Siemens User Conference Highlights Connectivity, Visibility

Siemens User Conference Highlights Connectivity, Visibility

Siemens Automation held its annual Users Conference the end of June at the Boca Raton Resort in Florida. Digitalization comprised the underlying theme, however connectivity technologies highlighted the important announcements and discussions.

MindSphere holds the top place as the most important Siemens technology at this time. Users and Siemens professionals highlighted two use cases at the conference both centering on condition monitoring / predictive maintenance.

The other connectivity announcement concerned PCS 7, the Siemens DCS. The company unveiled new I/O featuring Profinet connectivity. The new, denser I/O includes a user-configurable product, as well as traditional digital and analog modules. Ethernet connectivity featuring Profinet held center stage in the press announcement.

Siemens introduced MindSphere to me at Hannover 2016. Its evolution has been swift. Now dubbed an Internet of Things platform, it includes a set of APIs and libraries. It includes an “App Store” open to 3rd party developers in addition to Siemens apps. If you are a developer, just register and app and pay a royalty based on data or connections.

MindSphere placed in context is similar to what I’ve seen from Cisco, Dell EMC, GE, Microsoft, and SAP. I’m sure there are more and that we’ll see more in the future. Dell EMC’s platform is open source. MIMOSA, an industry standards organization provides a similar platform called the OIIE based on standards containing no proprietary components.

All of these platforms are important for maintenance and reliability professionals, as well as for plant management, engineering, and operations because of the increased data and visibility into operations and assets. This will result in improved planning, more efficient operations, and increased percentage of uptime.

Components of the platform include:
• MindSphere Apps – Siemens and 3rd party ; data analytics
• MindSphere Sphere – Azure, SAP, AWS, etc.
• MindSphere Connect – open standards, right now OPC UA, gateway, integrated with S7, build your own connectivity

 

 

A Trio of Technologies Enhancing Connections

A Trio of Technologies Enhancing Connections

When I travel to various conferences, there are certain technology themes that are strengthening connections the Internet of Things for manufacturing. We witnessed several of these this week. Here is a quick outline of some important announcements.

Why should we invest in IoT products and technologies? I hear this often. Like as not the answer will be predictive maintenance.

Augury has developed a unique technology for sensing situations that can predict upcoming failures. It must be solid technology with a solid management team. Why do I say that? Take a look at the funds investing in the company this week.

Augury Secures $17 Million Series B Funding Round

Augury, an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology company, announced that it has closed a $17 million Series B funding round co-led by Eclipse Ventures and Munich Re / HSB Ventures, the venture arm of Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB) and Munich Re. Augury will use the funding to strengthen Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) relationships, develop strategic partnerships and further establish itself as the leader in mechanical diagnostics.

This round of venture capital funding for Augury comes after a successful Series A raise completed in August of 2015. Additional investors in the current round include Sound Ventures, First Round Capital, Lerer Hippeau Ventures and Pritzker Group Venture Capital.

“Augury is by far the leading provider of mechanical diagnostics in the commercial and industrial sectors,” said Lior Susan, Managing Partner, Eclipse Ventures. “This investment perpetuates the commercial application of IIoT technology into what will become an inevitable part of predictive maintenance technology. We are confident that Augury will continue to redefine and lead the future of diagnostics in the Industrial Internet of Things.”

Augury’s existing OEM relationships include Grundfos, Armstrong and PSG Dover. Additional industry-leading customers include Johnson Controls, Trane, Carrier, Mueller, Aramark and AECOM. As they expand their market reach, Augury will continue to exponentially grow their mechanical malfunction dictionary, thus improving their diagnostics capabilities. This injection of capital will help to solidify Augury’s market leading position as a real-time, intelligent Predictive Maintenance (PdM) solution.

“We are building a long-lasting company with the goal of diagnosing everything that has moving parts, effectively creating the mechanical nervous system of the IoT,” said Saar Yoskovitz, CEO of Augury. “Equipment manufacturers and other market leaders in the industrial sector are increasingly turning to PdM as a critical component for their IIoT strategy. This funding will enable Augury to become a driving force towards the connected era of tomorrow.”

