Irrespective of how people and companies view IoT, everybody agrees that it will dwarf the internet we see today in very near future. Industry estimates that there will around 50 billion connected devices by 2020. With so many connected devices talking among themselves we need very robust protocols which will work in the real world

HTTP is the workhorse of the world wide web. Its the common standard according to which all the browsers communicate with all the servers. Can devices use HTTP for communication?

Usually HTTP runs on the top of TCP and has a big header

A bare minimum GET request for HTTP 1.1 is

GET / HTTP/1.1

Host: www.example.com

The above request fetches the resource at ‘/’. Each new line character is 2 bytes long (CRLF) and the last line should be a new line character, so there is an overhead of 25 characters to fetch a single resource

The minimal reply is also similarly long, its

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Content-Length: 1

Content-Type: text/plain

a

thats for replaying with a single character ‘a’. That is an overhead on 64 characters.

Each extra byte that needs to be transmitted incurs a cost on the battery life which is a very precious commodity for embedded devices

We have to keep in mind that all the data is passed as clear text without any encryption across the channel, HTTPS is used is used to overcome the problem of security but this adds another overhead of the SSL/TLS channel, handshake and certificate examination.

In the real world scenario where the communication channels and often unreliable and bandwidths limited, this much overhead is too much of a baggage.

Apart from that, HTTP essentially works under request response model, where clients can only push data to a server and there is no way for the server to connect back to the client unless the client also implements the server. This is an excellent way to get data from many and not the best when you want one to many communication moreover it would be impossible for a remote sensor to be aware of the events in real time.

So HTTP clearly cannot be used used and we need a protocol which is more suited for IoT.

Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is one such protocol which is designed for the constrained devices. The protocol extensively uses bit fields and mappings from strings to integers to reduce the number of bytes, moreover packets are easy to generate and can be parsed easily. It lets the clients get the updates in realtime by extending the HTTP request model and adding the ability to observe a resource.

CoRE, the group which designed the protocol has also defined mapping of CoAP with HTTP, this makes it easier to build proxies which will give access to CoAP resources via HTTP.

This is an interesting resource for data scientists, especially for those contemplating a career move to IoT (Internet of things). Many of these modern, sensor-based data sets collected via Internet protocols and various apps and devices, are related to energy, urban planning, healthcare, engineering, weather, and transportation sectors. 

Sensor data sets repositories

• Linked Sensor Data (Kno.e.sis) - Datasets for sensors and sensor observations, created at Kno.e.sis Center, and converted from weather data at Mesowest. Contains descriptions of 20 thousand weather stations and 160 million observations.
• Gas Sensor Array Drift Dataset Data Set
• Trajectory data collected from mobile GPS (Microsoft)
• Trajectory data collected from many taxis (Microsoft)
• Sensor data sets on Quora 
• From MIT 
• UCI Machine Learning Repository
• University of Edimburgh
• Smartsantander.eu (check out this link too)
• Japan Traffic Flow: cargo/passengers Flow
• Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport

Originally posted on Data Science Central

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RSA Conference 2016, the world’s leading information security conferences and expositions, kicked off its annual show today at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. In its 25th year, the conference brings together the top information security professionals and business leaders to discuss emerging cybersecurity trends and formulate best strategies for tackling current and future threats.

According to Britta Glade of the RSA Conference, during the course of this year’s review process they collectively looked at the "forest" of the submissions together and found that the Internet of Things was the #1 trend that stood out.

Last year they saw a huge uptick in IoT submissions, but this year it moved front and center.  She noted “While last year’s submissions tended to be "observational," this year we seem to have moved into the "solutioning" phase of the maturity curve, evidenced by a slew of new submitting companies—organizations that directly service end consumers and haven’t traditionally participated in our call-for-speaker process.”

Building on top of IoT, conference organizers also saw increased submissions on Industrial Control Systems and the Industrial Internet of Things. In the past, the sessions focused on this just didn’t gain attention. But one year makes a difference as many of the "things" coming alive and online, such as robots, sensors, building automation, are still based on old security protocols and approaches, and breaches here have the very real potential to trigger large-scale disasters.

Late last year when I posted 50 Predictions for the Internet of Things in 2016, security dominated. With the RSA Conference starting today, here’s a recap of some of those IoT security predictions.

Nathaniel Borenstein, inventor of the MIME email protocol and chief scientist Mimecast

“The maturation of the IoT will cause entirely new business models to emerge, just as the Internet did. We will see people turning to connected devices to sell things, including items that are currently "too small" to sell, thus creating a renewed interest in micropayments and alternate currencies. Street performers, for example, might find they are more successful if a passerby had the convenience of waving a key fob at their "donate here" sign. The IoT will complicate all aspects of security and privacy, causing even more organizations to outsource those functions to professional providers of security and privacy services.”

Mark Coderre, National Practice Director, OpenSky

“Attacks on connected cars, connected medical devices, and connected critical infrastructure have all hit the headlines in the recent past; and this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Internet of Things is proving to be a treasure trove for hackers. When developing networked devices, manufacturers are still placing more value on features than on security. "Security by design" must become an integral factor in development so that innovations win over increasingly security-conscious users. Additionally, the relevance of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI), as a part of a proactive information security program, will become essential for information security. In response to increasingly dynamic threat situations, it is critical for organizations to be able to identify evolving methods and emerging technology trends used by the cybercriminal, and then to continually assess their capability in this regard. Because many organizations don´t have access to internal specialists, they will need to turn to external experts from the CTI sector. Effective cyber security will require knowledge and understanding of the capabilities and intent of threat actors. Who are they? What do they want? What can they do? Organizations will define threat more specifically (i.e. less reliance on vague terms like "vulnerabilities"). We will see an emphasis on threat actors with means, motive, and opportunity being tracked. Understanding motive will become crucial for prioritizing resources.

Laurent Philonenko, CTO, Avaya

“Surge in connected devices will flood the network – the increasing volume of data and need for bandwidth for a growing number of IoT connected devices such as healthcare devices, security systems and appliances will drive traditional networks to the breaking point. Mesh topologies and Fabric-based technologies will quickly become adopted as cost-effective solutions that can accommodate the need for constant changes in network traffic.”

Lila Kee, Chief Product Officer and Vice President, Business Development, GlobalSign

“Prediction: PKI becomes ubiquitous security technology within the Internet of Things (IoT) market. It's hard to think of a consumer device that isn't connected to the Internet these days - from our baby monitors to our refrigerators to our fitness devices. With the increase of connected devices of course comes risk of exposing privacy and consumer data. But, what happens when industrial devices and critical infrastructure connect to the Internet and get hacked? The results can be catastrophic. Security and safety are real concerns for the Internet of Things (IoT) and especially in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Regarding security, the industrial world has been a bit of a laggard, but now equipment manufacturers are looking to build security in right at the design and development stages. Unless the security challenges of IIoT can be managed, the exciting progress that has been made in this area of connected devices will slow down dramatically. PKI has been identified as a key security technology in the IIoT space by the analyst community and organizations supporting the IIoT security standards. In 2016, we expect that PKI will become ubiquitous security technology within the IoT market. There will be an increased interest in PKI, how it plays in the IoT market and how it needs to advance and scale to meet the demands of billions of devices managed in the field.”

