It is this diversity of form, function and technology, and the proliferation of multiple standards or protocols that has limited the ability of IT and security teams to integrate the security of IoT technologies into the enterprise.

According to Amit Bareket, VP for Secure Service Edge at Check Point Software Technologies, the challenge lies in the transformation of corporate networks due to mobility and cloud computing. He explained that this shift has redefined the Internet as the new corporate network.

“Employees accessing cloud resources from outside the office necessitates opening up corporate resources to the internet, introducing significant security risks,” he added. “Traditional network security measures are often inadequate in this new landscape.

“There's a pressing need to rethink security strategies to effectively mitigate various cyber threats, as evidenced by recent high-profile attacks like the oil pipeline incident in the United States. This shift will undoubtedly remain a top priority for every CIO and CISO over the next five years.”

Amit Bareket

Securing OT is not that easy

Bareket commented that part of the security challenge lies in the sheer number of devices that need to be connected to the network. Finding all the devices remains a challenge, he opined.

Reflecting on the transitions many organisations had to undergo during the COVID-19 pandemic, he pointed out that the rapid transformation caught many off guard. He cited the global shutdowns that occurred during the pandemic.

“Suddenly, businesses that never envisioned remote operations have to thrust themselves into a new reality where remote work became the norm almost overnight,” he commented. “This abrupt shift left CIOs and CISOs grappling with uncertainty: Would we revert to the old ways, or was this the new normal? It became increasingly clear that remote work was here to stay, challenging our preconceptions about the pace of change.”

He added that what was initially projected to take 5—10 years unfolded within a single year. “I think today we stand in a strong position with robust solutions to meet the demands of this new landscape,” he continued.

SASE to the rescue

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is the convergence of connectivity and security helping organizations to achieve a consistent security posture by implementing a decentralised concept where security is provided directly at the source, with the management of all involved components done in the cloud. Bereket says SASE is just a secure network over the internet. SASE is a secure network infrastructure over the internet, encompassing various components such as users, cloud resources, and IoT devices.

Unlike traditional endpoints, IoT devices cannot typically accommodate agent or app installations, necessitating a network-level approach to security. He used Check Point's integration with SD-WAN devices and gateways as an example claiming it facilitates the creation of a unified network under the SASE platform.

“This integration provides visibility into IoT devices and enables security enforcement at the network level. Check Point's IoT security features, including device discovery and policy enforcement, play a crucial role in securing these devices within the SASE framework,” he continued.

SASE promises to bring IoT into the security framework of the organisation.

Asked whether IT leaders have heard the SASE story and are incorporating the technology into the overall network architecture he opined it has already happened.

“It’s evident that the internet is now the new corporate network. It is here to stay,” he started. He recalled a recent conversation with a major bank: “It was clear that they recognise this shift and understand that embracing solutions like SASE is inevitable,” he revealed.

“The pace of digital evolution will only accelerate, with forecasts from Gartner projecting a 30% year-over-year growth in the market for the next three years. By 2027, this market is expected to reach US$25 to US$28 billion from US$9 billion in 2024, further emphasising the significance of this shift in networking and security paradigms,” he concluded.

Click on the PodChat player and listen to Bareket elaborate on the intersection of IoT and SASE in OT security.

1. What are the top challenges faced in OT security in 2024?
2. What are the key components of OT security?
3. For a long time, the security of operational technology has been kept out of the IT portfolio. Given the recent rise in attacks against critical and industrial systems, do you see a convergence of IT and OT security and who will lead the charge?
4. How does IoT fit into SASE (and vice versa)?

The post PodChats for FutureIOT: The intersection of IoT and SASE in OT security appeared first on FutureIoT.

A recent Kaspersky study found that AI and IoT are already used by 61% and 64% of companies respectively, while 28% and 26% of companies plans to adopt them within two years. Data spaces are used by 27% of businesses, with more than half (54%) intending to adopt them soon.

Other interconnected technologies (digital twins, AR, VR, web 3.0, 6G), are used by 8-20% of companies participating in the survey, but more than 70% are considering integrating them into their business processes soon.

The expanding use of AI and IoT has the potential to expose organisations to new vulnerabilities. According to the research, 13-14% of organisations from the region think AI and IoT are ‘very difficult’ or ‘extremely difficult’ to protect, while only 6% of the AI users and 10% of the IoT owners believe their companies are fully protected.

According to Adrian Hia, managing director for Asia Pacific at Kaspersky, “Undoubtedly, new technological tools play a vital role in improving the efficiencies and productivity of enterprises in the region. However, there are loopholes, particularly in cybersecurity, that need to be addressed. Our recent study showed more than half of the companies are using AI and IoT in their organisations, but 21% of them think AI and IoT are somewhat difficult to protect. It shows that there is a skills and knowledge gap that needs to be patched with urgency.”

Recommendations going forward

Given the scale of change that interconnected technologies is likely to bring, organisations must develop a strategy to implement and protect them. Kaspersky recommends four effective ways to ensure organisations are prepared to protect interconnected technologies:

Adopt secure-by-design principles. By integrating cybersecurity into each stage of the software development lifecycle, secure-by-design software and hardware become resilient against cyberattacks, contributing to the overall security of digital systems. Cyber Immune solutions based on KasperskyOS, for instance, allow companies to minimize the threat surface and significantly decrease the ability of cybercriminals to perform a successful attack.

Train and upskill your workforce. Building a cyber-aware culture requires a comprehensive strategy that empowers employees to gain knowledge and put it into practice. With Kaspersky Expert training, InfoSec professionals can advance their skills and defend their companies against attacks.

