Year End Internet of Things Acquisition

I’ve taken some time during the holidays to get off the daily posting gerbil wheel to study even more deeply into the Industrial Internet of Things.

You may ask why. Every analyst firm now has an IoT practice. They do consulting of one sort or another. But, many are constrained by their models. I’ve seen some of the analyses. I think I can contribute.

Last week just before Christmas, PTC announced acquisition of Kepware to deepen its Internet of Things offering. I’ll have a longish analysis to kick off the New Year Monday.

The Internet of Things is a strategy, not a thing. It is described by an ecosystem, not a product.

A look at the 30-year history of the company reveals that it has grown by acquisition. First within its (then) core technology from CAD to modeling. Then into PLM. Then a Retail practice. Then it developed a services platform. None of these were core to my coverage, so PTC is not a company I’ve followed closely.

Then Jim Heppelmann, CEO, caught the Internet of Things virus. Meanwhile, the ThingWorx developers had a cool technology and cast about looking for a focus. Ah, it perfectly fits within the Internet of Things. Seemed like a fit, and an acquisition was consummated.

Following ThingWorx (2014) was Axeda–a company that itself had undergone more than one transformation. Then ColdLight helped complete the portfolio with its analytics engine.

I’ve consulted with a few companies and talked with others who wanted to jump into the Internet of Things by simply bolting on a product acquisition. They thought maybe just adding sensors (the “things” of the IoT, right?) they would be and IoT company. Or maybe a networking company.

No, PTC has the right idea. It remains to be seen if it bought the best technologies and if they can make them work together. I’ve seen companies fail at that point.

More later.

Meanwhile, I hope your 2015 was successful and that your 2016 will be one of personal growth and success.

Industrial Products – Do You Buy Good Enough Or Best?

Industrial Products – Do You Buy Good Enough Or Best?

One of my new favorite tech news sites is The Information. It’s a subscription email newsletter/Website founded by Jessica Lessin. (Interestingly my other favorite is Pando, also founded by a woman–Sarah Lacy.)

Jessica’s husband, Sam, wrote a post with a provocative thought this week, The Good Enough Stuff Revolution.

He asks, “Are Harry’s or Dollar Shave Club razors better than Gillette? What about Honest Co. soap versus Dial soap? I have no idea, and I don’t have any interest in figuring it out. They are good enough and generally easier to buy, and so they win.

“There is, in my mind, a major revolution underway in most consumer hard and soft goods which I call the Good Enough Stuff revolution. As a result, most traditional brands sold through traditional retail avenues are going to struggle to find a foothold in this new world.”

This leads to the provocative idea, “The thing to understand is that Good Enough products aren’t purely commodities racing to the bottom. They are a class of products where the end-to-end experience of selection, purchasing and customer service is more important than the product itself.”

Good enough Industrial Products?

What do you buy? Of course there are many classes of industrial products. Large assets, smaller assets, control components, MRO.

Which of these do you buy because of the end-to-end customer experience rather than diligently searching out best-in-class or merely price?

There are lots of PLCs available, for instance. You could get a smaller one and buy on price. You could go to AutomationDirect and buy direct over the Web (not unlike Amazon). You could buy where there is a strong distributor relationship. You could go with the “new kid on the block”–Bedrock Automation–and go for the added feature of built-in security.

Have you changed buying habits over the past 10 years or so? Do you think you could change buying habits? Where would you draw the line on size of equipment??

More important, perhaps, would be the question–should I be considering how I purchase and re-evaluate the entire process.

Thoughts welcome.

Industrial Products – Do You Buy Good Enough Or Best?

Connected World Powered by the Cloud

The famous Internet of Things would be just so many useless streams of bits without a place to store them before analysis can be done. Therefore, the importance of the Cloud. Microsoft has jumped in big time with its Azure Cloud.

Early last month, Microsoft held AzureCon and announced new solutions spanning containers, security, infrastructure and the Internet of Things (IoT) that enable organizations of all sizes to transform their business in today’s mobile-first, cloud-first world.

“We live in a connected world, and the intelligent cloud is powering it all,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud + Enterprise Division. “As data and devices continue to proliferate, there is vast opportunity for businesses to tap into their data to make their applications more intelligent. Through our offerings across applications, data and IoT, and cloud infrastructure, we are enabling companies to innovate more easily and rapidly, using the tools and platforms they know and love.”

Innovation through choice and simplicity

Applications are at the heart of business growth and transformation, and containerization is an increasingly popular way to maximize application value. Furthering its commitment to container technology and extending customer choice, Microsoft announced a new Azure Container Service that will combine the openness of Apache Mesos and Docker with the hyper-scale of Azure for container orchestration and management. With the service, organizations using Azure will now be able to easily deploy and configure Mesos to cluster and schedule Dockerized applications across multiple virtual hosts. Unlike many other container services in market today, this offering is based on open source to enable customer choice across the ecosystem and will support Windows Server containers in the future. The service will be available for preview by the end of the year.