Lasse Andresen, CTO, ForgeRock

“Chip to cloud (or device to cloud) security protection will be the new normal As business technology advances, the security data chain continues to grow, presenting an increasing number of opportunities for hackers to break in. With most data chains now spanning the full spectrum of chip, device, network and cloud (plus all stages in between), many organizations are starting to realize a piecemeal approach to protection simply isn't effective. This realization is spurring the adoption of more 'chip to cloud' security strategies, starting at the silicon level and running right through to cloud security. In this model, all objects with online capabilities are secured the moment they come online, meaning their identity is authenticated immediately. In doing so, it eliminates any window hackers have to hijack the identity of unsecured objects, thus compromising the entire data chain via a single entry point.”

Thorsten Held, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, whiteCryption Corp.

“Ransomware, a means whereby a hacker takes over a device and demands a ransom to remove the restrictions, will creep into biomedical devices in 2016. To thwart life-threatening consequences, medical device manufacturers will be looking for diverse ways to address these types of security flaws using more stringent, agile security solutions against the malware threats.”

Sam Rehman, Chief Technology Officer, Arxan Technologies

“Security regulation will make a meaningful impact for medical and other IoT devices: Regulatory requirements have generally been viewed as helping to drive organizations to meet minimum security standards. However, the overall security effectiveness or impact of regulatory requirements has been nominal. We can expect to see a much more meaningful advancement in the rigor of security requirements laid down by the regulators in 2016. This is partly due to accelerated advancements in public-private threat intel-sharing, and the regulators' acknowledgement of the need to seek out cutting-edge threat data and security best practices from the organizations that are on the front lines of defending against them. For example, in IoT, the FDA is making significant improvements in beefing up minimum security requirements for medical devices, which could otherwise pose grave safety risks to people, care providers, and medical device manufacturers that depend on their trusted operation. Since the vertical markets are so intimately interconnected, we will also see more teeth behind enforcement of security requirements.

Marty P. Kamden, CMO, NordVPN.com

“While facing the major transformation of our daily lives because of IoT, we are not completely ready to face related security issues. Since IoT networks will significantly grow in 2016, privacy and security issues related to web-enabled devices will mirror this change. For example, in August of 2015 hackers remotely seized control of over a million Chrysler automobiles, showing ability of having the full control of the cars – activating the windshield wipers, turning the radio and air conditioning on or disengaging the car’s transmission. To start tackling increasing online security threats, there are simple security measures that every Internet user should learn about, one of them being VPN (Virtual Private Network). VPNs will be increasingly popular in 2016 as security and privacy issues online will become more prominent, encouraging people to start encrypting their devices' online data, securing transfer of sensitive data, etc. NordVPN, one of the most advanced VPN service providers on the market, 256-bit AES encryption, is available on 6 devices on one account and has zero log policy.”

Ian Worrall, CEO, Encrypted Labs, Inc.

"The Blockchain has the ability to transform business similar to the Internet. With IoT, a major issue inhibiting its growth is how to manage the vast amount of data that will be stored around it. I think the answer to this is by leveraging distributed system technologies such as permissioned-server networks (Private Blockchains) or maybe even utilizing the Bitcoin Blockchain. A key aspect of this is inter-corporate collaboration between the networks of big data companies. This is crucial because the larger a single datacenter (one company) becomes, the harder it is to manage & secure. To do so efficiently it would involve (in some cases) competitors working together. This not only facilitates the management of this data, but secures it more effectively through distributed storage encryption. The companies willing to collaborate will succeed, while those overly competitive to control the space will inevitably fail long-term and short-term are impeding industry growth.”

Trevor Daughney, EVP, INSIDE Secure

"IoT device makers are realizing that they need to secure IoT devices to protect their reputations and customers. In 2016, IoT device manufacturers will pivot from asking 'why is security needed' to asking 'how do I implement security.' They will look to control data access and protect data at-rest, in-motion and in-process using a combination of software and hardware security measures."

More thoughts on IoT security can be found in our post here.

Last week Gartner identified the Top 10 Internet of Things Technologies for 2017 and 2018.

Nick Jones, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, said, "The IoT demands an extensive range of new technologies and skills that many organizations have yet to master. A recurring theme in the IoT space is the immaturity of technologies and services and of the vendors providing them. Architecting for this immaturity and managing the risk it creates will be a key challenge for organizations exploiting the IoT. In many technology areas, lack of skills will also pose significant challenges."

Here are the top 10 IoT technologies for 2017 and 2018 according to Gartner:

IoT Security

The IoT introduces a wide range of new security risks and challenges to the IoT devices themselves, their platforms and operating systems, their communications, and even the systems to which they're connected. Security technologies will be required to protect IoT devices and platforms from both information attacks and physical tampering, to encrypt their communications, and to address new challenges such as impersonating "things" or denial-of-sleep attacks that drain batteries. IoT security will be complicated by the fact that many "things" use simple processors and operating systems that may not support sophisticated security approaches.

"Experienced IoT security specialists are scarce, and security solutions are currently fragmented and involve multiple vendors," said Mr. Jones. "New threats will emerge through 2021 as hackers find new ways to attack IoT devices and protocols, so long-lived "things" may need updatable hardware and software to adapt during their life span."

IoT Analytics

IoT business models will exploit the information collected by "things" in many ways — for example, to understand customer behavior, to deliver services, to improve products, and to identify and intercept business moments. However, IoT demands new analytic approaches. New analytic tools and algorithms are needed now, but as data volumes increase through 2021, the needs of the IoT may diverge further from traditional analytics.

IoT Device (Thing) Management

Long-lived nontrivial "things" will require management and monitoring. This includes device monitoring, firmware and software updates, diagnostics, crash analysis and reporting, physical management, and security management. The IoT also brings new problems of scale to the management task. Tools must be capable of managing and monitoring thousands and perhaps even millions of devices.

Low-Power, Short-Range IoT Networks

Selecting a wireless network for an IoT device involves balancing many conflicting requirements, such as range, battery life, bandwidth, density, endpoint cost and operational cost. Low-power, short-range networks will dominate wireless IoT connectivity through 2025, far outnumbering connections using wide-area IoT networks. However, commercial and technical trade-offs mean that many solutions will coexist, with no single dominant winner and clusters emerging around certain technologies, applications and vendor ecosystems.

Low-Power, Wide-Area Networks

Traditional cellular networks don't deliver a good combination of technical features and operational cost for those IoT applications that need wide-area coverage combined with relatively low bandwidth, good battery life, low hardware and operating cost, and high connection density. The long-term goal of a wide-area IoT network is to deliver data rates from hundreds of bits per second (bps) to tens of kilobits per second (kbps) with nationwide coverage, a battery life of up to 10 years, an endpoint hardware cost of around $5, and support for hundreds of thousands of devices connected to a base station or its equivalent. The first low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) were based on proprietary technologies, but in the long term emerging standards such as Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) will likely dominate this space.

IoT Processors

The processors and architectures used by IoT devices define many of their capabilities, such as whether they are capable of strong security and encryption, power consumption, whether they are sophisticated enough to support an operating system, updatable firmware, and embedded device management agents. As with all hardware design, there are complex trade-offs between features, hardware cost, software cost, software upgradability and so on. As a result, understanding the implications of processor choices will demand deep technical skills.

IoT Operating Systems

Traditional operating systems (OSs) such as Windows and iOS were not designed for IoT applications. They consume too much power, need fast processors, and in some cases, lack features such as guaranteed real-time response. They also have too large a memory footprint for small devices and may not support the chips that IoT developers use. Consequently, a wide range of IoT-specific operating systems has been developed to suit many different hardware footprints and feature needs.