Upgrade your cybersecurity solutions and use centralized and automated platforms such as Kaspersky Extended Detection and Response (XDR). As companies adopt interconnected technologies, they need cybersecurity solutions with more advanced features, enabling them to collect and correlate telemetry from multiple sources and provide effective threat detection and rapid automated response. 

As many AI solutions are built on containers, it’s important to secure the infrastructure they are integrated in with cybersecurity products – such as Kaspersky Container Security – that allows companies to detect security issues at every stage of the app lifecycle, from development to operation.

Meet regulations to avoid legal problems or reputational damage, by ensuring your cybersecurity practice meets changing standards and legal requirements.

The post AI and IoT are opening new vectors of cyberattack appeared first on FutureIoT.

Using AI analysis on a large scale can be slow and complex, and associated with higher maintenance costs and software upkeep to onboard new AI models and additional hardware. With edge computing capabilities emerging in more remote locations, AI analysis can be placed closer to the sensors, reducing latency and increasing bandwidth.

Red Hat and NTT, in collaboration with NVIDIA and Fujitsu, have jointly developed a solution to enhance and extend the potential for real-time artificial intelligence (AI) data analysis at the edge.

Built on the foundation of Red Hat OpenShift, the solution has received an Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) Global Forum's Proof of Concept (PoC) recognition for its real-world viability and use cases.

This solution consists of the IOWN All-Photonics Network (APN) and data pipeline acceleration technologies in IOWN Data-Centric Infrastructure (DCI). NTT’s accelerated data pipeline for AI adopts Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over APN to efficiently collect and process large amounts of sensor data at the edge.

Container orchestration technology from Red Hat OpenShift provides greater flexibility to operate workloads within the accelerated data pipeline across geographically distributed and remote data centres.

NTT and Red Hat have successfully demonstrated that this solution can effectively reduce power consumption while maintaining lower latency for real-time AI analysis at the edge.

Delivering the PoC

The proof of concept evaluated a real-time AI analysis platform with Yokosuka City as the sensor installation base and Musashino City as the remote data centre, both connected via APN. As a result, even when many cameras were accommodated, the latency required to aggregate sensor data for AI analysis was reduced by 60% compared to conventional AI inference workloads.

The IOWN PoC testing also demonstrated that the power consumption required for AI analysis for each camera at the edge could be reduced by 40% from conventional technology. This real-time AI analysis platform allows the GPU to be scaled up to accommodate a larger number of cameras without the CPU becoming a bottleneck.

According to a trial calculation, assuming that 1,000 cameras can be accommodated, it is expected that power consumption can be further reduced by 60%. The highlights of the proof of concept for this solution are as follows:

• Accelerated data pipeline for AI inference, provided by NTT, utilizing RDMA over APN to directly fetch large-scale sensor data from local sites to the memory in an accelerator in a remote data centre, reducing the protocol-handling overheads in the conventional network. It then completes data processing of AI inference within the accelerator with less CPU-controlling overheads, improving the power efficiency in AI inference.
• Large-scale AI data analysis in real-time, powered by Red Hat OpenShift, can support Kubernetes operators5 to minimize the complexity of implementing hardware-based accelerators (GPUs, DPUs, etc.), enabling improved flexibility and easier deployment across disaggregated sites, including remote data centres.
• This PoC uses NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs and NVIDIA ConnectX-6 NICs for AI inference.
• This solution helps set the stage for intelligent AI-enabled technologies that will help businesses sustainably scale. With this solution, organisations can benefit from:
• Reduced overhead associated with collecting large amounts of data;
• Enhanced data collection that can be shared between metropolitan areas and remote data centres for quicker AI analysis;
• The ability to utilize locally available and potentially renewable energy, such as solar or wind;
• Increased area management security with video cameras acting as sensor devices.

The post PoC fuel AI Analysis at the edge appeared first on FutureIoT.

These use cases require various degrees of high throughput, low latency and geographical coverage. Therefore, to maximise networks’ efficiency and reduce operational expenditure, the report urged operators to accelerate the incorporation of AI into core networks.

AI investment critical for network performance & security

The report found that, as operators expand established 5G networks and build future 6G networks, AI must play an essential role. It identified performance optimisation and network security as the most important use cases; accounting for over 50% of global operator spend on AI by 2028.

Additionally, the ever-increasing virtualisation of network functions and demand for cellular data will drive operators to implement AI to decrease operational costs. It predicted that the ability to automate real-time network analysis and adjust network conditions accordingly will be crucial to minimising the costs associated with network management and service provision.

Research author Frederick Savage commented: “As operators compete on the quality of their networks, AI will be essential to maximising the value of using a cellular network for connectivity. High-spending users will gravitate to those networks that can provide the best service conditions.”

The post Reduce network operating cost drives AI spending appeared first on FutureIoT.

Enterprises continue to embrace IoT strategies to streamline operations, boost efficiency, and improve customer experiences. From hospitals to manufacturers to public sector agencies, IoT device fleets are critical for meeting these modernization goals.

However, the acceleration in connected device deployment opens new windows for cybercriminals and exposes networks to potential breaches.

Kenan Frager, VP of Marketing at Asimily, warns that vulnerable IoT devices continue to be a glaring cybersecurity weak spot for many enterprises. He opines that businesses are lured by the benefits the devices offer but do not take the necessary effort to check if such technologies are sufficiently secure.

“Regardless of industry, an attack on IoT infrastructure can and will result in operational downtime, loss of IP, loss of revenue, and reputational harm.”

Kenan Frager

He notes that regulatory compliance adds another layer of pressure, with steep fines and sanctions looming for breaches that affect HIPAA, PCI DSS, NIST, SOC 2, and other increasingly stringent mandates.

Report findings

Breach tactics continue evolving: Cybercriminals seeking confidential proprietary data to sell for financial gain look for and infiltrate vulnerable and often-unsecured IoT devices to establish initial access to an enterprise’s network.

