New Podcast – What Is The Internet of Things

New Podcast – What Is The Internet of Things

A new Gary on Manufacturing Podcast has been unleashed to the wilds. Talking about the Internet of Things and perhaps some of the misunderstandings that keep making the rounds.

 

The Internet of Things is not a “thing” in itself. In fact, asking what it is misses the point. The real question is what is the business case for implementing it.

 

 

New Podcast – What Is The Internet of Things

Open Source IoT Platform EdgeX Foundry Adds Member

Internet of Things platforms are all the rage these days. Seems like every company either has one or is building one. On the other hand, recent news about GE Digital’s Predix and discussions on LinkedIn have thrown a cautioning light on the efficacy of platforms.

When a technology supplier releases a platform the common thread is open connectivity to devices and closed, tightly integrated integration with the supplier’s products. Sometimes there is open connectivity with a variety of databases and analytics engines, but usually not.

A different take was begun by the Linux Foundation driven in the market by Dell Technologies. This take is open source and the drive has been to sign on as many technology companies as possible. Hence, today’s announcement. I have previously written about the EdgeX Foundry here and here.

EdgeX Foundry, an open source project building a common framework for Internet of Things (IoT) edge computing, announced Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has joined as a Platinum member. Participating in EdgeX Foundry will support Samsung’s emerging efforts in the industrial sector while expanding the market of EdgeX compatible components and devices.

“The true potential of IoT will be realized with solutions that cross both the consumer and industrial sectors. As one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world, having seamless IoT across our business domains and factories would streamline operations and drive efficiencies, but interoperability is a major challenge,” said Kyeongwoon Lee, Senior Vice President at Samsung Electronics. “EdgeX Foundry delivers the interoperability, flexibility and scalability that businesses need to deploy Industrial IoT solutions without hesitation, and it will enable us to create lightweight edge solutions that can support real-time operations for our manufacturing infrastructures.” 

EdgeX Foundry is a project of The Linux Foundation that is building an open interoperability framework hosted within a full hardware- and OS-agnostic reference software platform to enable an ecosystem of plug-and-play 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, EdgeX can quickly and easily deliver interoperability between connected devices, applications and services, across a wide range of use cases.

“Samsung is an active contributor in the open source community and has been a key driver behind IoT standardization supporting consumer devices and smart home technology,” said Philip DesAutels, PhD Senior Director of IoT at The Linux Foundation. “Their manufacturing experience combined with their expertise in consumer electronics, mobile devices and enterprise solutions will be essential to the development of the EdgeX Framework, and we are excited to welcome them into the community.”

EdgeX Foundry has rapidly grown to almost 60 members since its launch in April 2017 and is supported by an active community. More than 150 people from around the world joined EdgeX Foundry face-to-face meetings over the summer to align on project goals, develop working groups and discuss next steps for the project. EdgeX Foundry has also launched a series of technical training sessions called Tech Talks that are designed to help onboard new developers on to the project.

IIC and MESA Agree To Collaborate On Industrial Internet Standards

IIC and MESA Agree To Collaborate On Industrial Internet Standards

Looks like standards and interoperability week at The Manufacturing Connection. I once was pretty active with MESA and lately I’ve gotten to know the IIC. Both good organizations promoting best practices in industry. MESA is not a standards organization, though, but one that promotes Level 3 (MES/MOM) software applications. IIC has taken a leadership roll bringing Internet of Things people and companies together.

The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and the Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) International announced they have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to work together to advance their shared interests. Under the agreement, the IIC and MESA will work together to align efforts to maximize interoperability, portability, security and privacy for the industrial Internet. That all sounds pretty vague and something like motherhood, but I applaud all steps toward collaboration.

Joint activities between the IIC and the MESA will include:

  • Identifying and sharing IIoT best practices
  • Realizing interoperability by harmonizing architecture and other elements
  • Collaborating on standardization
  • Collaboration in the areas of industrial analytics and asset performance management (APM)

MESA’s President, Mike Yost, said, “This partnership makes good business sense, with the Industrial Internet Consortium advocating for the broad adoption of industrial Internet technologies and with MESA educating manufacturers and solution providers of all sizes on both how and why to adopt them. Collaborating with the IIC also helps ensure MESA members and IIC members have a common vocabulary and a common understanding of business value.”

“We look forward to working with the Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Enterprise Association,” said Wael William Diab, IIC Chair of the Liaison Working Group. “Within the manufacturing vertical, industrial analytics and asset intelligence systems enable manufacturers to realize the value of their industrial IoT systems by analyzing and acting on data to increase asset reliability and availability and reduce maintenance. Collaborating on industrial analytics and asset performance management will help to further advance industrial IoT in manufacturing environments.”

MESA and the IIC have agreed to meet regularly to exchange information and have targeted a joint workshop on industrial analytics and asset performance management for Q4. The IIC Liaison Working Group is the gateway for formal relationships with standards and open-source organizations, consortia, alliances, certification and testing bodies and government entities/agencies.