Event Stream Processing

Some IoT applications will generate extremely high data rates that must be analyzed in real time. Systems creating tens of thousands of events per second are common, and millions of events per second can occur in some telecom and telemetry situations. To address such requirements, distributed stream computing platforms (DSCPs) have emerged. They typically use parallel architectures to process very high-rate data streams to perform tasks such as real-time analytics and pattern identification.

IoT Platforms

IoT platforms bundle many of the infrastructure components of an IoT system into a single product. The services provided by such platforms fall into three main categories: (1) low-level device control and operations such as communications, device monitoring and management, security, and firmware updates; (2) IoT data acquisition, transformation and management; and (3) IoT application development, including event-driven logic, application programming, visualization, analytics and adapters to connect to enterprise systems.

IoT Standards and Ecosystems

Although ecosystems and standards aren't precisely technologies, most eventually materialize as application programming interfaces (APIs). Standards and their associated APIs will be essential because IoT devices will need to interoperate and communicate, and many IoT business models will rely on sharing data between multiple devices and organizations.

Many IoT ecosystems will emerge, and commercial and technical battles between these ecosystems will dominate areas such as the smart home, the smart city and healthcare. Organizations creating products may have to develop variants to support multiple standards or ecosystems and be prepared to update products during their life span as the standards evolve and new standards and related APIs emerge.

If you’re a Gartner client, you can dive deeper into the topic here.

Photo Credit: GSMA

And so it begins, Mobile World Congress 2016, the annual confab in Barcelona where the telecommunications industry goes to beach themselves for a week.

As with any big event, day one kicks off with a flurry of announcements. Announced today are a bevy of new smartphones, 5G networks as the new frontier, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg making a surprise appearance to talk about virtual reality at Samsung’s event where they showed off Samsung Gear 360 which allows you to make your own virtual reality video with a 360 degree camera.

But what of IoT?  Here’s a rundown:

• In a sign of the future and the importance of the subject, the organizers of MWC introduced for the first time this year the Internet of Things (IoT) Pavilion.

• The organizing body of the show, GSMA, is introducing the Mobile IoT Initiative which has the first live demonstrations of Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) solutions in licensed spectrum. Visitors will experience a diverse range of solutions underpinned by three complementary technology standards known as Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT), Extended Coverage EGPRS (EC-EGPRS) and LTE Machine Type Communication (Cat-M). The Mobile IoT Initiative is supported by 30 of the world’s leading mobile operators, OEMs, chipset, module and infrastructure companies.

• The organizing body will also showcase several IOT innovations including a “Mobile IoT Vineyard” that shows how mobile technology is helping to keep grapevines and wine stocks at optimum levels.

• Global M2M Association (GMA) - The GMA will showcase a live demonstration of its Multi-Domestic Service, an innovative global M2M connectivity management solution that significantly simplifies the global deployment, management and operations of M2M and IoT services for large enterprises.

• Continuing it’s march on leading IoT, Samsung moved forward on advancing their Open IoT Ecosystem with a new partner program and commercial availability of the SAMSUNG ARTIK™ Platform. Samsung’s new Certified ARTIK Partner Program is designed to help developers and companies jump start their development and take their ideas to market faster by working with carefully selected professional service providers and design houses.

• GE also made an announcement to grow its partner base and expand its Predix platform footprint with the GE Digital Alliance Program. The company says that this is the first ever program dedicated to growing the digital industrial ecosystem. This new alliance program is designed to connect systems integrators, telecommunications service providers, independent software vendors, technology providers and resellers with the technology and digital industrial expertise of GE. GE alliance members will be able to train and certify their developers and begin building industrial apps with Predix, GE’s cloud platform for the Industrial Internet.

• Visa Inc. announced that it is expanding its Visa Ready program to include Internet of Things (IoT) companies, such as manufacturers of wearables, automobiles, appliances, public transportation services, clothing and almost any other connected device. The Visa Ready Program for IoT will allow emerging IoT companies to join with mobile device manufacturers to evaluate, develop and potentially adopt new payment methods that are already approved by Visa, and can help financial institutions and merchants drive growth by expanding the use and acceptance of electronic payments globally.

• AT&T will showcase its capabilities as a global integrated provider helping millions around the world connect with leading entertainment, mobile, high-speed Internet and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. Inside the GSMA Innovation City, visitors will be guided around AT&T solutions that connect consumers and businesses, including AT&T IoT solutions such as connected car, smart cities and real-life industrial IoT use cases.

• Recently acquired Jasper will be demonstrating how leading enterprises are using its global IoT service platform to drive real-time business transformation, add value for customers and secure their share of the multi-billion dollar IoT market.

• Sierra Wireless, with partners Axis, Parkeon and Valeo, will showcase its latest innovative solutions in scenarios including how connected parking meters can become multi-service kiosks and enable services such as couponing, city news updates and payment of parking fines.

If you’re at #MWC2016, leave us a comment and let us know what we missed in the IoT buzz.

Photo Credit: GSMA

We are in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution within the Industrial Manufacturing sector. Accenture & General Electric recently published a paper on the Industrial Internet that places spending at $500 billion by 2020 and forecasts growth to a whopping $15 trillion of global GDP by 2030. The Industrial Internet is disrupting almost all industries today with a revolution of possibilities and opportunities across the value chain. The third Industrial revolution ushered in the digital era, but Industry 4.0 has the vision to connect the digital to the analog world in a truly seamless fashion.

Overcoming the challenges of systems architectures of the past

As industrial systems grow larger, their architecture frequently needs to be updated to match the technology capabilities of today. Most industrial systems have been closed systems built on proprietary technology stacks, both the hardware and software. It was impossible to communicate with them: communication worked only within the systems’ own ecosystems. Interoperability has also been challenging, and at times nonexistent, due to incompatible interfaces even among parts of the same family of systems. These systems could analyze real time data and use historical data to make good decisions, but many were built with rigid interfaces that lacked the ability to exchange data with others outside their ecosystem.

Where will we go with Industry 4.0?

As physical and digital worlds come together via exponential growth in analog and digital integrations, those who implement manufacturing control systems will need to understand the complexities of Industry 4.0 and lead the way to simplify them. Most industrial solutions now have embedded control systems that are constantly monitoring and computing based on feedback, so managers can optimize the performance of manufacturing processes. The next step in the evolution is to converge physical and digital processes and data to create a more holistic view not only of the manufacturing process, but also the context in which it operates. Both heavily impact realized outcomes.

The ‘things’ are absolutely vital for the Industrial Internet of Things, but what makes them highly valuable and ‘smart’ is when they provide unique insights and context and inform action by communicating, cooperating and collaborating with each other. Each ‘thing’ works not on its own, but rather in a mesh with others to attain a singular purpose. This also makes ‘things’ more resilient to faults and outages. They can be tuned to use little communication overhead and work in a congested and constrained network. However, an infrastructure to support communication among ‘things’ and addressability over networks and channels must be established via an Integrator or a Gateway.

A key component of Industry 4.0 is the Smart Factory, which should be context aware to help people and machines understand the execution context of the task at hand. This is different from the feedback loop of control systems. Rather, in a Smart Factory, the machine knows the state of operation not just by the position, but also from data that is provided to it from other information sources. This helps workers on the factory floor focus on higher priority tasks within context. For example, if in a warehouse, the sorting system needs to be calibrated after every couple of days, the system will automatically initiate an auto-calibration when it knows that it has no pending activities. The calibration data could be derived from the manufacturer or a local system that maintains it.

