Experts Explore the Ways IoT Is Disrupting American Industry
A panel of pros from all corners of the tech world share their insights into the future of business as well as both the benefits and challenges of IoT adoption.
What is an emerging trend within the IoT industry that readers should be aware of?
Jim Fusaro: As adoption spreads, decision-makers are becoming more open to IoT investments. This lower barrier to entry brings positive effects, such as more opportunity for smaller business cases, and negative consequences, such as increased confusion about the competency or specialization of providers.
Lee Waskevich: Collection of data manually from machines, valves, tanks, etc. would always provide a lag in the time it took to collect, analyze and adjust operations based on the knowledge learned. Emerging abilities to connect data points across vast distant and remote areas and leverage insights to provide more proactive operational changes is greatly increasing the advantage an organization has over one that does not.
Adrian Slobin: IoT allows for a greater object utilization, and it has led to the concept of, “pay only when you use it” — paying as you go rather than entirely up front. As connected devices continue to last longer, companies look for new business models to remain competitive. Jürgen Von Hollen: Automation and IoT have traditionally been difficult and expensive, but collaborative robots (“cobots”) are changing that. Cobots are versatile, lightweight and affordable, and are easy to program with powerful software that makes it easy for integrators to connect them to other equipment, sensors
and cameras, and cloud-based monitoring and control systems.
Dmitry Dain: Future IoT devices will transition from being just connected devices at a distance to being smart networks of devices. So instead of only extending the user’s reach, they will preemptively, collaboratively and increasingly autonomously enact the user’s will.
How will IoT continue to revolutionize the customer experience?
JF: IoT has the potential to transform both businesses and their customer experience models because it enables companies to collect data and use it intelligently. If more organizations begin to truly apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to both their IoT applications and business processes, they’ll be able to anticipate customer needs before customers even notice.
LW: Personal touch will always be the staple of true customer satisfaction, but so much can be automated behind the scenes, leveraging IoT to enhance that personal touch and experience. Abilities that leverage sensors, data collection, visual analytics and artificial intelligence will help transform the way organizations interact and provide more agility to the services they provide.
AS: As IoT components get cheaper and more embedded in technology around us, they’ll have greater impact. Sensors will become common in packaging, leading to new insights on consumer habits. Connected products will enable more informed
design choices and future products will better cater to our needs.
JV: Flexible, easy-to-use cobots are enabling that revolutionary customer experience. They can be easily reprogrammed and redeployed in-house with no special skills. That allows manufacturers to respond almost instantly to changes in demand, to prototype new products or to automate even low-volume, specialized production runs to lower costs, speed output and improve quality and consistency.
DD: For example, rather than allowing the user to simply remotely control lighting, IoT devices will set the lighting based upon collaboratively sensing the user’s actions and environment and inferring the user’s probable intent. This seamless marriage of distributed sensors feeding data analytics that predict actions to be taken for the user’s benefit, but without their action or even thought, will fundamentally change how we as humans interact with the world.
What are some of the challenges of IoT adoption, and how are they being overcome?
JF: Compared to traditional IT projects, IoT initiatives require different hardware and software expertise and more integration. The key to a smooth implementation is your partnership structure. Search for a solution comprised of a limited number of companies that you can count most on and a lead partner that will take responsibility for it — maintenance and all.
LW: Threats encountered through the introduction of IoT devices as well as new and enhanced digitized processes and data collection present some formidable challenges to integrating an IoT solution into full business operation. To address these challenges, organizations should ensure security considerations are transparent to all key business stakeholders and executive leadership.
AS: Security is a challenge that must be addressed in connected product design. With the proliferation of connected devices, there’s an exponential increase in potential vulnerabilities. The connected network is only as strong as its weakest point. Creating barriers to unwanted access must be a priority as the industry matures. JV: Certainly, a concern in every connected system is security. In the past, manufacturing systems were largely closed networks. With IoT, a wide range of systems and equipment from multiple vendors are being connected to each other and to the cloud, so manufacturers must invest in securing their networks to protect them from unauthorized access.
DD: Without firmware authenticity and provenance nothing can be trusted. IoT vendors should fix that immediately. IoT vendors need easy-to-use cryptographic building blocks and cloud-based services to ensure that their products, their customers and their customers’ data are secure. They need this at low cost, without lengthening product development cycles and in open source form.