Internet of Things and big data

The intelligent cloud is powered by data. Microsoft announced that its Azure IoT Suite is now available for customers to purchase. The Azure IoT Suite integrates with a company’s existing processes, devices and systems to build and scale IoT projects across their business using preconfigured solutions. In addition, Microsoft announced the new Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT program, an ecosystem of partners whose offerings have been tested and certified so businesses can take their next IoT project from testing to production, more quickly. Current partners include BeagleBone, Freescale Intel Corporation, Raspberry Pi, Resin.io, Seeed Technology Inc., and Texas Instruments Inc.

Microsoft also announced the expansion of Azure Data Lake. This includes Azure Data Lake Analytics, Azure Data Lake Store, a new programming language U-SQL, and Azure HDInsight general availability on Linux.

Intelligent infrastructure

Security is often cited as a top concern when moving to the cloud. Microsoft announced Azure Security Center, a new integrated experience that gives customers visibility and control of the security of their Azure resources without impeding agility, and helps customers stay ahead of threats even as they evolve.

This service integrates with security solutions from companies such as Barracuda, Checkpoint, Cisco Systems Inc., CloudFlare, F5 Networks, Imperva, Incapsula and Trend Micro Inc. In addition to enabling integrated security, monitoring and policy management, Azure Security Center also provides recommendations. By analyzing information gathered from customers’ deployments and comparing with global threat intelligence aggregated by Microsoft, the service introduces ability to detect threats while taking the guesswork out of cloud security. Azure Security Center will be broadly available for Azure customers by the end of the year.

Finally, continuing investments to deliver industry-leading compute capacity, Microsoft is announcing the N-series, a new family of Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) powered by NVIDIA GPUs. GPUs have long been used for compute and graphics-intensive workloads. Microsoft is the first hyper-scale provider to announce VMs featuring NVIDIA Grid 2.0 technology and the industry-leading Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform for professional graphics applications, deep learning, high-performance computing and more. A preview will be available in a few months.

Microsoft announced the Azure Compute Pre-Purchase Plan, a new pricing program designed for customers with steady state, predictable workloads on Azure. With this new offer, customers who pre-purchase Azure compute for one year can realize cost savings of up to 63 percent. This plan will be available globally starting Dec. 1.

Industrial Products – Do You Buy Good Enough Or Best?

Workforce and Productivity Discussed At Safety Conference

Rockwell Machine Safety Maturity ModelI’m wrapping up my coverage of the EHS Today Safety Leadership Conference held last week in Greenville, SC. I covered the Technology Track sponsored by Rockwell Automation.

Steve Ludwig, safety program manager at Rockwell Automation, presented on the impact of the evolving workforce on safety.

Workforce changes

“We are facing a shortage of skilled workforce, and it is a global issue,” began Ludwig. “The average age of skilled worker is 56,  and this demographic is prone not to delay retirement. Add to this the fact that birth rates have declined for the last 35 years, so we do not have the usual situation of increasing population to fuel economic growth.

There are now more inexperienced workers who are more at risk. This is not just a situation for your plant, but also for the plants of all your suppliers. Businesses face supply chain interruption, reputational / brand risk. Businesses face not only an aging workforce that may be prone to injury, but also a younger, less experience workforce that tend to have more frequent acute injuries.

When Ludwig asked attendees, “How do we improve with a changing workforce?” most responded that they were proactively going out to schools to recruit and evangelize manufacturing. They were also assuming much responsibility for helping train young people.

Connected enterprise for safety

Jeff Winter of system integrator Grantek discussed connecting the enterprise for safety. He noted a problem that continues to exist is that dashboards rely on manual data collection and input.

There are three “Eras” of safety technology–initially just preventing access; then detecting access (something that increased both safety and productivity); today controlling access (integrated safety into machine, about as productive as you can get).

“EHS must get a chair at the table when data collection and analysis are being discussed in the plant or company,” he concluded. Winter continued with this advice, “Ask for data on actions such as emergency stops, intrusions, shut downs.”

Beyond lockout, tagout

Turning to electrical safety specifically, Jimi Michalscheck business development manager for safety looked at going beyond Lockout Tagout (LOTO). His point was how to balance safety with production. He posited a system of engineered safety control, which he called a new way of addressing LOTO.

“If you haven’t designed an alternative, then you must use LOTO (OSHA). To prevent unexpected restart of the equipment during service from causing harm to employees.”

Engineering safe alternatives. Think of your machine as simple components. For example, a case packer. Notorious for frequent need for getting into it, so also for citations. Using Alternative Protective Measure (APM), design the machine in components. Task specific, area specific, documented (know that the service area is protected for the reach of the worker). APM developed must provide the same or greater level of protection as LOTO in order to comply with CFR1910.147.

Industrial Products – Do You Buy Good Enough Or Best?