Use Case: Applying Predictive Maintenance on Heavy-Duty Gas Turbines

The energy sector offers a good use case for Industrial IoT, and particularly with gas turbines. The primary purpose of a turbine is to generate power. The turbine itself is made up of rotors, blades, exhausts, inlets, brushes, shafts and a variety of control systems that manage fuel injection, power generation, etc. Each of these turbine elements has to be maintained from time to time, usually on a scheduled maintenance cycle. Any scheduled downtime of the turbine has to be managed; otherwise, it is not generating power. By combining data from the array of ‘things’ that can monitor the various parts of the turbine, the frequency of vibration of the blades and rotors, tensile and/or radial stress, and leakage control at the various seals, turbine operators gain insight into the overall turbine health and not just selected aspects. In addition, adding data on environmental conditions, such as temperature fluctuations, humidity, air quality, geography, and fuel quality, provides valuable context on the running condition of a turbine. For example, data on air quality can be used to predict when air filters need to be cleaned or changed. 

Turbine operators can collect and store data from each of the fleet’s turbines in an Asset Performance System. By applying statistical models and looking for patterns in the data, turbine operators can optimize maintenance scheduling and identify common fault areas in order to take corrective and/or preventive actions before an issue occurs. This results in lower maintenance costs and less turbine downtime, so turbine companies can generate more revenue, increase profitability, and deliver a better customer experience.

The impact of the Industrial Internet will be far greater and widespread than other industrial revolutions before it. Companies are beginning to realize the financial benefits and early mover advantage from implementing Industrial IoT, and we have only just started to scratch the surface of possibilities.

170,000 attendees from across the globe and 3,600 vendors gathered amongst 2.4 million net square feet of exhibit space debuting the latest products and services across the entire consumer tech ecosystem just concluded CES 2016.

It’s come a long way since spinning out of the Chicago Music show in 1967. Products that have debuted at CES include the videocassette recorder, the compact disc player, HDTV, Microsoft Xbox and smart appliances.

Each year there seems to be a new category in consumer electronics added to the mix. In 2015 the big buzzword was the Internet of Things and it’s weight carried over to 2016 with more than 1000 exhibitors unveiling IoT technologies. For a community like ours focused on the industrial side of the IoT, what does a consumer electronics show have to do with our world?

A lot actually.  

Here are the notable announcements from CES 2016:

WiFi HaLow

For industrial IoT heads this is probably the most notable announcement to come out of the show. The Wi-Fi Alliance® introduced a low power, long range standard dubbed Wi-Fi HaLow™ .

In the IoT space with billions of sensors to be placed everywhere, the industry is in need of a low power Wi-Fi solution. Wi-Fi HaLow will be a designation for products incorporating IEEE 802.11ah technology. Wi-Fi HaLow operates in frequency bands below one gigahertz, offering longer range, lower power connectivity to Wi-Fi certified products.

Edgar Figueroa, President and CEO of Wi-Fi Alliance said, “Wi-Fi HaLow is well suited to meet the unique needs of the Smart Home, Smart City, and industrial markets because of its ability to operate using very low power, penetrate through walls, and operate at significantly longer ranges than Wi-Fi today. Wi-Fi HaLow expands the unmatched versatility of Wi-Fi to enable applications from small, battery-operated wearable devices to large-scale industrial facility deployments – and everything in between.”

Many devices that support Wi-Fi HaLow are expected to operate in 2.4 and 5 GHz as well as 900 MHz, allowing devices to connect with Wi-Fi’s ecosystem of more than 6.8 billion installed devices. Like all Wi-Fi devices, HaLow devices will support IP-based connectivity to natively connect to the cloud, which will become increasingly important in reaching the full potential of the Internet of Things. Dense device deployments will also benefit from Wi-Fi HaLow’s ability to connect thousands of devices to a single access point.

The bad news? The Wi-Fi Alliance isn't planning on rolling out HaLow certifications until sometime in 2018, and even if it gets here, it might not be the de-facto standard. There are others vying for the crown.

AT&T

AT&T held a developer summit at the Palms Resort which was all about emerging technologies, products and services. A year ago, AT&T launched the M2X Data Service, a cloud-based data storage service for enterprise IoT developers. At CES they announced the commercial launch of Flow Designer, a cloud-based tool developed at the AT&T Foundry that lets IoT developers quickly build new applications. They also said that they are on track to have 50% of their software built on open source. They are working with OpenDaylight, OPNFV, ON.Lab, the Linux Foundation, OpenStack and others. Rachel King of ZDNet has an interview with AT&T President and & CEO Ralph de la Vega here.

Ericsson

Ericsson and Verizon announced joint activities to further the development and deployment of cellular low-power wide-area (LPWA) networking for a diverse range of IoT applications. Ericsson introduced three IoT solutions for smart homes and cities:

• Smart Metering as a Service puts consumers in control and enables utility companies to offer "smart" services to consumers in the future.

• User & IoT Data Analytics enables controlled access and exposure of data from cellular and non-cellular devices and creates value through cross-industry offerings.

• Networks Software 17A Diversifies Cellular for Massive IoT, supporting millions of IoT devices in one cell site, 90 percent reduced module cost, 10+ years battery life and 7-time cell coverage improvement.

IBM Watson

Last year, IBM announced a USD 3 Billion investment in Internet of Things, and in October, they announced plans to acquire The Weather Company, accelerating IBM's efforts in the IoT market that is expected to reach USD 1.7 trillion by 2020.

They furthered their commitment with five related IoT announcements at CES: Softbank, Whirpool, Under Armour, Pathway Genomics and Ford. What IBM does with Watson in the consumer space will carry over to the industrial space and vice versa. With the tremendous volumes of data from IoT, Watson’s advanced power of cognitive computing will be one way to exploit this new resource. Fortune’s Stacey Higginbotham has more here.

Intel

Lady GaGa aside, Intel made one announcement at CES which I think got through a lot clearer than Qualcomm’s 14 announcements! Rather than focus on technical aspects, Intel announced innovative technologies and collaborations aimed at delivering amazing experiences throughout daily life - which we often forget to do as we get enamored by the 1’s and 0’s. From unmanned aerial vehicles and wearables to new PCs and tablets, Intel made sure their chip was in it. On the industrial front was the DAQRI Smart Helmet, an augmented reality helmet for the industrial worker, powered by an Intel® Core™ M processor.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm made a mind-boggling 14 announcements in the CES time frame. Probably the most interesting was the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X5 LTE modem (9x07). Qualcomm said the chip has multimode capability and supports LTE Category 4 download speeds up to 150 Mbps. It’s designed to be used in a range of mobile broadband applications and in IoT use cases that demand higher data rates.

Samsung

The President and CEO of Samsung Electronics, BK Yoon, delivered the opening keynote speech CES, calling for greater openness and collaboration across industries to unlock the infinite possibilities of the Internet of Things. Mr. Yoon announced a timetable for making Samsung technology IoT-enabled. By 2017, all Samsung televisions will be IoT devices, and in five years all Samsung hardware will be IoT-ready. He also emphasized the importance of developers in building IoT and announced that Samsung will invest more than USD 100 million in its developer community in 2015.

ZigBee Alliance

The ZigBee Alliance, a non-profit association of companies creating open, global standards that define the Internet of Things for use in consumer, commercial and industrial applications, announced that it is working with the Thread Group on an end-to-end solution for IP-based IoT networks. The solution will become part of the ZigBee Alliance’s comprehensive set of product development specifications, technologies, and branding and certification programs.

I’m sure there were many more industrial Internet of Things announcements. Let me know what I missed in the comments section below.