That tactic supports ransomware attacks as well, with criminals gaining access via IoT endpoints, encrypting data, and extorting ransoms. In other cases, nation-state-sponsored groups are motivated to shut down or disrupt the services of their targets.

A common tactic is harvesting vast fleets of vulnerable IoT devices to create botnets and utilize them to conduct DDoS attacks. Attackers also know they can rely on unresolved legacy vulnerabilities, as 34 of the 39 most-used IoT exploits have been present in devices for at least three years.

Routers are the most targeted IoT devices, accounting for 75% of all IoT infections. Hackers exploit routers as a stepping stone to access other connected devices within a network. Security cameras and IP cameras are the second most targeted devices, making up 15% of all attacks.

Other commonly targeted devices include digital signage, media players, digital video recorders, printers, and smart lighting. The Asimily report, IoT Device Security in 2024: The High Cost of Doing Nothing also highlights the especially consequential risks associated with specialised industry equipment, including devices critical to patient care in healthcare (including blood glucose monitors and pacemakers), real-time monitoring devices in manufacturing, and water quality sensors in municipalities.

Cyber insurers are capping payouts. Cybersecurity insurance is becoming more expensive and difficult to obtain as cyberattacks become more common. More insurers are now requiring businesses to have strong IoT security and risk management in place to qualify for coverage—and increasingly denying or capping coverage for those that do not meet certain thresholds.

Among the reasons why cyber insurers deny coverage, a lack of security protocols is the most common, at 43%. Not following compliance procedures accounts for 33% of coverage denials. Even if insured, though, reputational damage remains a risk: 80% of a business’s customers will defect if they do not believe their data is secure.

Manufacturing is now the top target: Cybercriminals are increasingly focusing their attention on the manufacturing, finance, and energy industries. Retail, education, healthcare, and government organizations remain popular targets, while media and transportation have been de-emphasized over the past couple of years.

“There’s a clear and urgent need for more businesses to prioritise a more thorough risk management strategy capable of handling the unique challenges of the IoT,” said Shankar Somasundaram, CEO, Asimily.

“While organisations often struggle with the sheer volume of vulnerabilities in their IoT device fleets, crafting effective risk KPIs and deploying tools to gain visibility into device behaviour empowers them to prioritise and apply targeted fixes.”

Shankar Somasundaram

He added that this approach, coupled with a deeper understanding of attacker behaviour, enables teams to distinguish between immediate threats, manageable risks, and non-existent dangers.

“The right strategy equips organizations to focus efforts where they matter most, maximising their resources while ensuring the security of their IoT ecosystem at scale,” he concluded.

The post Rising risks from accelerated use of unchecked IoT in enterprise appeared first on FutureIoT.

In the report, 2023 Strategic Roadmap For Digital Workplace Infrastructure and IT Operations (I&O), the analyst suggested that a successful digital workplace strategy strikes a cost-effective balance between hardware, employee support and cybersecurity while focusing on improving the digital employee experience.

Key findings of the report

Digital employee experience (DEX) is a major component of overall employee experience. This necessitates a greater focus on continually measuring and improving employee sentiment, technology adoption and solution performance.

Gartner posits that many digital workplace leaders are increasing investments in endpoint analytics and self-healing.

Traditional, siloed operating models are prone to gaps in DEX and are ill-equipped to support increased cybersecurity and operational demands, yet many organisations fail to adjust their structure.

Over 80% of digital workplace leaders have increased prioritisation on environmental sustainability. Success requires modern operations, selecting sustainable vendors, adopting new tooling and developing comprehensive reporting.

Gartner says I&O plays a crucial role in enabling and supporting the digital workplace and must improve its business acumen and ability to:

• Adapt to ever-evolving employee, HR and line-of-business demands
• Upskill team members
• Evolve operating models
• Keep pace with and prepare for the future
• Free up resources to focus on employee enablement
• Improve DEX
• Eliminate technical debt

The post What the digital workplace will look like in 2024 appeared first on FutureIoT.

Juniper Research predicts that enterprises’ increasing use of cellular networks, including for smart manufacturing and autonomous vehicles, will necessitate further investment into AI that automates key network processes.

These use cases require various degrees of high throughput, low latency and geographical coverage. Therefore, to maximise networks’ efficiency and reduce operational expenditure, the report urged operators to accelerate the incorporation of AI into core networks.

AI Investment critical for network performance & security

The report found that, as operators expand established 5G networks and build future 6G networks, AI must play an essential role. It identified performance optimisation and network security as the most important use cases; accounting for over 50% of global operator spend on AI by 2028.

Additionally, the ever-increasing virtualisation of network functions and demand for cellular data will drive operators to implement AI to decrease operational costs. It predicted that the ability to automate real-time network analysis and adjust network conditions accordingly will be crucial to minimising the costs associated with network management and service provision.

Research author Frederick Savage commented: “As operators compete on the quality of their networks, AI will be essential to maximising the value of using a cellular network for connectivity. High-spending users will gravitate to those networks that can provide the best service conditions.”

The post AI Investment critical for network performance and security appeared first on FutureIoT.

The latest Nozomi Networks Labs OT & IoT Security Report revealed that “network scans” topped the list of network anomalies and attack alerts, followed closely by “TCP flood” attacks which involve sending large amounts of traffic to systems aiming to cause damage by bringing those systems down or making them inaccessible.

“TCP flood” and “anomalous packets” alert types exhibited significant increases in both total alerts and averages per customer in the last six months, increasing more than 2x and 6x respectively. 

"These trends should serve as a warning that attackers are adopting more sophisticated methods to directly target critical infrastructure, and could be indicative of rising global hostilities,” said Chris Grove, director of cybersecurity strategy at Nozomi Networks.

