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.

Internet of Things Platform Architecture

Internet of Things Platform Architecture

If enthusiasm means anything there will shortly be what could be described as an Internet of Things operating system. I reported Monday about a press release I received from the Linux Foundation about a “unification platform for interoperability of protocols for the Internet of Things.” As you may have guessed, I was less than impressed with the press release. This is the EdgeX Foundry.

So, I devoted an hour to Jason Shepherd, the Dell EMC director who is the driver putting this all together in Hannover on Wednesday. He brought me to an architecture diagram. I wish they had sent that with the release.

Internet of Things Loosely Coupled

By way of preface for the geeks in the readership, I refer you to a book, Loosely Coupled, by Doug Kaye. This architecture is an example of what Kaye thought was the future of IT and computing—namely loosely coupled applications.

The architecture is a loosely coupled system of data inputs in a variety of protocols, almost an endless variety, if you will, and a loosely coupled system of applications (gray) brought together by a set of services (purple)—which are open source.

In other words, EdgeX describes the Internet of Things ecosystem bringing in data sources from a variety of protocols, storing the data, performing analytics, and serving out for visualization and action. This action is performed within a gateway device, let’s say for argument’s sake, a Dell Gateway product.

And as a side note, it is capable of also doing control. Now don’t get all excited about that, yet, but you and I both know engineers who like to try out new things that may give them some sort of advantage.

Let’s Contextualize

To place this in a context, this is close to what Siemens is doing with Mindsphere. Siemens is trying to be open. This project is also open source, taking it one step further. Except that there is no company of Siemens’ stature on board, yet.

I interviewed a company called Exosite at Hannover, which is the technology behind the Parker Voice of the Machine (to be described later). This company is trying to do a similar thing, but all within its system. That is its competitive edge—debases and analytics.

Similarly, SAP brings data from lots of sources into its cloud where it can perform all the work with its system.

Then there is Cisco. It controls all the data flow on most networks. Tapping into that data source, it also is building a proprietary system that can do much of this.

Rockwell Automation can do some of this, but again, pretty much within its own ecosystem.

Meanwhile, GE Digital has Predix.

All of those have open connectors into their systems, but the systems remain closed within their own walls.

Thinking Radically

Let’s step outside the box for a second and consider what ExxonMobil is trying to do with its attempt to build an open DCS. There are many similarities to what Dell is doing here. I think ExxonMobil would have been further along partnering with Dell rather than Lockheed Martin who is taking it into the big company direction.

Shepherd and team have already amassed 50 companies committed to the effort. He thinks another 25 are close. Consider that, ExxonMobil.

Shepherd also thinks this is finally the ideal opportunity for smaller companies to disrupt the big company hold on the control market.

Augmented Reality and Internet of Things Meet In Hannover

Augmented Reality and Internet of Things Meet In Hannover

Let’s talk augmented reality and Internet of Things (IoT) today.

The first day of Hannover Fair began with much buzz about the Dell / Linux Foundation announcement (see yesterday’s post) about the open source “unify the IoT” project. But that buzz died off after people digested the news and determined that for the time being it was not going to disrupt the industrial world.

I have only a little time between appointments today, so I’ll do a quick recap of some highlights.

OPC Foundation has brought me along to investigate and write about what’s happening with OPC UA and especially with Time Sensitive Networks (TSN).  This will not be easy–I see the OPC Foundation logo everywhere. More on this later.

I devoted much time to the Microsoft stand yesterday and again already today.  It had the “OPC wall” showing a number of products serving OPC data. Microsoft’s play is moving OPC UA to the Azure cloud. It also showed integration with Time Series Insights, a real-time data base. It also has an IoT suite and recently added IoT Central which is an SaaS application that walks customers through the process of setting up analysis and visualization of the operations data through the OPC UA connection to Azure.

Microsoft had many partners showing authentic working applications of its Hololense augmented reality product–mostly for the enhancement of service technicians including TetraPak and Thyssen Krupp among others.

SAP took me for a walk around its IoT wall. It is building a system where, if all other suppliers opt in and put all their documentation and data into the SAP cloud, then it can serve up a variety of operations and predictive information to operators and maintenance.