Technophiles and dreamers unite in their joint vision of a future where our lives are connected via a network of devices that electronically talk both to each and to us. This intelligent design, often – and fondly – referred to as the 'Internet of Things', is a way to semi-automate everything from our homes to our workplaces to all kinds of fun and functional activities in between. While there are already glimpses of new ways to push the boundaries of cutting-edge communication, currently SMS messaging is slated to play a major role in how we live our day-to-day lives in a smarter way.

Housekeeping Reimagined

How many times have you forgotten to transfer wet clothes from the washer to the dryer and found yourself needing to rewash a stinky pile of long-sitting laundry? Perhaps you're notorious for not watering your plants, or maybe you're nagged by the idea that you've driven off and left the garage door up. As programming develops and device interconnectivity grows, you might get a text message from your smart flower pot or pre-programmed appliances alerting you to the error and giving you options as far as corrective action. Even better, the appliances' connection to the internet will allow them to guide you towards the proper amount of water for your plant or the temperature your fridge ideally should be at so you can make an educated decision about what steps to take next. If it sounds too good to be true, think again; by 2019, there will be 1.9 billion home devices connected across the IoT to a tune of some $490 billion in revenue.

Medical Milestones

The Internet of Things holds great promise for the medical industry. Geoff Zawolkow, CEO of Lab Sensor Solutions, says, "Sensors are changing the face of medicine. Mobile sensors are used to automatically diagnosis disease and suggest treatment, bringing us closer to having a Star Trek type Tricorder. Also mobile sensors will ensure the quality of our drugs, diagnostic samples and other biologically sensitive materials through remote monitoring, tracking and condition correction." SMS may connect medical professionals in their quest for quicker and more accurate diagnoses, but there are also real-world applications for everyday use as well; there are already pill boxes that will text you a reminder if you forget to take your daily dose, and a clever wearable gadget could send an alert to your phone if your heart rate or blood pressure read abnormally.

Security

We all seek to protect our home and loved ones, and the Internet of Things is making that easier and easier. Smart locks with electronic sensors can be activated – or deactivated, should your child arrive home to an empty house and find themselves unable to remember the entry code – by text, and should a break-in occur, emergency services and other chosen parties will get an SMS update as well.

Promoting Independent Living

The Internet of Things can help elderly relatives live alone longer by providing a constant connection between them and their caregivers. A network of wireless sensors placed around the home and even worn on the person can track, log, and transmit a person's daily activities and alert the proper authorities if there's a heat flare (fire), lack of regular activity (sudden illness or a fall), or even a fever or elevated heart rate. The alert threshold can be adjusted to maintain privacy and allow for discretion in all but certain circumstances deemed text-worthy by those involved. The result is greater independence for our parents and grandparents and peace of mind for those who love them the most.

Streamlining Inventory and Ordering

Running out of milk or eggs at home is inconvenient enough, but in the restaurant industry inventory mistakes can be practically catastrophic. Connected coolers, freezers, pantries, and storage containers send an automated SMS message when a product drops below a set level, with embedded data that can be plugged into an ordering system or forwarded right on to the distributor to maximize efficiency.

Experts say that there may be as many as 30 billion devices in the collective Internet of Things by the year 2020 – a huge web of connected devices that work in concert to make our lives bigger, better, and more efficient. Read more information about the impending electronic evolution and prepare yourself for a brave new world.

Internet of Things (IoT) has garnered massive attention across the tech industry and portends major productivity advances for businesses of all types. The coming year holds significant promise as, potentially, the year in which actual (i.e., not simply existing products and services rechristened as IoT) business and industrial IoT deployments hit the mainstream.

Here are a few predictions from Bsquare.

1.  The fragmentation of IoT will gain speed

The IoT market is so broad that research data analyzing size and growth aspects of the market become almost meaningless. In fact, with such a broadly defined market, saying the IoT market will generate x trillions of dollars of economic impact is analogous to saying the same about the “technology” market. Interesting maybe, but hardly actionable for buyers, investors, suppliers or other market participants.

Going forward, the industry will begin to break the IoT market apart into subsets that do actually fit together. Many of these discrete markets may even dispense with the IoT acronym.

At the highest level this segmentation is already occurring. Consumer and business IoT, for example, are discrete markets having very little in common. Going further, and just looking at business IoT, segments are emerging for devices and device software, cloud services, machine learning, predictive analytics, and others that allow trends to be more accurately identified and tracked.

2.  Business IoT will see that fastest pace of innovation

While interesting developments are occurring in the consumer space, and these will continue to garner disproportionate attention, the most meaningful innovation will occur on the business side of the market. This is primarily due to the fact that while consumers may purchase IoT products for purely personal reasons, businesses embark on IoT initiatives with specific business objectives in mind, most of which translate directly or indirectly into improved financial outcomes. As a result, business IoT systems are considerably more complex and multifaceted, in many cases touching many core operational systems, yet afford more opportunities to innovate.

Advances in on-board device logic, machine learning, complex rule processing, predictive analytics, as well as IoT platforms in general, will raise the bar in terms of business outcome improvements that can be derived with IoT.

3.  A movement will be launched to capitalize the ‘o’ in IoT

Acronyms have long been smiled upon by technology people. They contribute to verbal economy and improve communications efficiency. For example, saying “TCP” requires five fewer syllables than “transmission control protocol.” And while there is no convention for the structure of acronyms, they are typically all caps in order to distinguish them from abbreviations.

However, starting with voice over IP (VoIP), technology acronyms started to get playful with capitalization. This was followed by fill-in-the-blank-as-a-service (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, etc.) and, among others, IoT. The rationale for this was undoubtedly that words like “over,” “as,” “a,” and “of” are not important enough to warrant capitalization. This wouldn’t be a problem, and might even by slightly amusing, if it weren’t for the fact that the acronym most frequently appearing near IoT is ROI (return on investment). How do we account for the fact that “on” warrants a capital “O” while “of” has to get by with a small “o”?

4.  Analyst estimates will start to decline… but become more realistic

Stupendously ridiculous numbers have been bandied about regarding the potential size of the IoT market, the number of things participating, and total economic impact. The zeal to outdo one another quickly led to numbers in the trillions (one large company forecast economic impact at $82 trillion; by way of reference, nominal gross product for the planet earth is roughly $74 trillion (to be fair, the author didn’t specify a planet)). It seemed only a matter of time before someone would finally break out the “Q” word. E.g., “global economic value attributable to IoT is expected to eclipse two quadrillion dollars by the year… .”

As we get closer to reality many of these forecasts have been ratcheted down, in some cases by an order of magnitude. We expect these refinements will continue but at the same time become more realistic. In some ways, the progression of market forecasts follows the shape of Gartner’s well-known hype curve—progressively more outlandish estimates followed by a crashing back down to earth and finally settling into more realistic and sustainable ranges.

5.  2016 will be the year actual business IoT deployments accelerate

Not unlike any new technology, there is a propensity among suppliers to rechristen products and/or services they already offer using terminology associated with that new technology. Hence it might appear that the business-oriented IoT market is already going gangbusters when in fact it’s still in its infancy. This tendency is understandable and, in some cases, not completely without merit but what is truly interesting for businesses are complete systems where intelligent devices generate data that is captured by enterprise systems in order to automatically drive desired business outcomes. This, more than anything else, is why IoT is not even remotely the same as M2M.

For possibly the first time, 2016 will mark the beginning of complete, large scale IoT systems that directly and automatically link devices with business outcomes.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece asking “Do you believe the hype?” It called out an unlikely source of hype: the McKinsey Global Institute. The predictions for IoT in the years to come are massive. Gartner believes IoT is a central tenet of top strategic technology trends in 2016. Major technology players are also taking Big Swings. Louis Columbus, writing for Forbes, gathered all the 2015 market forecasts and estimates here.