“Insurance companies are playing a significant role in the deployment of IIoT solutions,” said Jacqueline LeSage Krause, Managing Director, Munich Re / HSB Ventures. “This investment in Augury further strengthens HSB’s leadership position in IoT and insurance.”

Cloud and the Edge

The cloud is a consistent topic of conversation. Sophisticated technologists are now discussing connectivity and bandwidth and edge computing/cloud relationships. Here is an interesting take.

Vapor IO, the next generation platform for edge clouds, announced Project Volutus, which enables cloud providers, wireless carriers and web-scale companies to deliver cloud-based edge computing applications via a network of micro data centers deployed at the base of cell tower sites. The company also announced today that Crown Castle, the nation’s largest provider of shared wireless infrastructure, has made a minority investment in Vapor IO to accelerate the project’s development and deployment.

Project Volutus is a “data center as a platform” service, powered by Vapor Edge Computing. Project Volutus offers fully-managed micro data centers at the base of cell towers, literally at the true edge of the wireless network. It combines Vapor IO’s patent pending hardware and software technology with the nation’s extensive network of cell towers and dense metro fiber to build and operate self-driving, distributed edge data centers in major metropolitan locations.

“Zettabytes of machine to machine communication and new application types will require a shift in how the industry thinks about data centricity and the delivery of edge services,” said Cole Crawford, CEO and founder of Vapor IO. “Project Volutus is the most cost-effective way to deliver cloud applications that benefit from last mile wireless proximity and sub 10-millisecond round trip latency. By locating Vapor IO’s technology at tower locations and connecting to dense metro fiber, we will provide the fastest, most economical way for cloud providers, telecom carriers and web-scale companies to deliver next generation edge services in every major US city.”

In addition to supporting traditional cloud applications, Project Volutus allows carriers to incorporate virtual Radio Access Networks, including those based on Intel Corporation’s FlexRAN reference design, for speed and scale when upgrading their networks. By cross-connecting the radio network directly to edge services and the internet, Project Volutus eliminates multiple network hops and facilitates a new breed of low-latency edge applications.

Eye Tracking Research

OK, eye tracking technology can be creepy if the company sneaks it in on you during your browsing sessions. But research into how people look at and interact with their various screens is valuable in the development of improved HMI and other visualization screens. Here is a company taking it into virtual reality for research.

Tobii Pro, the global leader in eye tracking research solutions, announces a new solution for conducting high-end, eye tracking research within immersive virtual environments (VR) – Tobii Pro VR Integration.

The research tool, based on the HTC Vive headset integrated with Tobii eye tracking technology, comes with the Tobii Pro software development kit (SDK) for research applications. Researchers can collect and record eye tracking data from a VR environment with pinpoint accuracy and gain deeper insights on human behavior.

Eye tracking research in immersive VR is transforming how studies can be conducted and opens up entirely new possibilities in psychology, consumer behavior, and human performance.

Through VR, researchers have complete control over a study environment which allows them to run scenarios that previously would have been too costly, risky or difficult to conduct in real life.

“Combining eye tracking with VR is growing as a research methodology and our customers have started to demand this technology to be part of their toolkit for behavioral studies. The Tobii Pro VR Integration is our first step in making eye tracking in immersive VR a reliable and effective research tool for a range of fields. It marks our first major expansion of VR-based research tools,” said Tom Englund, president, Tobii Pro.

Tobii Pro VR Integration is a retrofit of the HTC Vive business edition headset with a seamless integration of Tobii eye tracking technology. It is capable of eye tracking all types of eyes, collecting binocular eye tracking data at 120 Hz (images per second). The solution allows study participants to move naturally while wearing the headset without compromising the user experience or the output of the eye tracking data.