ABB announced a partnership with IBM Watson to help customers improve productivity.

Parker has brought all of its products into a network uniquely called Voice of the Machine–an interesting take on IoT.

There’s more, but I’m late for another appointment.

Internet of Things Platform Architecture

EdgeX Foundry Unifies the IoT Marketplace to Accelerate Enterprise IoT Deployments

The Linux Foundation announced launch of EdgeX Foundry, an open source software project to build a common open framework for Internet of Things (IoT) edge computing and an ecosystem of interoperable components that will unify the marketplace and accelerate enterprise and Industrial IoT. The goal is the simplification and standardization of Industrial IoT edge computing, while still allowing the ecosystem to add significant value.

Looks like the big news is that Dell has joined and turned its Project Fuse set of IoT building blocks over to the open source project.

The press release, like most that deal with software, was long on buzz words and short on specifics that we all love to see. I have meetings this week in Hannover and expect to learn more. Watch for end-of-the-week updates.

Project Fuse? I did some research.

Back in December, 2015, Dell’s IoT director of strategy and partnerships Jason Shepherd told me that things were too complex trying to tie all the different ways to communicate through, for example, and IoT Gateway edge device. He also added these predictions for 2016. They seem to fit with the announcement.

  1. Enterprise will become the largest market for IoT adoption—While the Internet of Things hype reached its peak in the consumer markets this past year, 2016 will be the year of IoT in the enterprise market. Currently, we are seeing a slump in sales for the once buzzworthy, consumer IoT devices, such as fitness trackers, whereas just the opposite is happening for commercial IoT products. As companies begin understanding the value of IoT (return on investments, efficiency, productivity, etc.), commercial IoT solutions will gain traction and the enterprise will emerge as the largest market for IoT adoption.
  2. Standardization and interoperability of IoT technology will become a focal point—As IoT solutions become a mainstay for enterprises and consumers alike, the industry will face growing pressure for standardization and interoperability. As a result, an increasing number of industry players will begin uniting under the common goal of establishing a set of standards for IoT. These standards bodies and consortiums will make solid progress in 2016 but it is unlikely they will decide upon a finalized set of standards in the coming year. Rather, 2016 will be a year for critical industry-wide conversation that will help to drive the awareness of and need for standardization and interoperability.

Then I found this blog by Stacey Higginbotham, Dell plans an open source IoT stack, from last October.

I met with Jason Shepherd, director of IoT strategy and partnerships with Dell, who told me about its efforts to bring a modular set of building blocks to the industrial internet. It’s called Project Fuse, and Dell plans to make the effort open source.

Dell is working with 30 other “big name” companies that Shepherd didn’t name to create a layer of technologies that will sit between the many different messaging protocols used by today’s sensor networks and the cloud and analytics layer (see photo).

To me, this looks like it could cause problems for some of the middleware software vendors that currently do a lot of the heavy lifting for clients trying to integrate various systems, but Shepherd says some of them are on board because a platform like Project Fuse means they don’t have to build each client’s integration from scratch.

 

Leaders of this initiative believe there is too much fragmentation and the lack of a common IoT solution framework. This complexity hinders broad adoption and stalling market growth.

“Success in Internet of Things is dependent on having a healthy ecosystem that can deliver interoperability and drive digital transformation,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of The Linux Foundation. “EdgeX Foundry is aligning market leaders around a common framework, which will drive IoT adoption and enable businesses to focus on developing innovative use cases that impact the bottom line.”

Unifying the IoT Market

EdgeX Foundry is designed to unify the marketplace around a common open framework and build an ecosystem of companies offering interoperable plug-and-play components. “Designed to run on any hardware or operating system and with any combination of application environments, EdgeX can quickly and easily deliver interoperability between connected devices, applications, and services, across a wide range of use cases,” states the release. Interoperability between community-developed software will be maintained through a certification program.