So what better way to end the year and look into the future than by asking the industry for their predictions for the IoT in 2016. We asked for predictions aimed at the industrial side of the IoT. What new technologies will appear? Which companies will succeed or fail? What platforms will take off? What security challenges will the industry face? Will enterprises finally realize the benefits of IoT? We heard from dozens of startups, big players and industry soothsayers. In no particular order, here are the Internet of Things Predictions for 2016.

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Photo Credit: Sean Creamer via Flickr

Nathaniel Borenstein, inventor of the MIME email protocol and chief scientist Mimecast

“The maturation of the IoT will cause entirely new business models to emerge, just as the Internet did. We will see people turning to connected devices to sell things, including items that are currently "too small" to sell, thus creating a renewed interest in micropayments and alternate currencies. Street performers, for example, might find they are more successful if a passerby had the convenience of waving a key fob at their "donate here" sign. The IoT will complicate all aspects of security and privacy, causing even more organizations to outsource those functions to professional providers of security and privacy services.”

Adam Wray, CEO, Basho

"The deluge of Internet of Things data represents an opportunity, but also a burden for organizations that must find ways to generate actionable information from (mostly) unstructured data. Organizations will be seeking database solutions that are optimized for the different types of IoT data and multi-model approaches that make managing the mix of data types less operationally complex.”

Geoff Zawolkow, CEO, Lab Sensor Solutions

“Sensors are changing the face of medicine. Mobile sensors are used to automatically diagnosis disease and suggest treatment, bringing us closer to having a Star Trek type Tricorder. Also mobile sensors will ensure the quality of our drugs, diagnostic samples and other biologically sensitive materials through remote monitoring, tracking and condition correction.”

Zach Supalla, CEO, Particle

“2016 isn't the Year of IoT (yet)- It's A Bump in the Road. The industry has been claiming it’s the year of IoT for the last ​five years - let’s stop calling it the year of the IoT and let's start to call it the year of experimentation. 2016 will be the year that we recognize the need for investment, but we’re still deeply in the experimental phase. 2016 will be the bump in the road year - but at the end of it, we’ll have a much better idea of how experiments should be run, and how organizations can “play nicely” within their own walls to make IoT a reality for the business.”

Borys Pratsiuk, Ph.D, Head of R&D Engineering, Ciklum

"The IoT in medicine in 2016 will be reflected in deeper consumption of the biomedical features for non-invasive human body diagnostics. Key medical IoT words for next year are the following: image processing, ultrasound, blood analysis, gesture detection, integration with smart devices. Bluetooth and WiFi will be the most used protocols in the integration with mobile."

Brian T. Patterson, President, EMerge Alliance US Representative, International Electrotechnical Council

“IoT to Enable an Enernet 2016 will see the IoT starting to play a major role in the evolution of a new, more resilient, efficient, flexible and sustainable 21st Century electric energy platform. IoT connected sensors and microcontrollers will enable the effective and efficient management of a true mesh network of building and community level microgrids, which in turn will enable the greater use of distributed renewable energy sources like solar, wind, bio fuel micro-turbines and fuel cells. The convergence of data networks and physical energy grids will give rise to what will become the Enernet, a data driven transactional energy network.”

Chris Rommel, Executive VP, IoT & Embedded Technology, VDC Research

“PaaS Solution Evolution to Cannibalize IoT Platform Opportunity: The landscape of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions is changing rapidly. In 2015, leading PaaS providers IBM, Oracle, and SAP threw their hats into the “IoT platform” ring. As quickly as the value of PaaS solutions had been placed on the consumerization and user experiences of development platform offerings, premiums have now been placed on the ease of back-end integrations. However, the value associated with time to market in the Internet of Things marketplace is too high. IoT solution development and engineering organizations still want the flexible benefits offered by PaaS development, but they also require a breadth of out-of-the-box integrations to mitigate the downstream engineering and deployment hassles caused by heterogeneous IoT systems and networks topologies. The desire and need for enterprise organizations to tightly integrate deployed systems' operations with enterprise business functions are reshaping PaaS selection. The need for tight, out-of-the-box integrations extends beyond the back-end, however. Bi-directional integration is critical. The heterogeneous nature of the IoT and wide range of device form factors, components and functions is too complex and costly to rely on bespoke integrations. As such, we expect the aforementioned PaaS leaders to accelerate their ecosystem development efforts in 2016. Although we likely won’t see any real winners yet emerge in the IoT PaaS space, I do expect that the investments made by the aforementioned large players to threaten the market opportunity available to smaller IoT-focused platform vendors like Arrayent and Carriots.”

Laurent Philonenko, CTO, Avaya

“Surge in connected devices will flood the network – the increasing volume of data and need for bandwidth for a growing number of IoT connected devices such as healthcare devices, security systems and appliances will drive traditional networks to the breaking point. Mesh topologies and Fabric-based technologies will quickly become adopted as cost-effective solutions that can accommodate the need for constant changes in network traffic.”

Lila Kee, Chief Product Officer and Vice President, Business Development, GlobalSign

“Prediction: PKI becomes ubiquitous security technology within the Internet of Things (IoT) market. It's hard to think of a consumer device that isn't connected to the Internet these days - from our baby monitors to our refrigerators to our fitness devices. With the increase of connected devices of course comes risk of exposing privacy and consumer data. But, what happens when industrial devices and critical infrastructure connect to the Internet and get hacked? The results can be catastrophic. Security and safety are real concerns for the Internet of Things (IoT) and especially in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Regarding security, the industrial world has been a bit of a laggard, but now equipment manufacturers are looking to build security in right at the design and development stages. Unless the security challenges of IIoT can be managed, the exciting progress that has been made in this area of connected devices will slow down dramatically. PKI has been identified as a key security technology in the IIoT space by the analyst community and organizations supporting the IIoT security standards. In 2016, we expect that PKI will become ubiquitous security technology within the IoT market. There will be an increased interest in PKI, how it plays in the IoT market and how it needs to advance and scale to meet the demands of billions of devices managed in the field.”

IoT Central members can see all the predictions here. Become a member today here. 

Earlier this week Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen announced that he was teaming up with the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to offer a $50 million prize to the winner of a “Smart City” competition aimed at promoting high-tech solutions to traffic snarls.

The aim is to show what is possible when communities use technology to connect transportation assets into an interactive network. The Smart City Challenge will concentrate federal resources into one medium-sized city, selected through a nationwide competition. Funding of up to $40 million in funding will go to one mid-sized city that puts forward bold, data-driven ideas to improve lives by making transportation safer, easier and more reliable. DOT will partner with Vulcan, Paul Allen’s venture arm, to offer an additional $10 million to the winning city to support infrastructure for Electric Vehicles.

Photo: Courtesy of Cisco via Flickr

February is the deadline to submit proposals for transit innovations and DOT’s experts will select five proposals as finalists. Each of the finalists will receive $100,000 in federal funding for further development, and the winner would be announced by next June. The competition is open to U.S. mid-sized cities, which is defined as cities with a 2010 census population between 200,000 and 850,000. You can see the guidelines here.

Fifty million dollars may not sound like much compared to overall spending on transportation, but for cities of this size it’s a great start for creating a smarter city.

This week’s announcement is one of many smart city competitions announced over the years, and surely there will be more to come. Cities are where the majority of people will live and by 2050 some estimates predict that as many as seven out of 10 people on Earth will live in an urban area. The continued population increases will exceed the capacity of human administrators.

