IoT: Big-Picture Perspective

4. Key Industries

It’s no surprise that manufacturing and industrial automation industries, like mining, continue to lead the way in IoT. These industries have a long and proud tradition in sensor technology and automation; IoT is simply the next logical step on a progressive journey.

However, we’re also seeing machine builders increasingly embrace IoT. What do I mean by machine builders? Effectively, companies that provide their customers with an integrated turnkey solution, consisting of our hardware and their IP. Take the spectrometry world, where you have specialist lab instruments, packaged with proprietary software, sitting on either a Dell Technologies’ edge device or an appliance server, with the software and hardware working together to measure the chemical, physical and biological components of liquids like blood, beer or wine. (Quick aside, for those of you who are wine connoisseurs, the good news is that this will help the vineyard scientifically determine the optimum time to pick the grapes, but more on this later).

5. Industry Collaboration Is The Glue

Of course, challenges remain, and as a leader in the industry, it’s important that we help make the IoT journey easier. Back in 2017, we helped launch the EdgeX Foundry, an open source project within the Linux Foundation. This was all about developing an open framework for interoperability between IoT devices and applications. The project has seen a steady increase in the number of backing organizations and developers contributing across the globe, in addition to our own ongoing inputs. This has certainly helped provide answers to many of the open IoT questions.

Maybe you run marathons to keep fit or relax? Well, if you compare an IoT project to a decent run, the EdgeX Foundry will bring you within sight of the finishing line, delivering all the core building blocks you need. However, if the project is complex, you may need a bit of a leg-up for the last few miles. This is exactly why we invested over $1 billion in IoT research in 2017, and have provided funding to new companies like Nexiot that specialize in smart sensors, big data algorithms and ultra-low-power embedded technology.

In summary, the big trends I see are edge computing, KOTS, open standards, flexibility and industry collaboration. While there have been huge advances over the last three years, I believe that the best is yet to come. A picture paints a thousand words, so watch this space for a series of follow up blogs focused on interesting customer IoT use cases.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.