He posited that the significant uptick in anomalies could mean that the threat actors are getting past the first line of defence while penetrating deeper than many would have initially believed, which would require a high level of sophistication. “The defenders have gotten better at protecting against the basics, but these alerts tell us that the attackers are quickly evolving to bypass them,” he added.

Alerts on access control and authorization threats jumped 123% over the previous reporting period. In this category “multiple unsuccessful logins” and “brute force attack” alerts increased 71% and 14% respectively.

This trend highlights the continued challenges in unauthorized access attempts, showing that identity and access management in OT and other challenges associated with user passwords persist.

The top critical threat activity seen in real-world environments over the last six months:

1.            Network Anomalies and Attacks – 38% of all alerts

2.            Authentication and Password Issues – 19% of all alerts

3.            Access Control and Authorization Problems – 10% of all alerts

4.            Operational Technology (OT) Specific Threats – 7% of all alerts

5.            Suspicious or Unexpected Network Behaviour – 6% of all alerts

ICS vulnerabilities

With this spike in network anomalies top of mind, Nozomi Networks Labs has detailed the industries that should be on highest alert, based on analysis of all ICS security advisories released by CISA over the past six months.

Manufacturing topped the list with the number of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) in that sector rising to 621, an alarming 230% increase over the previous reporting period. Manufacturing, energy and water/wastewater remained the most vulnerable industries for a

third consecutive reporting period – though the total number of vulnerabilities reported in the

The energy sector dropped 46% and Water/Wastewater vulnerabilities dropped 16%. Commercial Facilities and Communications moved into the top five, replacing Food & Agriculture and Chemicals (which both dropped out of the top 10).

Healthcare & Public Health, Government Facilities, Transportation Systems and Emergency Services all made the top 10.

In the second half of 2023:

• CISA released 196 new ICS advisories covering 885 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) – up 38% over the previous six-month period
• 74 vendors were impacted – up 19%
• Out-of-Bounds Read and Out-of-Bounds Write vulnerabilities remained in the top CWEs for the second consecutive reporting period – both are susceptible to several different attacks including buffer overflow attacks

Data from IoT Honeypots

Findings reveal that malicious IoT botnets remain active this year, and botnets continue to use default credentials in attempts to access IoT devices. From July through December 2023, it was revealed that:

• An average of 712 unique attacks daily (a 12% decline in the daily average compared to the previous reporting period) – the highest attack day hit 1,860 on October 6.
• Top attacker IP addresses were associated with China, the United States, South Korea, India and Brazil.
• Brute-force attempts remain a popular technique to gain system access – default credentials remain one of the main ways threat actors gain access to IoT. Remote Code Execution (RCE) also remains a popular technique – frequently used in targeted attacks, as well as in the propagation of various types of malicious software.

The post Beware of network anomalies and attacks appeared first on FutureIoT.

This shift from CAPEX to OPEX started with multi-cloud adoption but is now becoming the norm across all infrastructure out to the edge, providing enterprises with greater agility in architecting their infrastructure everywhere while ensuring they have access to the most efficient technologies.

“Industry patterns have shown that the traditional procurement process of buying your IT hardware if that is not your business, is becoming a competitive disadvantage,” said Steve Madden, vice president of digital transformation & segmentation at Equinix.

He opined that the pace of hardware innovation is increasing (especially with GPU technologies), putting pressure on the price-performance ratio and infrastructure efficiency.

“Globally, digital transformation requires businesses to become more agile while adapting to dynamic changes. Subscription models can offer continuous improvement and easier adoption of new technologies already in place,” he added. 

Other forecasts and trends

• The digital economy continues to expand: Global interconnection bandwidth is forecast to grow at a 34% five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR), reaching 33,578 terabits per second (Tbps) by 2026.
• Accelerating the growth of ecosystems: Organizations are connecting with 30% more business partners in twice as many locations.
• Digital proximity drives business at the edge: Edge infrastructure has shown the highest growth rate and is expected to expand at over two times the rate of the core through 2026.
• Greater China sees the fastest-growing interconnection demand: Leading core and edge metros in Greater China maintain their positions at the forefront of growth. Shanghai, with interconnection bandwidth projected to reach a 39% CAGR by 2026, is the world’s fastest-growing core metro. Hong Kong closely follows with a projected CAGR of 37%. Notably, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Beijing are also forecast to experience substantial growth at a projected CAGR of 42-43% by 2026.
• Enterprise bandwidth growth outstrips service providers: Asia-Pacific currently accounts for 28% of global interconnection bandwidth and is forecast to grow at a 35% CAGR to 9,283 Tbps by 2026. The enterprise sector in the region is forecast to see the fastest growth at a CAGR of 42%, outpacing the growth rates of service providers.

Elias Khanser, chief of research with the EK Media Group notes that in the current dynamic environment, subscription-based access to the thriving ecosystem is the only way organizations will be able to build and scale a digital infrastructure capable of sustaining the business transformation resulting from AI, edge and other technologies.

The post Organisations shifting from own to rent appeared first on FutureIoT.

The report notes the continued diversification of the Alliance’s collaborative ecosystem, which drove end-to-end IoT solutions. It claimed that deployments are delivering strong ROI, which in turn is accelerating the decision-making process for new users and projects.

• Smart cities are increasingly requiring LoRaWAN-certified end devices in their RFPs.
• LoRaWAN took a leadership position in Industry 5.0 as it meets the sustainability, efficiency and quality-of-life requirements.
• The benefits and ROI of LoRaWAN deployments are exponential when end users collaborate with system integrators and solution providers.
• LoRaWAN is the leader in the emerging satellite-based LPWAN communications market, with multiple member companies delivering networking via satellite and rapidly growing deployments in the sector.
• The Alliance is meeting the emerging workforce needs of the IoT with its LoRaWAN Accredited Professional program, giving end users confidence in the vendors they select.