Cities will have to get a whole lot smarter.

This is why you are seeing more and more contests for cities to get smarter, and for them to be more open.  Witness cities like Glasgow who won the UK’s Future Cities competition, Barcelona’s Smart City ecosystem, India’s Smart City Challenge, the Obama Administration's Smart City challenge, and New York’s efforts to build a smart city.

What this means is that sensors will be woven into every aspect of daily life. By 2020, the number of thermostats, pressure gauges, accelerometers, acoustic microphones, cameras, meters and other micro-electromechanical measuring devices linked to the Internet is predicted to reach 50 billion worldwide, a number predicted by Cisco.

Think solar powered WiFi connected trash cans to let rubbish collectors know when they are full, sensors to alert public works directors of clogged sewers, traffic cameras connected to an IP network to notify engineers in a central location of mounting traffic jams, air quality sensors to monitor pollution and rooftop acoustics sensors triangulating sounds of gunshots.  

These contests are a way to drive industry towards a new era of more efficient and responsive government, driven by real-time data. The role of the IOT will also drive new economic opportunity and business development, centered around the creation, analysis and intelligent use of these data feeds. The benefits are many: increased cost-savings, bolstered civic engagement, and strengthened public health and safety.

Cheers to more contests and to the winners, which will be all of us.

Further reading: Wall Street Journal Special Report: As World Crowds In, Cities Become Digital Laboratories

I recently shared the Top 10 Books to Read Now on IoT. In an attempt to keep everyone smarter and share resources in the most simple way, I created the ever ubiquitous listicle by compiling what I believe are the Top 50 IoT people to follow on Twitter. These are, as far as I can tell, real people and not brands. 

How did I compile this list? No hard data science here, just good old grunt work from researching, reading and talking with people over the last few months. If you have any suggestions or if I missed an important person, please leave a comment. Or better yet, tweet to me @DavidOro.

If you make it to the bottom of this list, I provide an easy way for you to follow them all with just one click.

Without further adieu, the Top 50 in no particular order.

1. @gigastacey - Stacey Higginbotham. OK, I put Stacey Higginbotham first on purpose cause I like her and for the fact that she’s been reporting on IoT or years and also hosts the popular podcast iotpodcast.com

2. @Kevin_Ashton Credited with coining the term “Internet of Things”

3. @mjcavaretta Michael Cavaretta, Manager, Connected Vehicle Analytics, Ford Motor Co.

4. @techguyadam  Adam IoT, Content Editor for http://www.appcessories.co.uk

5. @chrismatthieu Chris Matthieu, Director IoT Engineering at Citrix

6. @GilPress Gill Press, claims to have launched the #BigData conversation

7. @CB_Telzerow Alex Telzerow, Editor-in-Chief COMPUTER BILD

8. @JonBruner Director of hardware and IoT @OreillyMedia

9. @timoelliott Timo Elliott, Innovation Evangelist at SAP

10. @cgiorgi Cédric Giorgi Head of Startup Relations, IoT Evangelist @sigfox

IoT Central members can see the full list here. Become a member today here. 

At IoT Central we aim to cover all things industrial and IoT. Our site is segmented into five channels: Platforms, Apps & Tools, Data, Security and Case Studies. If you’re going to connect everything in the world to the Internet you should expect to cover a lot. That means plenty of reading, sharing and discussing.  

To tackle the reading part we reached out to our peers and friends and put together the 10 best books to read now on IoT. From theoretical to technical, we tried to find the most important and current reading while throwing in one or two relevant classics.

Below is the list we compiled. What books would you recommend?

Shaping Things

By Bruce Sterling

I first came across Bruce Sterling’s name when he wrote the November 1996 Wired cover story on Burning Man. I happened to attend the desert arts festival for the first time that year and Bruce’s prose nailed the the experience. I’ve been a fan of his ever since. "Shaping Things is about created objects and the environment, which is to say, it's about everything," says Bruce. This is a great higher level book that looks at the technosocial transformation needed to understand our relationship between the Internet of Things and the environment in which it exists.

The Hardware Startup

By Renee DiResta, Brady Forrest, Ryan Vinyard

Consumer Internet startups seem to get all the media ink these days - think AirBnB, Instagram, What’sApp, Uber. But many forget that much of the technological innovation began with hardware - think Fairchild Semiconductor, Xerox PARC and the stuff that came out of IBM. With an emphasis on ‘Things,’ IoT is set to usher in a new era of hardware startups and any entrepreneur in this space should find this book to be a valuable read.

IoT M2M Cookbook

By Harald Nauman

If IoT devices can’t communicate, you’re not going to get much use out of them. Someone pointed me to Harald Naumann’s book IOT/M2M Cookbook. Harold is an M2M evangelist with a primary interest in implementation of wireless applications. His blog is chocked full of technical tips on wireless communications.

IoT Central members can see the full list here. Become a member today here. 

Summary:  This is my favorite IoT story. We are so used to IoT platforms being physical objects that we forget about the potential for biologics.  In terms of direct economic reward little will compare to this story about the IoT and cows.

This is my favorite IoT story which I first heard from Joseph Sirosh, CVP of Machine Learning for Microsoft at the spring Strata convention in San Jose.  We are so used to IoT platforms being physical objects like cars or thermostats or gaming consoles that we forget about the potential for biologics.  Of course FitBit will immediately come to mind for human beings but in terms of direct economic reward little will compare to this story about the IoT and cows.

The setting is Japan but it could just as easily have been Iowa.  The players are Fujitsu who developed this system and Microsoft Azure providing the NoSQL DB on which it runs.

The opportunity requires seeing a dairy farm as a simple manufacturing environment with cows and feed coming in one end and milk products coming out the other.  The immediate problem for the farmer is replacing or adding to his production capacity, the cows.

Dairy cattle are largely ‘produced’ by artificial insemination and we’ve been doing that long enough that we can get a 70% conception rate, but only if the procedure occurs when the cow is in estrus.  That proves much harder to predict since it mostly relies on the farmer’s experience-based intuition which turns out isn’t all that good.  In fact, farmers only get it right statistically about 55% of the time meaning that the true pregnancy rate is only 39%.

So Fujitsu reasoned if estrus detection could be made perhaps 95% accurate the pregnancy rate would go up to 67% or a whopping 70% improvement in performance.  But estrus detection isn’t all that easy since Bessie is only in estrus about once every 21 days; estrus lasts only 12 to 18 hours, and just to make it that much more difficult, usually occurs between 10 pm and 8 am, just when the poor exhausted farmer is asleep.

So first let’s talk about how this all turned out.  In the chart below the green line represents the number of steps normally taken by a cow and the yellow line represents the steps taken by a cow in estrus.  It turns out that the onset of estrus can be detected because Bessie starts doing a little dance.  The optimum time for artificial insemination is 16 hours later.  And as a very valuable added bonus it turns out that AI performed in the first two hours of the window has a much higher probability of producing a female which of course is what you want for a milk cow.

Fujitsu equipped the herd with battery powered pedometers to detect the number of steps, wirelessly transmits that information to a MS Azure DB where it’s analyzed, and notifies the farmer via mobile phone app when the time is right.  Pretty remarkable.

In field testing, over a group of 11 dairy farms, the farmers achieved annual increases in herd size, when compared with historical methods that averaged 12% and ranged upwards to 31%.

If you’re a farmer that’s all you really need to know.  But if you’re a data scientist it’s the part of the story that isn’t told above where the magic happens.