Internet of Things At Dell EMC World

Internet of Things At Dell EMC World

Enterprise begins to meet operations from the enterprise side of technology at Dell World—now Dell EMC World following the mammoth acquisition of EMC by Dell last year–via the Internet of Things. That followed Michael Dell leading the company into privately owned territory.

Michael Dell himself prominently mentioned manufacturing and Internet of Things (IoT) during his keynotes of 2015 and 2016. Perhaps not as much this year at the first totally combined conferences held May 8-11 in Las Vegas. But there was so much enterprise product news and so little time.

Dell also stressed the success of combining the companies as well as making clear the new organization structure of Dell Technologies—the company name—consisting of Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, RSA, SecureWorks, Virtustream, and VMware.

Digital Transformation formed the theme message of the week. This conversation consists of business transformation and applications changes rapidly taking place now. Part of the transformation is formed by IT Transformation requiring adoption and assimilation of a new generation of servers, applications, and technologies. Millennials’ expectations (and maybe also some of us “old” guys) fire the Workforce Transformation now building. One study found that 82% of millennials would quit or not hire in initially based upon the level of technology tools offered. Finally all this digital infrastructure, the cloud, and communications are fueling the Security Transformation.

Of course, Dell Technologies is positioned to lead in all of these. Michael Dell pointed out that the company is the leader in 15 Gartner Magic Quadrants.

Internet of Things

But we are really here to discuss the point of intersection of all this IT stuff with Operations Technology—the Internet of Things. Dell EMC IoT leader Andy Rhodes received prominent positioning during the Day Two Keynotes. As an aside, the Day Three technology keynotes blew away any really cool tech keynotes I’ve seen in the past. Must be nice to have marketing dollars.

By the way, at 5’10” I think of myself of at least average height. Talking with some of the IoT team leaders made me feel like a refugee from the Island of Lilliput. Andy Rhodes, Jason Shepherd, and Keven Terwilliger are 6’5”, 6’’7”, and 6’8” (if memory serves).

News Summary:
• New VMware Pulse IoT Center, Dell EMC IoT Technology Advisory Services simplify IoT deployments
• New IoT partnerships with Atos, Bosch and more
• Dell EMC and VMware, founding members of new EdgeX Foundry Linux Foundation project, join 50 other companies to build open framework for edge computing

New IoT Products and Services

Simplified “Things” Management – The new VMware Pulse IoT Center is a secure IoT infrastructure management solution that will enable customers to have complete control of their connected things. VMware Pulse IoT Center will help customers to more efficiently manage, operate, scale and protect their IoT projects from the edge to the cloud. Dell will be offering VMware Pulse IoT Center as the preferred enterprise management and monitoring solution for Dell Edge Gateways. By plugging Pulse IoT Center into the new EdgeX Foundry, VMware will be able to offer system and device management for the EdgeX ecosystem.

IoT Advisory Services – IoT Technology Advisory Service is a new consulting offer from Dell EMC Services to help organizations determine the key capabilities and architecture required to leverage IoT data (e.g., sensors, beacons, gateways, mobile phones, wearables, connected devices). This information can be used for initiatives such as optimizing key operational processes, reducing compliance and security risks, uncovering new revenue opportunities and creating more compelling customer engagements.

Open Source Framework for Interoperable Edge Computing – The Linux Foundation recently launched EdgeX Foundry, an open source software project chartered to build a common framework and surrounding reference platform for edge computing. It will drive interoperability between proprietary value-added applications and existing connectivity standards. It was started by a community of more than 50 companies such as AMD, Analog Devices, Dell EMC, Foghorn and VMware to enable an ecosystem of plug-and-play components that can be combined to quickly create secure and scalable IoT solutions. Dell contributed more than a dozen microservices and over 125,000 lines of source code under Apache 2.0 to seed the project, additional contributions are already underway from other members. EdgeX Foundry is architected to operate on any hardware, on any operating system and with microservices developed in any application environment for maximum scale.

I have previously written about the Open Source EdgeX Foundry. This, I feel is the most significant of the news. The VMware announcement shows the coming together of the various parts of the Dell Technologies portfolio. People studying IoT for implementation in their companies are considering whether going with a consultant is the wise thing to do. Dell EMC now offers that alternative.