“In 2023, key end markets such as cities, buildings and utilities widely embraced LoRaWAN and the ROI it provides, leading to large-scale deployments that sparked further innovation in use cases,” stated Donna Moore, CEO and chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance.

She added that the demand for certified LoRaWAN devices within these essential sectors continues to grow as it is critical for massive device rollouts. Confidence in LoRaWAN was further reinforced through our Accredited Professional program, which addresses end users’ desire for a way to evaluate vendors’ knowledge of the development and implementation of LoRaWAN. As the leader in global LPWAN deployments, we anticipate an even stronger year in 2024.”

“We continued to see strong growth globally in IoT deployments in 2023, with LoRaWAN clearly established as the market leader in LPWANs,” said Robin Duke-Woolley, CEO and Chief Analyst, Beecham Research. “With its established and active ecosystem, considerable involvement of system integrators and solution providers, and expansive features, including connectivity via satellite, we expect LoRaWAN will see strong growth again in 2024 as the IoT continues to mature.”

Other highlights

• Validation of LoRaWAN by IEC and CEN standards for smart metering, affirming its capability to meet specialised market requirements.
• Issuance of two Technical Recommendations enhancing LoRaWAN functionality, including network capacity improvement and direct device-to-device communication.
• Release of several FAQ documents to deepen understanding of recent LoRaWAN specification updates.
• Enabling pre-testing of firmware updates over the air (FUOTA) and relay specifications, alongside new reporting features via the LoRaWAN Certification Test Tool (LCTT).
• Development of tools and procedures by the Interoperability Work Group to certify interoperability among LoRaWAN network components, including the establishment of an interoperability testbed architecture.

The post LoRaWAN 2023 report card out appeared first on FutureIoT.

“We are not only making 5G networks smarter, simpler, and more secure for our customers’ IT departments. We are also allowing our customers’ security organisations to take control over how their employees leverage generative AI tools, protecting them from misuse that could lead to a damaging data leak or a malware infection,” said Donna Johnson, CMO at Cradlepoint.

AI capabilities include:

NetCloud AIOps Dashboard – Simplifies the ongoing operations of enterprise networks leveraging 5G SASE capabilities. The NetCloud AI model aggregates learning into a single dashboard that identifies areas of performance degradation, isolates the cause of the issue, and pinpoints the affected sites, users, and applications. With a unique focus on cellular networking, NetCloud AIOps will turn cellular signal quality indicators, such as proximity to cell tower, signal quality, and signal strength into actionable insights to enhance performance.  

AI-based NetCloud Assistant (“ANA”) – Uses natural language processing to assist NetCloud users with everyday queries about the operation of their network. From providing recommendations on cellular endpoints for specific use cases, to effectively troubleshooting network performance issues, ANA will be an invaluable assistant to simplify day-to-day operations.

Network Traffic Analysis – Provides centralised flow-level visibility for traffic analysis and forensics. This service will evolve later this year to leverage AI to establish a baseline of normal traffic patterns for the most common 5G use cases (distributed IoT, vehicles, sites) and flag any anomalies indicating the signs of a breach. 

GenAI Data Loss Prevention – With 79% of organisations reporting generative AI adoption without established policies, this solution applies access policies to block confidential data, personally identifiable information, or other sensitive data from being submitted to the generative AI site which can be potentially exposed in future responses. Ericom’s remote browser isolation technology also protects against weaponised responses infecting employee assets.   

“As a provider of turn-key car wash solutions, our customer success model requires highly reliable and efficient car wash operations,” said Ian Beason, director of Technology and Innovation at Motor City Wash Works.

He added that Cradlepoint’s new AIOps capabilities will allow our lean IT team to scale with our growing customer base and manage our network more effectively while providing an enhanced level of service to our customers.

The post Cradlepoint AI functionality advances 5G for business appeared first on FutureIoT.

Trained on seven years of insights and data science development, Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform was designed from the ground up to assure that every connection is reliable, measurable and secure for every device, user, application and asset.

Unique to the industry, Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform unifies all campus, branch and data centre networking solutions with a common AI engine and Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA).

This enables end-to-end AI for IT Operations (AIOps) to be used for deep insight, automated troubleshooting and seamless end-to-end networking assurance, which elevates IT teams’ focus from maintaining basic network connectivity to delivering exceptional and secure end-to-end experiences for students, staff, patients, guests, customers and employees.

The Juniper AI-Native Networking Platform provides the simplest and most assured Day 0/1/2+ operations, resulting in up to 85% lower operational expenditures than traditional solutions, demonstrates the elimination of up to 90% of network trouble tickets, 85% of IT onsite visits and up to 50% reduction in network incident resolution times.

“AI is the biggest technology inflexion point since the internet itself, and its ongoing impact on networking cannot be understated,” said Rami Rahim, Juniper Networks CEO.

He added that Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform represents a bold new direction for Juniper and for our industry. “By extending AIOps from the end user to the application, and across every network domain in between, we are taking a big step toward making network outages, trouble tickets and application downtime things of the past,” said

Within the new AI-Native Networking Platform, Juniper is introducing several new products that advance the experience-first mission, from more predictable, reliable and measurable IT operations using AI, to simpler high-performance data centre networks specifically designed for AI training and inference.

Networking for AI

Juniper is expanding its AI data centre solution, which is the fastest and most flexible way to deploy high-performing AI training and inference clusters, and the simplest to operate with limited IT resources.