When conceiving this idea that estrus can be detected by some combination of measurable biologic factors that the cow will demonstrate, as data scientist we can only imagine the amount of poking and prodding the test cows must have endured as Fujitsu built up its data base.  I imagine there must have been multiple body temperature, blood chemistry, waste and urine chemistry, and who knows what else that was originally fed into the hopper to build the model.  Remember that IoT is a classic two step data science process.  Gather and analyze data and use classical predictive modeling techniques to find a signal in the data that predicts the desired outcome, estrus.  I imagine the data scientist at Fujitsu must have been overjoyed to find something as simple as the number of steps since it could have been much messier.

The data which is found to be predictive, the steps, is then gathered in the production environment via the pedometers and scored via the predictive models to signal the farmer that Bessie is ready to get busy.

As a bonus, Fujitsu claims that it can also detect as many as ten different diseases using the same technique.  If you’d like to see Joseph Sirosh tell the story it’s available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY0mxwySaSo.

October 27, 2015

Bill Vorhies, President & Chief Data Scientist – Data-Magnum - © 2015, all rights reserved.

About the author:  Bill Vorhies is President & Chief Data Scientist at Data-Magnum and has practiced as a data scientist and commercial predictive modeler since 2001.  Bill is also Editorial Director for Data Science Central.  He can be reached at:

Bill@Data-Magnum.com or Bill@datasciencecentral.com

This week at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2015 upwards of 10,000 CIOs and business technology professionals from around the world are gathering to talk all things IT. Gartner regularly polls their clients and today released the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2016.

Gartner defines a strategic technology trend as one with the potential for significant impact on the organization. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to the business, end users or IT, the need for a major investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

As this community would expect, IoT dominates the majority of the list.

In this latest report, everything is a device and the general idea is that the digital mesh is a dynamic network linking various endpoints.

IoT related trends include:

The Device Mesh

The device mesh refers to an expanding set of endpoints people use to access applications and information or interact with people, social communities, governments and businesses. The device mesh includes mobile devices, wearable, consumer and home electronic devices, automotive devices and environmental devices — such as sensors in the Internet of Things (IoT).

Ambient User Experience

While this trend focuses on augmented and virtual reality, IoT sensors play a key role in how this is implemented.

Information of Everything

Everything in the digital mesh produces, uses and transmits information. Advances in semantic tools such as graph databases as well as other emerging data classification and information analysis techniques will bring meaning to the often chaotic deluge of information.

Advanced Machine Learning

Gartner explores deep neural nets (DNNs), (an advanced form of machine learning particularly applicable to large, complex datasets) and claims this is what makes smart machines appear "intelligent." DNNs enable hardware- or software-based machines to learn for themselves all the features in their environment, from the finest details to broad sweeping abstract classes of content.

Autonomous Agents and Things

Gartner Research Fellow David Cearley says, "Over the next five years we will evolve to a postapp world with intelligent agents delivering dynamic and contextual actions and interfaces. IT leaders should explore how they can use autonomous things and agents to augment human activity and free people for work that only people can do. However, they must recognize that smart agents and things are a long-term phenomenon that will continually evolve and expand their uses for the next 20 years."

Adaptive Security Architecture

Security and IoT should go hand-in-hand. Gartner says that relying on perimeter defense and rule-based security is inadequate, especially as organizations exploit more cloud-based services and open APIs for customers and partners to integrate with their systems.

Advanced System Architecture, Mesh App and Service Architecture

These are three of the ten trends that I’m summarizing into one. All of these require more computing power and new ways of deploying software. Say goodbye to the monolithic approach and welcome agility. Application teams must create new modern architectures to deliver agile, flexible and dynamic cloud-based applications with agile, flexible and dynamic user experiences that span the digital mesh.

Internet of Things Platforms

IoT platforms complement the mesh app and service architecture and Mr. Cearley rounds out the trends by stating, "Any enterprise embracing the IoT will need to develop an IoT platform strategy, but incomplete competing vendor approaches will make standardization difficult through 2018.”

Lots of work to still do. Further reading here.

IoT practitioners are at the forefront of their company's digital initiatives. But is the rest of your company ready for its digital moment? The expectations are high in the C-Suite for digital transformations, but there's still more talk than action for many companies.

New research by McKinsey Institute suggests only 17% of corporate boards are participating in strategy for big data or digital initiatives. The good news is almost half of big companies have managed to get their CEOs personally involved, up from 23 percent in 2012.

Other findings from the survey include:

• The most common hurdle to meeting digital priorities, executives say, is insufficient talent or leadership.

• Across the C-Suite, 71% expect that over the next three years, digital trends and initiatives will result in greater top-line revenues for their business, and large shares expect their profitability will grow.

• More than half of executives say that, in response to digital, their companies have adapted products, services, and touchpoints to better address customer needs.

• Executives most often cite analytics and data science as the area where their organizations have the most pressing needs for digital talent, followed by mobile development and user experience.

• Executives who report ample organizational support for adopting risky digital initiatives are twice as likely to work for a high-performing company as executives reporting resistance to risky initiatives due to fear of failure.

• Forty-seven percent say cutting-edge digital work helps them attract and retain digital talent.

• Companies’ priorities vary across industries, reflecting key sources of value in each sector: big data is a top priority in healthcare, for example, while automation is a greater focus in manufacturing (see graphic below).

The digital interconnection of billions of devices is today’s most dynamic business opportunity and at present, the Internet of Things remains a wide-open playing field for enterprises and digital strategy. According to the study, buy-in from the C-Suite and aligning with corporate culture and objectives is key to digital success.

You can read the complete survey here.

It is said that there are 100,000 freighters on the seas and that 90% of everything you have has come via container ship. The first time I saw Hong Kong Harbour from my swank room at the JW Marriott what struck me most was the number of container ships. As I scanned the waters I counted several dozen of the floating giants and imagined everything onboard was coming out of China and going somewhere on the planet.

Photo Credit: Andrew Smith via Flickr

Once at its destination port a gantry crane unloads the containers and places them either on a truck or a rail car. Then the goods are sent off to their respective warehouses, where another delivery vehicle most likely takes it to another vendor or supplier where it might eventually end up in your garage. Just thinking about this one aspect of transportation and logistics is mind boggling. And it’s perfect for IoT.

The fine folks at Deloitte University Press have written a wonderful overview on IoT considerations for the shipping and logistics industries. Entitled, “Shipping smarter: IoT opportunities in transport and logistics,” the report highlights that while companies in transport and logistics (T&L) have always been data-driven, with specific applications like real-time tracking of shipments, warehouse-capacity optimization, predictive asset maintenance, route optimization, improved last-mile delivery, and more, they still have a huge opportunity ahead of them in IoT.

The increasing number of connected devices, embedded sensors, and analytics technologies will only increase the data and accelerate. This will lead to more efficient use of transport infrastructure, better engagement with customers, and more informed decision making. The report has four recommendations for T&L and IoT, but what I found most thought provoking was their framework that captures the series and sequence of activities by which organizations create value from information: the Information Value Loop (see below).

You can find the full report here. Further reading on the subject is listed after the graphic.

Further Reading

• Big Data Analytics and Supply Chain Management - http://bit.ly/1KU0lOZ

• Sensor Applications Support the IoT: Part 1 Smart Transport - http://bit.ly/1Kt4YNZ

• How IoT Based Analytics Will Drive Future Supply Chain Operations - http://bit.ly/1OhOOJE

• Top technology trends in supply chain & logistics industry - http://bit.ly/1Lk6Bhw

• The Industrial Internet Comes to the Loading Docks - http://bit.ly/1iSEHOE