Talking about the IIoT could be summed up as referring to the presence of sensors in the industry. However, it would be to miss the essential, the incredible possibilities offered by this area of future, on the condition of having partners able to respond to the projects.
The IIoT (Industrial IoT) – the Internet of objects in the industry – suffers from a classic phenomenon in the technological field: ad effects. Readers and consumers of IT, our attention focuses on the general uses of connected objects, whereas the uses in the industry are of unsuspected wealth, and sometimes hidden because the industry intends to protect its projects.
Even though its stakes deserve a specific interest, IIoT is considered a subcategory of IoT (Internet of Things), which includes energy, transport, manufacturing, and agriculture. And on a more technological level, automation of production, M2M communication, data collection by sensors, intended to be exploited via Big Data analysis tools, and machine learning. A market that, according to a recent study by IndustryARC, is expected to grow by 21% between 2016 and 2021 to reach $ 123.8 billion. That is about half of the global market for IoT estimated at $ 250 billion. It should be noted that according to the same study, Europe should show steady growth and dominate the market in 2021.
Thus, in many industrial fields – such as telecoms, production, transport, and logistics – projects are multiplying and are a reality, even though they are part of our vision. Moreover, another drift in the effects of the announcement, it is difficult to find oneself in a majority of actors whose positioning is still too close to the intention rather than the realization, while those who have operational solutions remain In the shade, often at the request of their customers.
The market, or rather the IIoT markets, because the reality shows a great diversity, exist well, with their suppliers, their consultants, and especially their customers. These markets are based on global strategies that combine sensors, mobility, data centers and compute (computing and processing capacities), an infrastructure that is close to usage – at the foot of industrial equipment (at the edge) and Cloud, data storage, software platforms, numerous and diverse workloads, Big Data and analytics, services and consulting. And a lot of intelligence.
It may seem simple to place a sensor on a machine to access contextual data, proactively predict failures to extend the asset’s lifetime, improve security, and reduce costs. Especially as this falls within the objectives of the operational teams. But industrialization of the project is more complex and requires the combination of many skills.
This also explains the strategic choices made by certain players in the market, whereas there are fewer people with the capacity to respond largely to market expectations via their technologies and skills. The example of HPE is indicative of this phenomenon. The historical IT player has the necessary bricks to meet the industry’s IIoT expectations, data center equipment (servers, storage, networks, and administration), the communications network infrastructure and Computing at the edge for IoT with Aruba, consulting with Pointnext, and platform with HPE Universal IoT Platform.
However, the IT giant is also able to refocus its strategy around priority objectives, manufacturing, retail, public sector, life sciences and healthcare, and telco. Around also use cases, predictive maintenance, asset management and tracking, intelligent spaces (buildings and public places), future cities and connected vehicles.
The deployment of an IIoT solution requires the combination of a wide variety of ‘smart’ experiences on a data center-based software platform and pilots a scattered infrastructure with the ability to serve thousands or even millions of sensors and sensors. users.Workloads, which are typically very low in load, also depend on WAN connectivity, from cellular to cloud. And the company’s IIoT partners will have to guarantee access and analysis of data via the analysis layer. The choice of the partner (s) will, therefore, be essential in order to carry out the IIoT projects and exploit them profitably.