The Juniper solution consists of a spine-leaf data centre architecture with a foundation of QFX switches and PTX routers operated by Juniper Apstra. With unique intent-based operations, the new Marvis VNA for data centres and validated AI designs, Juniper takes much of the complexity out of AI Data Centre networking design, deployment and troubleshooting, allowing customers to do more with fewer IT resources.

The solution also delivers unsurpassed flexibility to customers, avoiding vendor lock-in with silicon diversity, multivendor switch management and a commitment to open, standards-based Ethernet fabrics.

New products and capabilities to drive even more speed, efficiency and scale: 

• Juniper Apstra has been expanded to provide faster and more efficient processing of AI/ML traffic over Ethernet, including congestion management, load balancing and flow control.
• New Express 5 silicon-based PTX routers and line cards with the promise of industry-leading performance and energy-efficient sustainability to enable the necessary massive scale with high-density 800GE capacity. 
• A new QFX switch provides 2X the capacity of the previous generation and is the first announced data centre switch from an Original Equipment Manufacturer using the most advanced Broadcom Tomahawk 5 silicon for 800GE.

Both the new PTX and QFX platforms support high 800GE port density and the necessary AI infrastructure protocols, including RDMA over Ethernet (RoCE v2) for power-efficient and scalable AI Data Centre networking.

Sustainability considerations

The AI-Native Networking Platform exceeds sustainability requirements without sacrificing performance and security. Its AIOps enable fast and remote troubleshooting, significantly cutting inter-site travel by 85% in certain instances. It also features power-efficient hardware which minimizes energy consumption and is modularly built to make repairs easier and prolong product life.

“Juniper’s AI-Native Platform provides comprehensive solutions for organisations seeking to transition from reactive to proactive and even predictive network troubleshooting and management, said Bob Laliberte, principal analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group.

He explained that the combination of proven AIOps and the addition of synthetic testing enables highly available and optimized network environments. He added that Juniper is extending its AI capabilities to the data centre by coupling Marvis VNA with Apstra so it can provide end-to-end context and simplified use leveraging conversational AI interfaces.

“Additionally, Juniper’s AI-native solutions and switches can be applied to power back-end GenAI network infrastructure. Organisations can take advantage of Juniper’s validated solutions to accelerate adoption and time to value of these GenAI environments,” he continued.

The post AI-native networking platform to deliver better UX at lower Op costs appeared first on FutureIoT.

Study highlights

• By 2028, 1 in 5 Ethernet switch ports sold into the data centre will be related to AI/ML and accelerated computing
• AI/ML will drive record levels of 800 Gbps ports and Optics during their first 18 months of adoption
• Hyperscaler CAPEX for 2024 will continue adjusting as AI/ML projects progress towards production
• Customers continue to evaluate different networking topologies to address AI/ML networking requirements

“2023 showed tremendous growth in vendor revenue related to AI/ML networking with 2024 set to surge as many customers’ Proof of Concepts (PoC) move towards production networks,” said Alan Weckel, founder and technology analyst at 650 Group.

Weckel noted that AI/ML puts a tremendous amount of bandwidth performance requirements on the network, and AI/ML has become one of the major growth drivers for data centre switching over the next five years.

“With bandwidth in AI growing, the portion of Ethernet switching attached to AI/ML and accelerated computing will move from a niche today to a significant portion of the market in 2028,” he continued. “We are about to see record shipments in 800 Gbps based switches and optics as soon as products can reach scale in production to address AI/ML.”

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ABI Research expects industries such as manufacturing, telecommunications, and smart cities to be leading the way in CT, IT, and OT convergence, driven by the need to operate more efficiently, increase productivity, and not be left behind in a digitally driven environment.

“We are seeing technologies such as AI/ML, hybrid cloud, and data analytics playing a role in accelerating the convergence of CT, IT, and OT. Solutions developed from the convergence of CT, IT, and OT will centre around predictive maintenance, production fault detection, data transparency, and automated network healing, explains Yih-Khai Wong, distributed and edge computing senior analyst at ABI Research.

The convergence of CT, IT, and OT will enable organisations to harness and benefit from their technology investments fully. According to Wong, “The goal is to integrate data created and stored in network infrastructures, enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, and product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions, breaking down data silos by leveraging digital platforms powered by edge and cloud computing resources.”

The availability of cloud computational components ensures that organisations can procure resources based on current business needs. The buzz and demand around AI/ ML processing tools help organisations process workloads to analyse, predict, and make recommendations based on data from the convergence of CT, IT, and OT.

“The convergence of CT, IT, and OT is poised to be a game changer. However, technology providers must build deep strategic relationships to drive demand and adoption of this converged platform. Cloud hyperscalers, data centre infrastructure providers, independent software vendors (ISVs), and operational platform providers will need to work closely together to deploy an integrated solution to customers,” Wong concludes.

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ABI Research forecasts that by 2026, the installed base of connected devices will reach more than 70 billion installations, creating an expansive IoT attack vector in the IoT environment.

Most of these devices are low-power, storage limited, and with weak computational power, which means these devices are increasingly connecting to the cloud environment for centralized storage, data analytics, real-time monitoring, remote access, and updates in firmware and software.

Connecting to the cloud environment creates yet another compromise vector for these devices.  An effective IoT device-to-cloud security strategy should target security in three vital areas: device, network, and cloud.

“Device security often means securing the chipset and the data stored inside the device from being breached. Network security securely transfers data between the IoT device and the cloud. Cloud security allows the data to avoid intrusion while sitting in the cloud,” says Michael Amiri, senior industrial and IoT cybersecurity analyst at ABI Research.

In addition to embedded security in device design and cloud provider security offerings, end-users need to ensure the implementation of robust authentication practices, especially given the nature of remote access and remote work regarding the IoT environment.

