Industry IoT Consortium

John W. Koon interviews Helder Antunes, Chairman of the OpenFog Consortium. They discuss OpenFog's progress and the organization's goals for the future.... Read more →

When I ask people what they think the Internet of Things (IoT) is all about, the vast majority will say “smart homes,” probably based on personal experience. If I say that it is also about industries making using of data from sensors, then most people’s immediate reaction is to think of manufacturing. Sensors have been used for a long time in manufacturing, and the concept of using data generated at the edge to monitor and run automated processes is well understood. This perception, however, is underselling the IoT.... Read more →

The IIC, through its Liaison Working Group, has worked to build coalitions in the industry via liaison relationships that foster deep collaboration, with the goal of accelerating IIoT adoption and realizing the economic and social gains.The liaison relationship between IIC and IVI, is an example of this type of collaboration.... Read more →

Differing viewpoints around ownership of the development and enforcement of endpoint security mechanisms has been an ongoing debate. Does it reside within the realm of IT or OT? IIoT has blurred traditional IT and OT infrastructure boundaries and added a level of confusion to the inevitable convergence of the two realms, particularly in regards to security. Both IT and OT need to understand the risks imposed by new or existing IIoT devices connecting to the Internet and the corporate network. And, both need to know how to track and manage these risks as a team.... Read more →

From the drilling site to the refinery, O&G operators deploy pushers such as pumps, compressors, and turbines to transport highly inflammable products across thousands of kilometers through uninhabited spaces and ecologically fragile areas. An unplanned or accidental breakdown can have a catastrophic long term impact on the surrounding environment. Monitoring and keeping pipeline assets under surveillance is however a routine but equally daunting and critical task for any enterprise.... Read more →

The software industry’s move towards pay-as-you-go and subscription licensing is fueled by the success of Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce and others who have revamped their business models to take advantage of the flexibility of cloud-based services and give their customers usage-based options. That trend will no doubt continue as ISVs scramble to retool their packaging and delivery models to take care of their customer preferences while keeping sight on the monetization of their software offerings.... Read more →

Prosumers in the utility sector, who both produce and consume electricity, are increasingly influencing how utilities are interacting with rate payers. These clients utilize distributed renewable energy resources to produce energy, both for themselves and for the grid, and actively monitor and manage their own energy use. This poses a bi-directional flow of energy challenge, as the energy sector’s traditional supply-and-demand management approaches are forced into new territories.... Read more →

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is heralding a new wave of modernization, across many industries, with customers and internal stakeholders demanding advances in productivity, management, security, and flexibility across various verticals. However, IIoT deployments continue to face considerable head-winds in terms of (largely) manually managed infrastructure, that are mostly un-secure and setup as silos. Fog Computing offers an innovative solution to address these challenges by providing secure access to Operational Technology (OT) infrastructure within the framework of Information Technology (IT) toolsets.... Read more →

As new technologies and innovative solutions enter the picture, companies are working to modernize existing power infrastructures and deliver secure, reliable and affordable energy to end consumers. One significant driver of this transformation is the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT-connected devices have the potential to not only deliver cost savings to energy and utility enterprises, but also provide more value-added services to consumers.... Read more →

As more connected devices come into use across the industrial IoT (IIoT), traditional cloud computing architectures are no longer sufficient. Current centralized systems simply don’t hold up to the scale and security requirements of so many billions of IoT devices, including the secure storage, availability over intermittent network connections, access control, authentication, and real-time analysis of a near-constant data stream. The traditional approach involves moving data from the edge to a central server for processing, which increases latency and reduces available bandwidth across the network. Most importantly, however, the transfer of massive amounts of data from devices at the edge to a central system greatly increases the chance for a security breach, resulting in lost and compromised information.... Read more →

We’re in the middle of another industrial revolution. We’re seeing the digitalization of business processes and operations, and transformation in how goods and services are designed, produced, and delivered. As part of this transformation, organizations are moving to self-healing systems where automation is used to reconfigure networks, systems, and processes improving availability, reliability and quality of their services and products. This article explores the exponential growth of data from sensors and connected devices, and how organizations can manage the increasing pace of change.... Read more →

With data from billions of connected devices and trillions of sensors, supply chain and device manufacturing operators are taking advantage of new benefits. Think improved efficiency and greater flexibility among potential business models. But as the IoT assumes a bigger role across industries, security needs to take top priority. Here’s a look at four key challenges that must be taken care of before realizing the rewards of increased connectivity.... Read more →

In the last century, transportation, medical, power, and industrial systems were built from individual devices, usually programmed one at a time. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is changing all of that, transforming isolated programmable devices into intelligent networks of connected machines, such as autonomous cars, intelligent drone delivery systems, smart grid power systems, automated air traffic control, connected medical devices, robotic oil drilling, and more. As a result, these systems have unique computing requirements including real-time processing, complex data interconnectivity, integrated security, high performance, reliability, and scalability. ... Read more →

By Christopher Arthmann, New Business Creation Lead, NEC’s Innovation Division Have we really changed that much? If you look at the basics, maybe not. We still eat, we still sleep, we still want to get from one place from another, we all want shelter and clothing; we want to be... Read more →

Businesses are starting to look at new monetization opportunities beyond first-generation, IIoT applications. For the industrial sector, the IIC hosted a brainstorming discussion on this topic during the Q4-2017 IIC Member meeting in Burlingame, CA.Here are a few ideas stemming from our corporate experience in supporting multi-user, multi-application IIoT systems.... Read more →

Through advances in control and robotics research, we can reliably deploy drones on manual or pre-planned trajectories. In the near future, we will even be able to anticipate collision avoidance and formation flights in commercial drones. A fleet of drones will be able to self-pilot itself to capture video several hours a day in smart cities and industrial sites, thereby collecting massive amounts of video data. To manage this volume of video data in real-time, drones need fog networks.... Read more →