Dell is seeding EdgeX Foundry with its FUSE source code base under Apache 2.0. The contribution consists of more than a dozen microservices and over 125,000 lines of code and was architected with feedback from hundreds of technology providers and end users to facilitate interoperability between existing connectivity standards and commercial value-add such as edge analytics, security, system management and services. This is complemented by the recent merger of the IoTX project into the EdgeX effort, which was previously supported by EdgeX Foundry members including Two Bulls and Beechwoods Software, among others. Additional supporting code contributions by EdgeX members are already underway.

“One of the key factors holding back IoT designs in the enterprise is that there are too many choices to safely and easily implement a system that will provide a return on investment in a reasonable timeframe,” said Mike Krell, Lead IoT Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “EdgeX Foundry will fundamentally change the market dynamic by allowing enterprise IoT applications to choose from a myriad of best-in-class software, hardware and services providers based on their specific needs.”

Founding members include: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Alleantia, Analog Devices, Bayshore Networks, Beechwoods Software, Canonical, ClearBlade, CloudPlugs, Cloud of Things, Cumulocity, Davra Networks, Dell, Eigen Innovations, EpiSensor, FogHorn Systems, ForgeRock, Great Bay Software, IMS Evolve, IOTech, IoTium, KMC Controls, Kodaro, Linaro, MachineShop, Mobiliya, Mocana, Modius, NetFoundry, Neustar, Opto 22, relayr, RevTwo, RFMicron, Sight Machine, SoloInsight, Striim, Switch Automation, Two Bulls, V5 Systems, Vantiq and ZingBox. Industry affiliate members include: Cloud Foundry Foundation, EnOcean Alliance, Mainflux, Object Management Group, Project Haystack and ULE Alliance. 

“Businesses currently have to invest a lot of time and energy into developing their own edge computing solutions, before they can even deploy IoT solutions to address business challenges,” said Philip DesAutels, PhD Senior Director of IoT at The Linux Foundation and Executive Director of EdgeX Foundry. “EdgeX will foster an ecosystem of interoperable components from a variety of vendors, so that resources can be spent on driving business value instead of combining and integrating IoT components.”

Adopting an open source edge software platform benefits the entire IoT ecosystem:

  • End customers can deploy IoT edge solutions quickly and easily with the flexibility to dynamically adapt to changing business needs;
  • Hardware Manufacturers can scale faster with an interoperable partner ecosystem and more robust security and system management;
  • Independent Software Vendors can benefit from interoperability with 3rd party applications and hardware without reinventing connectivity;
  • Sensor/Device Makers can write an application-level device driver with a selected protocol once using the SDK and get pull from all solution providers;
  • System Integrators can get to market faster with plug-and-play ingredients combined with their own proprietary inventions.

The Linux Foundation will establish a governance and membership structure for EdgeX Foundry to nurture a vibrant technical community. A Governing Board will guide business decisions, marketing and ensure alignment between the technical communities and members. The technical steering committee will provide leadership on the code merge and guide the technical direction of the project.

“We think EdgeX Foundry is the key to accelerating the fragmented IoT market and are proud to have been a part of the effort from the beginning,” said Jason Shepherd, IoT Strategy and Partnerships, Dell. “We’re big believers in openness and choice, and this modular architecture is designed to help anyone easily build edge computing solutions with preferred hardware, software, standards and services while minimizing reinvention. EdgeX Foundry is not a new standard, rather a software platform to unify standards and edge applications.” 

EdgeX Foundry is an open source project hosted by The Linux Foundation building a common open framework for IoT edge computing and an ecosystem of interoperable components that unifies the marketplace and accelerates the deployment of IoT solutions. Designed to run on any hardware or operating system and with any combination of application environments, the EdgeX enables developers to quickly create flexible IoT edge solutions that can easily adapt to changing business needs. To learn more, visit: www.edgexfoundry.org.

 

 

Podcast–Benefits of Internet of Things Projects

Podcast–Benefits of Internet of Things Projects

Companies really are deriving benefits from Internet of Things projects. In this podcast I discuss projects, a teaser for what IoT is, and a look at some benefits and applications.

Next week I will be at the Hannover Messe in Germany. Should have a report of many things from there. Looking into what people are thinking about OPC and TSN specifically.

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