Growth opportunities in network security

In such an environment, Amiri explains, “Security vendors need to include cloud security solutions at the forefront of their marketing strategies. Emphasising cloud solutions is fundamental in a market where IoT devices increasingly rely on the cloud for storage, data handling, computation, remote management, and updates.”

IoT security technology is already experiencing a surge in demand, which will probably accelerate if new regulations for IoT and cloud connections are passed. A case in point is a recent Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) mandate for medical device manufacturers in the U.S. ABI Research spoke to SBOM service providers, and they unanimously believe regulation has been a significant driver for their services.

“An explosive increase in IoT connections and devices is evident in the next three to four years. North America and the Asia region show the highest level of growth, followed by Western Europe. These will be the largest markets for IoT and cloud security solutions. Traditional markets for IoT security solutions have been the consumer, financial, enterprise, and government verticals. Yet automobile, healthcare, and manufacturing have seen a strong push for IoT security,” Amiri concludes. 

The post Laying the groundwork for secure IoT appeared first on FutureIoT.

Analysys Mason observed that the number of projects using 5G rose by 32.5% from 2022 to 2023 and that 5G deployments made up more than half of all LTR/5G deployments. IDC says the private cellular networks market continues to show promise, as both LTE and 5G are being rolled out to address enterprise and industrial challenges.

“5G is starting to see more traction within the manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics verticals, where we expect the bulk of growth to occur over the forecast period," said Patrick Filkins, research manager of IoT and Telecom Network Infrastructure at IDC.

FutureIoT held a recent discussion with executives from Belgium-based BICS, the global connectivity provider for telecommunication operators and provider of global connectivity solutions to enterprise customers.

BICS executives Malcolm Chan, senior VP, BICS Asia, Enterprise; Gabriel Salvate, enterprise solutions manager; and Luc Vidal-Madjar, head of IoT Solutions, discuss ubiquitous connectivity and transitioning to 5G, the investments it requires, and how it can change the way the world connects.

Ubiquitous connectivity

Spending the last two decades building BICS’ global network, offering the widest connectivity coverage, and relating with “literally every operator in the world, both fixed and mobile”, Chan says that connectivity has changed and improved over the past years.

“You cannot travel anywhere in the world without your phone and roaming. The cost of roaming is going down. It is a lot more affordable today. The quality is much better.”

On the enterprise side, Chan adds that connectivity has become completely seamless. “It is so critical, but it is so seamless, and it is taken for granted. People tend to forget all the heavy lifting that is required to do it.”

Seamless connectivity across devices, networks, companies, and countries has its share of challenges. For Chan, the biggest challenge for operators and enterprises is navigating different hardware and software that can work across different countries.

“The challenge lies in ensuring that every device that works in your country is in your home network and works just as well when you leave. Operators and enterprises need to make things happen and they need to protect their customers’ experience.”

Chan says that the key is to ensure that devices work and provide services to test devices before deployment in the market. He says that the enterprise space has a similar challenge.

“Enterprises need to make sure that devices and software work before they roll it out to the market. If they do not, it is extremely costly – and not only financially. If they damage the customer goodwill that they may have built-in one country, they will also damage their reputation in other countries. That is an expensive lesson.”

Malcolm Chan

5G Investment 

5G, or the fifth-generation mobile network is the new global standard for wireless connectivity after 1G, 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. Qualcomm allows connection with machines, objects, and devices while delivering high multi-Gbps data speeds, low latency, more reliability, massive network capacity, increased availability, and a more uniform user experience.

Chan posits investing in 5G technology helps operators optimise their costs. “It helps them use the spectrum better. You can serve more customers and provide more data in a particular way. It is more around optimisation. We have seen this already happen across Asia.”

Salvate differentiates between standalone 5G and non-standalone 5G, which operators have been recently using. “At the end of the day, it is the improvement of the standard network,” he says.

“In parallel, we see a lot of operators investing and testing the new 5G standalone that uses a dedicated core that can unlock capabilities like faster upload speeds, ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, and edge functions.”

Salvate says that operators need “some levels of investments” to replace the standard network with the new one.

Operators’ role

Salvate recognises the role of operators in facilitating the integration of different devices and systems for seamless connectivity. He says operators are in charge of offering a good ecosystem for it to happen and that includes infrastructure, capacity, and partnerships.

He adds that there are several ways to manage the network infrastructure and the device itself. “We have the Connectivity Management Platform we offer to enterprises to check scenarios. Our enterprise customers can see by themselves if the network is available, if it faces any type of issues if the device is connected, and if the device is sending and receiving data.”

As BICS’ Enterprise Solutions Manager, Salvate says it allows operators to give to enterprise full control of the device and it can also be available for the enterprise back-end systems, such as CRM, ERP or business analytics systems through integrations via APIs.

Operators also face operational issues they need to handle as they transition to 5G connectivity, one of which is managing the operational costs.

“When you decide to shut down the network, devices must be upgraded to a new version. You have operational costs to be managed by customers. You need to manage what is happening in the market. You need to remove the device and issue a new one, and it is more about cost.”

Gabriel Salvate

Aside from that, Salvate shares that from an MNO perspective, it is more cost-effective to operate an LTE or 5G network than a 2G or 3G network, as more devices can share the available spectrum. In addition, the 5G network is more secure, robust, and easy to maintain.

Ubiquitous connectivity for 2024

Vidal-Madjar, head of IoT Solutions at BICS, believes there is a new eSIM standard coming into the market that will make it easier for enterprises to simplify how they embed connectivity into the products they sell in multiple geographies. 

“I can foresee that enterprises will be requesting more flexibility to change the mobile carrier on the SIM card, which is bringing a lot of value for global deployment.”

Luc Vidal-Madjar

"I also see security as an important aspect. The more you deploy a device, the more you open the risk for the enterprise infrastructure. They will have to mandate some key characters to have solutions to protect the infrastructure,” Vidal-Madjar adds.

