by Andrew Hazerjian, Marketing Specialist, IIC
On October 16th, 2018 IIoT industry stakeholders from throughout the world met in Barcelona, Spain for the fourth annual IoT Solutions World Congress, a three-day event co-organized by the Industrial Internet Consortium and Fira Barcelona. With an exhibition spanning 2 halls across 32,000 square meters, featuring 300 exhibitors and a Congress boasting 400 top-level speakers (100+ of which were IIC members representing 32 member companies), the 2018 IoT Solutions World Congress explored the latest industrial IoT innovations to bring visitors the necessary cutting-edge expertise and strategies to capitalize on IoT.
Dr. Richard Solely, Executive Director of the IIC, called the event “an outstanding success.” The conference attracted 16,250 visitors—a 25% increase from the 2017 event. Considering the growth in just one year, including 100 more exhibitors than the 2017 event, Solely says, “It’s quite clear that interest in IoT continues to climb.” The week kicked off with a keynote presentation that featured three major announcements.
First, the IIC Resource Hub was launched with a presentation by Dirk Slama, Vice President of Business Development at Bosch Software Innovations and Chair of the IIC Steering Committee. The Resource Hub offers a more specific picture of what the IIC as a consortium is doing. It enables members to more effectively deliver what they have learned and enables users to implement that knowledge immediately as they design and build their own IoT systems. Such tools featured in the Resource Hub are the Ecosystem Directory, Body of Knowledge, Testbed Insights, and the Industrial Internet Vocabulary Technical Report. Also included in the Resource Hub is the IIoT Project Explorer—a powerful tool unlike any other in the industry that guides users through the steps needed to analyze their own IIoT project.
The second keynote announcement highlighted the strong relationships the IIC is forming in the IIoT industry. In particular, the IIC is collaborating with more than 40 other organizations that are likely to make use of the outputs and discoveries of the IIC in the future.
The third announcement publicized that the IIC Track & Trace Testbed has generated the requirements for a new IoT standard for tracking and tracing assets. These requirements have been used by standards development organization Object Management Group (OMG) who has a nearly 30-year history creating and maintaining IT standards. OMG has begun the process to develop this as a new IIoT standard. The Track & Trace Testbed specifically aims to efficiently track and trace the usage of power tools in manufacturing and maintenance environments to ensure their proper use, prevent their misuse and collect data on their usage and status.
In addition to the impactful keynote and many highly-trafficked exhibitor displays at the conference, there were dozens of press and analyst briefings and hundreds of sessions dedicated to real end-user stories. Solely considered the conference “enough for anyone to get a good start in IoT projects or accelerate existing projects.” This thought leadership and networking environment always has room for new participants.
Be sure to join the IIC and other industry members next year at the 2019 IoT Solutions World Congress taking place October 29-31, 2019.