Curated Partnerships

Dell has carefully curated a group of IoT software and services partners through the Dell IoT Solutions Partner and Dell EMC Partner Programs. Many partners have deep, proven expertise in industry-specific IoT challenges, and can help with everything from managing multiprotocol data sources to security to analytics. New partners recently added to the program include Atos, Bosch, GreatBay Software, ForgeRock, IOTech, Mocana and Modius.

Today’s key IoT partner news includes:
• Dell and Bosch have jointly developed an Industry 4.0 jump start kit to help customers implement IoT projects quickly to realize faster ROI. The kit consists of multiple Bosch XDK sensors, a Dell Edge Gateway, ready-to-go use-cases, cloud integration and software, all preconfigured.
• Atos and Dell EMC are working together to build an IoT service management framework, Atos Codex IoT Services, to allow customers to be assured that all users can continuously create value from their connected devices.

[DISCLAIMER: Dell Technologies provides some compensation to support my work. It does not edit what I do.]

Microsoft Makes Huge Investment In OPC Open Source Code

Microsoft Makes Huge Investment In OPC Open Source Code

OPC UA was everywhere in the Digital Factory and automation areas of Hannover Fair 2017.  Not only was the expanded OPC Foundation stand busy, an “OPC Wall” at the Microsoft stand was constantly packed. Microsoft executives took attendees on a digital path using OPC UA from the factory to the Azure cloud.

Spokespeople pointed out that OPC UA was crucial to a solution that was open, secure, and agnostic. While waiting for the finalization of OPC UA pub/sub (publish / subscribe), they wrote a transport in JSON and AMQP to get there.

The OPC Foundation announced an open-source implementation of the OPC UA technology, available on GitHub to truly enable the OPC community successful adoption of OPC UA across all markets and all platforms.

Microsoft contributed a huge amount of lines of code to this open source effort.

OPC UA is the set of standards for multivendor multiplatform secure reliable interoperability for moving /information from the embedded world to the cloud.   The testimonial to the standards is a complete reference implementation that is now been posted as an open-source implementation, replacing the original OPC Foundation .NET deliverables that were developed and maintained for the last 10 years.

The original OPC Foundation .NET OPC UA reference implementation has been available to OPC Foundation members and last year was provided as an open-source implementation on GitHub. This version was targeted and limited to Microsoft Windows only.

The new OPC Foundation reference stack, based on the new .NET Standard Library technology, was developed and optimized by Microsoft to serve as the complete platform-independent infrastructure, from the embedded world to the cloud. This new version is enabled on the following supported platforms: Various Linux distributions, iOS, Android, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Phone, HoloLens and the Azure cloud.

One of the important features of the .Net Standard stack is the expansion of the security features to meet the needs of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications, as well as the requirements of “Plattform Industrie 4.0”.

Additional benefits of the OPC UA .Net Standard Stack include:

  • The .Net Standard stack is cross platform specifically enabling OPC UA applications.
  • The .Net Standard API portability strategy is all about developing once and running everywhere: No need to special-case OS-specific functionality.
  • The architecture of the .Net Standard stack focuses on managed code, which translates to rapid application development.
  • Microsoft deliberately enabled the creation of NuGet packages, which allows suppliers to quickly integrate OPC UA support into their application with a few simple clicks.
  • The .Net Standard stack includes increased security inclusive of support for SHA512.
  • The .Net Standard stack enable support for cross-platform UI design tools through Xamarin.
  • Microsoft has provided, in conjunction with the OPC Foundation, an extremely rich set of sample applications, inclusive of reference clients, reference servers, an aggregation server, an OPC classic wrapper and a web application to quickly display OPC UA telemetry data sent to the cloud.
  • Microsoft has also provided, in conjunction with the OPC Foundation complete samples demonstrating Azure connectivity leveraging the OPC UA publish/subscribe technology (the specification of which is currently being finalized).

