Industrial

The Industrial Internet Consortium’s Reference Architecture helps connect the many dots needed for the IoT to work from a technology and business perspective. Check out the recently added documentation. It’s must-read material for anyone developing an IoT solution and wanting to present the value using generally understood terms.

The Internet of Things marketplace has big-name players—Intel IoT, IBM Watson, SAP, GE, Google and many others. The market potential for all companies is predicted to be enormous. According to Gartner, IoT vendors will earn more than $309 billion by 2020, with most of those earnings coming from services. As a solution provider, you probably have existing relationships with many of the leaders. But the IoT market is the wild west, and a crop of lesser-known IoT companies are stepping into the game, making headway in vertical ecosystems.

Hands-free technology is on the rise in industrial applications, as it quickly connects workers with pertinent information in a matter of seconds. Even though the creation and application of smart glasses isn’t particularly new, private partnerships have led to the development of smart glasses that can transform daily operations in the workforce while decreasing operational costs and increasing worker productivity.

The IoT promises exciting new business models that are as compelling as the benefits of reducing costs and improving efficiencies. By leveraging your ecosystem and re-imagining your business, solutions providers can take advantage of a market that is changing everything.

Intel’s acquisition of Mobileye for an eye-popping $15.3 billion is still not a surprise given the importance of automobiles as the next technology innovation platform. Specializing in making sense out of visual data with the goal of making driving safer and eventually autonomous, Mobileye has been focused on automotive safety for 17 years. Once again Intel has made it clear that it sees automotive systems as a critical part of the IoT.

Even though finding the perfect home can be a long (and often expensive) process, the rise in 3D printing of homes could be the solution, as several 3D homes have been constructed in 48 hours or less. Printing in 3D originally began as a mechanism for creating small replicas of various products and objects, such as 3D models of organs for medical research and health care delivery. But now it is drastically revolutionizing the housing, construction and automobile industries.

The world of IoT is brimming with forecasts and predictions, with all estimates pointing to a rapidly expanding market composed of thousands of different devices sending petabytes of daily data through the network. Gartner released its top 10 IoT technologies list, which includes the emergence of technologies and ecosystems such as smart homes, smart cities and healthcare. For the solution provider, the challenge is to identify the high-margin hot spots of technology and become the go-to expert.

The presence of drones to conduct human-like tasks, such as food deliveries and aerial photography, is increasingly becoming the new norm. But several applications of this innovative technology can now do more than “routine” tasks—drones can save lives and prevent health risks from natural disasters as well.