Cisco Survey-Manufacturing Largest Cloud Service Adopter

Cisco just released the findings of a global study that indicates cloud is moving into a second wave of adoption, with companies no longer focusing just on efficiency and reduced costs, but rather looking to cloud as a platform to fuel innovation, growth and disruption.

The study finds that 53 percent of companies expect cloud to drive increased revenue over the next two years. Unfortunately, this will be challenging for many companies as only 1 percent of organizations have optimized cloud strategies in place while 32 percent have no cloud strategy at all.

The Cisco-sponsored InfoBrief “Don’t Get Left Behind: The Business Benefits of Achieving Greater Cloud Adoption” was developed by International Data Corporation (IDC) and is based on primary market research conducted with executives responsible for IT decisions in 3,400 organizations across 17 countries that are successfully implementing private, public and hybrid clouds in their IT environments.

Nick Earle, Senior Vice President, Global Cloud and Managed Services Sales, Cisco, said, “As we talk with customers interested in moving to the second wave of cloud, they are far more focused on private and hybrid cloud—Primarily because they realize that private and hybrid offer the security, performance, price, control and data protection organizations are looking for during their expanded efforts. This observation, which drove our strategy to build a portfolio of private and hybrid infrastructure and as-a-service solutions, is reflected in the new IDC study, which shows that 44 percent of organizations are either currently using or have plans to implement private cloud and 64 percent of cloud adopters are considering hybrid cloud.”

In the study IDC identifies five levels of cloud maturity: ad hoc, opportunistic, repeatable, managed and optimized. The study found that organizations elevating cloud maturity from the ad hoc, the lowest level to optimized, the highest, results dramatic business benefits, including:

  • revenue growth of 10.4 percent
  • reduction of IT costs by 77 percent
  • shrinking time to provision IT services and applications by 99 percent
  • boosting IT department’s ability to meet SLAs by 72 percent
  • doubling IT department’s ability to invest in new projects to drive innovation.

The study also quantified the economic benefits the most mature cloud organizations are realizing. Organizations studied are gaining an average of $1.6 million in additional revenue per application deployed on private or public cloud. They are also achieving $1.2 million in cost reduction per cloud-based application.

The revenue increases were largely the result of sales of new products and services, gaining new customers, or selling into new markets. Organizations were able to attribute revenue gains to increased innovation resulting from the shifting of IT resources from traditional maintenance activities to new, more strategic, more innovative initiatives.

Operational cost reductions associated with cloud stem from the advantages to the business of running on a more scalable, reliable, and higher-performing environment. These include improved agility, increased employee productivity, risk mitigation, infrastructure cost savings and open source benefits.

Private Cloud’s Correlation

Private cloud allows better resource use, greater scale, and faster time to respond to requests, but with the added control and security of dedicated resources for a single company.

Adopting hybrid cloud can be more complex than adopting other forms of cloud. It requires workload portability, security, and policy enablement. These requirements were evident in the study, which showed that up to 70 percent of respondents expect to migrate data between public and private clouds (or among multiple cloud providers) and have high security and policy requirements.

Mature Cloud Adoption by Country

Mature cloud adoption varies by country, with the United States and Latin America among the countries with the greatest percentage of organizations with repeatable, managed or optimized cloud strategies, and Japan with the fewest among the countries studied. The study notes the percentage of organizations with mature cloud adoption in each country:

  • 34 percent USA
  • 29 percent Latin America Region
  • 27 percent UK
  • 22 percent France
  • 21 percent Germany
  • 19 percent Australia
  • 19 percent Canada
  • 18 percent Korea
  • 17 percent The Netherlands
  • 9 percent Japan

 

Cloud Adoption by Industry

By industry, manufacturing has the largest percentage of companies in one of the top three adoption categories at 33 percent, followed by IT (30 percent), finance (29 percent), and healthcare (28 percent). The lowest adoption levels by industry were found to be government/education and professional services (at 22 percent each) and retail/wholesale (at 20 percent). By industry, professional services, technology, and transportation, communications, and utilities expected the greatest impact on key performance indicators (KPIs) across the board.

 

Cisco Business Cloud Advisor Adoption Report, Tool and Workshop

Cisco is helping customers translate the findings of this study into customized reports for customers. These Cisco Business Cloud Advisor engagements come in two formats, a simple, survey-based tool and a more in-depth workshop.

The Adoption Report allows customers to go through a structured survey to determine their own cloud adoption maturity and associated business benefits relative to their industry peers—by industry, company size and geography.

The Adoption Tool and Workshop allows Cisco and qualified channel partner sales teams to bring a much deeper level of analysis to organizations. The half-day workshop will help organizations better measure the potential impact of cloud adoption on their IT organizations across a broad range of key performance indicators. The recommendations include vendor agnostic guidance regarding how organizations can evolve their cloud journey across a number of domains, including the Intercloud. The Adoption Tool and Workshop are currently being rolled out on a worldwide basis.

The Cisco Business Cloud Advisor Adoption Report, Tool and Workshop are based on the same unbiased primary market research conducted by IDC for the study.

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