Microsoft’s Sam George, Director of Microsoft Azure IoT said “OPC UA has truly established itself as the interoperability standard for Industrial IoT. We are honored to work with the OPC Foundation on the continued evolution of the standard. The response from the Industrial IoT community to our .Net Standard reference stack contribution has been very positive.”

OPC Foundation’s President Thomas J. Burke said, “The Microsoft commitment to open standards, and specifically to the OPC Foundation is absolutely amazing. Microsoft is clearly a pioneer and a leader in developing and bringing to market the best technology that truly enables multivendor information integration and interoperability. It has been a pleasure to work with the Microsoft development team, and how they are enabling so many of the suppliers to have seamless connectivity to the Azure cloud, through their development and commitment providing an open-source implementation of the OPC UA technology”.

Stefan Hoppe, OPC Foundation’s Vice President said, “Microsoft is the strongest open-source contributor to the OPC Foundation’s industrial interoperability standard, OPC UA. Microsoft’s integration of the OPC UA code with Microsoft Azure IoT as well as Windows IoT allows companies to bring millions of devices and apps to the public cloud and manage them with one single application, no matter if the devices run on Windows, Linux, iOS or Android. Using this OPC UA implementation, IT and Manufacturing will merge seamlessly”.

Siemens’ Thomas Hahn said: “As a founding member, Siemens has supported the OPC Foundation for years. For us, open connectivity – from shop floor to the cloud – is a must. We therefore appreciate the availability of OPC UA technology as open source!”

The OPC Foundation will continue to develop, maintain and extend this new .NET technology as the new OPC Foundation endorsed open-source .NET reference implementation. Some of these significant new features to be added include the publish/subscribe extensions as well as support for important IoT protocols like AMQP and MQTT.

Hannover Messe Was All About Internet of Things Platforms

Hannover Messe Was All About Internet of Things Platforms

Internet of Things platforms were all over Hannover Fair last week as I put on more than five miles a day walking checking out as much as I could see.

A few years ago, Industrie 4.0 was unveiled. Last year it was Digitalization. This year Industry 4.o is assumed. Internet of Things is assumed. The race is on for the platform for Internet of Things this year.

One consistent technology, though, that almost all platforms tout–OPC UA. You saw that logo everywhere. [Note: OPC Foundation paid most of my expenses to attend.]

What do I mean by platform? It is the central technology by which everything connects. Most of the time it is what we call proprietary, that is, controlled by one company. It builds a database with connectors to the world. All protocols (they encourage everyone to participate in their own system) bring in data. Sometimes the provider does all the analysis and provides all the applications. Sometimes the provider allows connection to other apps, as well.

I’ve written about the Dell / Linux Foundation effort–after I got through the hype and found the meat. This effort is all open source allowing tie ins with individual company applications.

Microsoft also has an ecosystem or platform that is open with some open source. It relies heavily on OPC UA for data input. Microsoft has its Internet of Things applications but can allow connection to others.

Siemens has its platform called Mindsphere. Siemens is a major proponent of OPC UA.

GE Digital has Predix. It likes OPC UA, too.

SAP is building a platform entirely within its umbrella but encouraging other companies to join it and allows the other apps to run. It also employs OPC UA.

A company I just got a deep dive with for the first time is Exosite. It is a database/analytics developer. At present it is not as broad as the others, but it has the desire to grow to that status.

And then there is Cisco. Yes, the company that builds the network components and OS that control the flow of all your data. Since they know where your data is, it can tap into it and it also has an IoT platform, database, and analytics engine.

By comparison, Rockwell Automation’s Connected Enterprise is totally inbred to Rockwell. I’m sure that in places such as North America where it has huge market share the connectivity works well. It will use some OPC UA next year, so a spokesman told me.

If this is any indication, the Internet of Things has become a “real” thing. Many of these platforms more or less existed before. But Internet of Things adoption obviously is attracting such good things as competition and innovation.

More from Hannover the rest of the week. I’m still compiling notes.

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