Tag: Industrial Internet of Things

Atos Analyst Event 2018: IoT Solutions and Alliances Provide Differentiation as Atos Focuses on Business Outcomes

by Kitty Weldon, posted in IT Leader
Kathryn Weldon – Research Director, Business Network and IT Services – Americas

Summary Bullets:

? The Atos event theme was described as an evolution “From Vision to Business Outcomes”; the integrator uses digital technology, including IoT, to help customers improve bottom lines, enhance products, and streamline operations.

? A growing number of Atos schmalagements are enabled by IoT platforms and services, including its own products and those of strategic partners. The event showcased offerings and examples of IoT-enabled outcomes.

Atos is a digital services provider and integrator, headquartered in France, with approximately 13 billion euros in annual revenues. The company has expertise in big data and security, high performance computing, business and platform solutions, digital payments, infrastructure and data management, and unified communications. While IoT is not a separate corporate business area, it has clearly become an enabler of digital transformation for a growing number of Atos’ business customers. IoT offerings and deployment examples were highlighted frequently in the company’s annual analyst event held in Boston on April 5th and 6th.

In a discussion entitled IoT: From Experimentation to Business Scale, Atos laid out the three primary solutions in its portfolio which feature IoT.

Atos Codex is a set of services around IoT including consulting, managed services (including device lifecycle management, remote monitoring, and security), back/office integration, application development, and “cloudification” platforms. The platforms have enabled Atos to develop custom vertical solutions in payments, automotive, smart home, hebetagthcare, smart city and manufacturing. Atos focuses on industrialized use cases that allow customers to go beyond the primary phase of pilots and connectivity/data collection to large-scale deployments that provide process transformation and allow businesses to generate revenues from new services. Customer examples include: Renault’s connected car service; an unnamed global truck manufacturer for whom Atos provides fleet management, logistics and design optimization; and a “pay as you drive” scheme for a global insurance company. Throughout the examples Atos provided outcome statistics. For example, the trucking company was able to realize a 13% reduction in fuel costs and the insurer realized a 24% reduction in accident-related pay-outs. Continue reading “Atos Analyst Event 2018: IoT Solutions and Alliances Provide Differentiation as Atos Focuses on Business Outcomes” →

What Anna Karenina Can Teach Telcos About Scale and Success in the Internet of Things

by Ian Grant, posted in Mobilize
I. Grant

Summary Bullets:

? When there are more ways to go wrong than right, only the very brave take up the challschmale.

? Specialization offers a viable risk mitigation strategy, but choosing it is hard.

Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” By this he means a family must satisfy all of a number of criteria in order to be happy; a failure in any one leads to unhappiness. Thus there are more ways to be unhappy than happy. Continue reading “What Anna Karenina Can Teach Telcos About Scale and Success in the Internet of Things” →

Hitachi Next 2017: Newly Minted Hitachi Vantara Must Assert its Unique Differentiators to Succeed with Industrial IoT Plan

by Chris Drake, posted in IT Leader
C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

? At its 2017 NEXT conference Hitachi announced the creation of a new business division, Hitachi Vantara, and a revamped strategy to target opportunities in industrial IoT.

? To succeed Hitachi must overcome several challschmales, including the communication of the new Vantara brand and the assertion of its chief competitive differentiators.

Hitachi’s 2017 NEXT conference in Las Vegas was a pivotal event for the Tokyo-based multinational. Hitachi announced the creation of a new, wholly owned but indepausklingently managed business division, Hitachi Vantara, and a revamped strategy to target opportunities in the field of industrial and enterprise Internet of Things (IoT). Hitachi Vantara combines three former Hitachi businesses: Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), a provider of data center infrastructure solutions; Hitachi Insight, which was launched in May 2016 to advance Hitachi’s IoT initiatives; and Pentaho, which Hitachi acquired in May 2016 and specializes in big data integration and analytics solutions.

