between devices, providing opportunity to re-think and simplify workflow processes and tasks, from payment methods in the personal realm to machine management and interoperability within industrial applications.
The above changes to technology also creates potential for disruption in the market for professional services. With the implementation of technology becoming more simplified, HOW to implement is not the first or primary challenge in delivering a project-based solution. Rather, the first challenge is to identify what technologies are relevant to addressing the customer’s use case; for example, whether the solution requires a higher-reliability, on-premise proprietary application in a closed vendor ecosystem, an open platform using IoT data collection and cloud-based applications, or something between. The critical value of the system integrator becomes less the expertise of implementation, and more the credibility to make the right platform decision to match the reliability, performance and cost-based expectations of the customer.
There is disruption happening in industry, often represented vaguely as IoT or Industry 4.0, and this disruption is evident in the new entrants and fragmentation of the market for solutions from sensor to application. The disruption occurring, however, is not so much in the creation of fundamentally new technology, and is certainly not in solving fundamentally new problems. Rather, the disruption occurring is in the alignment of technology to substantially lower the barriers to entry for customers to experience those advantages and scale solutions. What are your customer’s problems, and how can you solve them more effectively?
Postscript: An Example
The above theory hits the ground running in the automation space, which arguably has been transitioning into ‘IoT’ for the past 15+ years. In plant automation, the use of standard Ethernet has exploded and switches have increasingly taken the place of what used to be proprietary gateways. Panduit, who provides control panel and and Ethernet networking systems, recognized their customers’ need to improve not only how these systems were implemented, but also how they were managed during operations. Seeing the challenges customers were facing trying to implement and maintain monitoring and documentation of these systems, they invested in massive updates to their IntraVUE(TM) software. The application of networking technology, applied to simplified discovery, monitoring and documentation, substantially cut the cost their customers had in maintaining effective documentation on the plant floor.
...shameless plug...
This allows engineers and technicians far simpler ability to document and monitor their automation system, as if they were looking at a live, self-updating Visio(R) drawing of their plant. As result, even those plant sites that were not staffed to constantly update drawings and documentation of their systems are now able to keep ahead of changes and risks to their automated operations.