The agreement with the MESA is one of a number of agreements made by the IIC’s Liaison Working Group.

Here is a little more information about the IIC.

The Industrial Internet Consortium maintains active relationships with standards development organizations, open-source organizations, other consortia and alliances, certification and testing bodies and government entities or agencies involved in the Industrial Internet.

The purpose of these relationships is to generate requirements for new standards from every part of the activities taking place within the Industrial Internet Consortium.

These relationships help eliminate duplication of effort and ensure that new standards and technologies necessary to build and enable the Industrial Internet are brought to market more rapidly.

By establishing a formal liaison with the Industrial Internet Consortium, organizations can engage directly with our Working Groups and gain faster access to developing requirements for standards and technologies required for the Industrial Internet across a spectrum of industries and applications.

The Industrial Internet Consortium itself is not a standards organization; however, it strongly advocates for open standard technologies in order to ease the deployment of connected technologies. Our Liaison Working Group is the gateway for the liaison relationships listed below and new ones forming now.

New Podcast – What Is The Internet of Things

OPC Foundation Also Promotes the Open Process Automation Forum

Interoperability spurs innovation. After years of technological consolidation in the process automation industry with “distributed control systems” becoming ever more centralized, we are witnessing a resurgence of distributed, along with open and interoperable.

Open Process Automation Forum

Yesterday I discussed Foxboro promoting the Open Process Automation Forum. Today, I can report that the OPC Foundation has also formally joined the forum. It fits given that OPC UA is one of the key standards that the OPAF will need for its interoperable system to work.

The OPC Foundation has developed a whitepaper, an introspective on process automation, elaborating on the vision of OPC UA and why the OPC Foundation is engaging in The Open Process Automation Forum.

The OPC Foundation vision includes the key element of information modeling, providing a foundation for other standards organizations to directly plug-in their data/information models into OPC UA.

OPC UA Seminar Tour

Here is a free opportunity to learn about open standards, OPC UA, a chance to meet with leaders in the interoperability field – in one day, in one place. Oh, and at two of those sessions (Milwaukee and Cleveland) one of those leaders will be me!

The seminar is designed for corporate leaders, IT professionals, students and all interested in IT to learn more about open standards, their place in this constantly changing arena of IIot, Industre 4.0, the Cloud and beyond and how this knowledge will benefit their life, their career and their company.

 

This seminar tour will focus on the rich feature set of OPC UA and the unique ways these features are put to use in real applications. By attending these conferences you will:

  • Learn how OPC UA provides Industrial Interoperability for the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0
  • Learn about OPC UA in the world of the IIC, China 2025, Korea Manufacturing Innovation 3.0
  • Hear why end-users are requiring vendors to build OPC UA into their products
  • Get latest update on OPC-UA technology and further roadmap enhancements
  • Learn how active collaborations with other industry organizations are working to revolutionize the transformation of data, providing an infrastructure for the modeling of information
  • Network with industry experts and peers
  • Hear how Microsoft is positioning Azure with OPC UA extensions
  • How to connect your machine to SAP easily and standardized
  • Learn why OPC UA is the one and only recommendation for communication channel for RAMI4.0 – the Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0

 

Here are the event details:

 

September 26 – San Diego

September 27 – Santa Clara

September 28 – Seattle

September 29 – Vancouver

October 3 – Minneapolis

October 5 – Toronto

October 9 – Milwaukee

October 11 – Cleveland

 

New Podcast – What Is The Internet of Things

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Enters Internet of Things Fray

The Internet of Things technology competition remains robust. I devoted Monday to a trip to Houston to visit the campus of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE). This was the old Compaq computer campus remodeled for a new generation.

The occasion was the grand opening of the Internet of Things customer experience center. We toured several demo areas that were set up, but the capability exists for custom demos for visiting customers.

 

Prominent among partner companies was National Instruments, whose executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing Eric Starkloff was present to talk with customers as well as analysts and influencers. Other partners you’d recognize from our market included Schneider Electric (Foxboro), PTC (ThingWorx and Kepware), OSIsoft, and SAP.

Key points:

HPE has invested in many operations technology (OT) people. I talked with several who were quite knowledgeable about the industrial technology area.

While HPE has a typical gateway product, the featured device was the Edgeline—a powerful Xeon processor and PCI or PXI slots and mega gigs of memory. Called a “mini-data center”, it’s like having a datacenter at the Edge.

I first met Dr. Tom Bradicich [updated spelling] when he was at National Instruments evangelizing “Big Analog Data” solution—which NI still touts. He is still passionate about finding ways to use all that data generated from devices. The Edgeline is a perfect solution for him seeing that it combines the NI technology with which he’s familiar with enterprise grade architecture also with which he’s familiar.

Key takeaways:

The Edgeline takes edge computing up a notch, as Emeril would say.

HPE has made a significant investment on the OT side with several industrial technology partners.

No company can do it all alone anymore, and HPE has built a strong partner ecosystem. However, it must continue to reach out and grow it even more.

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