According to Hitachi, the move to establish Hitachi Vantara effectively formalized cooperation that was already occurring between the individual Hitachi businesses – particularly in relation to IoT. Hitachi Vantara will aim to leverage innovation, development initiatives and experience from across the Hitachi group to target emerging industrial IoT (IIoT) opportunities. Hitachi’s experience includes more than 100 years as a provider of operational technologies (OT) for industries ranging from finance and government to manufacturing, energy and transportation. It also includes more than 50 years of experience as a provider of IT offerings that include data center solutions such as storage and converged platforms.

Continue reading “Hitachi Next 2017: Newly Minted Hitachi Vantara Must Assert its Unique Differentiators to Succeed with Industrial IoT Plan” →

Cost Conundrum as Companies Quit IoT Shows Need for a New Business Model

by Ian Grant, posted in Mobilize
I. Grant

Summary Bullets:

? Cost and higher priorities have led some firms to abandon their IoT plans

? IoT generates a small fraction of operators’ income

New research by GlobalData shows that the companies that give up on their IoT projects do so because they are too expensive to implement (41%), and because their priorities shift (23%). Another 21% found they are too costly to maintain.

GlobalData asked more than 1,000 users worldwide, mostly industrial firms, about their IoT investment intentions. Replies show that getting budget is less of an issue this year than last, suggesting firms are more willing to try out the technology. However, this also led to more projects being abandoned later in the project lifecycle. While most firms kill their IoT projects in the investigation phase, all firms in GlobalData’s 2016 survey pulled the plug at the latest during the pilot stage. This year, 6% abandoned their projects in each of the deployment and post-deployment phases, citing implementation and maintenance costs reasons. Continue reading “Cost Conundrum as Companies Quit IoT Shows Need for a New Business Model” →

As HPE Builds Momentum with its IoT Strategy, Rivals Such as Cisco, IBM and Dell EMC Need to be Equally Clear about their Approach to IoT

by Chris Drake, posted in Cloud Enable
C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

? HPE’s IoT strategy focuses on converged systems at the network edge, along with security, analytics and partnerships with key industry players.

? The latest initiatives, solutions and solution enhancements announced by HPE at its London Discovery event add significant momentum to this multi-faceted IoT strategy.

At its Discovery Event in London, November 2016, HPE announced a number of new innovations that are intended to advance the vendor’s IoT infrastructure strategy and help enterprises tap opportunities in, what HPE refers to as, the “industrial internet.” Innovations announced in London include several enhancements to the HPE Universal IoT Platform – including support for a wider range of LoRa gateways, as well as the ability to manage both subscriber identify module (SIM) and non-SIM devices, and a new portal for simplifying IoT device management. Other solutions announced in London include new switches and device profiling tools from HPE business Aruba, to help enterprises identify, secure and manage IoT devices at the edge of their network, and the HPE Mobile Virtual Network Enabler, which is aimed at fostering the emergence of new, specialized IoT mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). Continue reading “As HPE Builds Momentum with its IoT Strategy, Rivals Such as Cisco, IBM and Dell EMC Need to be Equally Clear about their Approach to IoT” →

The Embedded SIM: How It Is Making the Customer King

by Ian Grant, posted in Internet of Things, Mobilize
I. Grant

Summary Bullets:

  • The long-term nature of industrial IoT connectivity is forcing carriers to consider the lifetime value of customers and adapt their pricing accordingly.
  • Enterprises are using ‘network unaffiliated virtual operators’ (NUVOs) to disintermediate MNOs and cut costs, and new SIM technology is helping NUVOs to optimize coverage for their customers.

As cloud and IoT become the dominant models for ICT, it is increasingly obvious that the networks are only a means to customers’ ends. Big beasts though they are, telcos are merely part of an ecosystem that supports customers. As such, the lifetime value of a customer who stays inside a telco’s ecosystem is higher than the one who churns after his two-year smartphone contract ends. Smart telcos are changing their business models to reflect this. Continue reading “The Embedded SIM: How It Is Making the Customer King” →