On the telco side, Salvate says that standalone is the new trend with telecommunication companies and must offer this new technology as quickly as possible because it will improve the network coverage.  

“We will see a huge number of new devices entering the network and the latest version of network technology. 5G is the future; it is the trend,” Salvate shares.

Chan adds they are looking at specific segments within the enterprise. “You already heard the many things that we do. You already heard the value that we bring to the enterprise space, in particular, the global philanthropy part, and making it easier to be connected. We are optimistic about 2024 because we have seen the momentum build over the last two years.”

The post Connecting the future with 5G appeared first on FutureIoT.

“When we look at the backdrop for 2024, we are still seeing many of the 2023 trends impacting fortunes,” says Stuart Carlaw, chief research officer at ABI Research. “High inflation, cost pressures, and reduced demand continue. Major markets like the US, Germany, and China face extended manufacturing recessions. Monetary policy's focus on curbing inflation hampers tech funding. Yet, there are signs of hope: inflation is dropping, central bank policies might change, and job markets recover. The global political landscape is the one outlier not on the trajectory to positive movement. That withstanding, 2024 could be a watershed year as we collectively turn a corner. It won’t be smooth, and it won’t be linear, but 2024 holds the promise of technology providing the acceleration engine to move us out of the past few years in the doldrums.”

What won’t happen in 2024?

Enterprise 5G

5G will fail to attract enterprise interest in 2024 – just like in 2023. In deciding about investments in connectivity technologies, enterprises are much more interested in use cases and outcomes than in the name of the connectivity technology—especially because the implementing enterprises are not connectivity technology experts.

Mainstream foldable devices

Thinner and lighter designs, better hinges, crease-free displays, fold and flip form factors, and larger cover screens—these features are convincing consumers to switch to foldable devices.

This is not for lack of trying, as the roster of competitor foldable devices is impressive, including flip and fold variants.

Network APIs

Despite the efforts of GSMA's Open Gateway and CAMARA initiatives, Network APIs will not likely create significant business opportunity. And will suffer the very same fate as GSMA’s OneAPI project in 2012, which was abandoned soon after it was launched.

It is true that the telco operators desperately need enterprise revenue and use cases in 2024, but the same problems that faced network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) a decade ago remain today: application developers are already addressing their needs through either aggregators or hyperscalers. Releasing fancy new network API initiatives will not automatically attract developer attention.

Generative AI at the edge

Enterprises will deploy generative AI in the cloud but not at the edge. The challenge with running generative AI at the enterprise edge will be in terms of selecting a good use case, deploying the correct generative AI framework/model, and balancing Return on Investment (ROI) expectations.

Robotaxis

Don’t expect robotaxi operations in 2024. The complexity of unsupervised autonomous driving in the real world is becoming increasingly apparent, particularly in interactions with more vulnerable road users.

What you can expect is greater scrutiny following the Cruise robotaxi accident.

“ABI Research is privileged to sit in a powerful position between the tech innovator communities and those companies looking to utilize technology in their operations. Our goal is to provide the key decision tools businesses need to act with speed, appropriateness, and efficiency. 2024 will be challenging, but it also holds great promise and opportunity,” Carlaw concludes.

The post Technologies with no hope in 2024 appeared first on FutureIoT.

Nozomi Networks and NetWitness are partnering to deliver what they claim is unified security and visibility across OT and IT solutions. Integrating operational technology (OT) data greatly improves the effectiveness of the security operations centre (SOC).

“A key differentiator for NetWitness is its radical visibility into an organisation’s data, no matter what type – logs, network, or endpoints -- or where it resides – on-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid,” said

From a security perspective, Tod Ewasko, chief product officer for NetWitness, says integrating critical OT and IoT data into the threat detection, investigation, and response functions increases the effectiveness of the SOC and protects an increasingly important avenue for attacks.

The post Advancing OT security with smart IoT appeared first on FutureIoT.

The firm says telcos must transition to becoming technology companies (techcos) to survive.

“The traditional telco business model must be reinvented. ABI Research sees a clear signal for mobile operators to increasingly deploy automated solutions to streamline operations, optimize resource allocation, and drive cost efficiencies. At the same time, the big focus now for mobile operators is on added consumer services and enterprises in dire need of 5G connectivity for their digital transformation efforts,” says Dimitris Mavrakis, senior director at ABI Research.

ABI Research says telcos must take these four steps telcos to transform into techcos:

• Embrace 5G-as-a-Service
• Invest in vertical ecosystems
• Digitize network management
• Become active contributors to cellular innovation

Transforming into a techco can be a huge change for many mobile operators, requiring a re-evaluation regarding technological capabilities, corporate culture, and target audience. Therefore, it’s vital to map out strategies to support this transformation effectively.

ABI Research also places emphasis on the importance of The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standardization and Standard Essential Patent (SEP) development, and how telcos need to be involved in both standards discussions and owning a significant patent holding.

The post Four steps to capture 5G returns appeared first on FutureIoT.

The surge in extreme weather events linked to climate change has also laid bare additional vulnerabilities in aging and strained post-war infrastructure. A greater variety of sensor and connectivity types alongside more advanced data analytics software platforms is enabling the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) market to expand.

ABI Research says SHM sensors will reach 22.9 million connections by 2030, with a CAGR of 18% for wired retrofitted sensors and 28% for wireless retrofitted sensors.

"The greater variety of IoT sensor hardware has made it much easier for asset owners to integrate sensors into their operations, shifting away from expensive and bulky implementations to lower cost and easy-to-install solutions," says Maryam Zafar, IoT markets analyst at ABI Research.

"Vendors are increasingly investing in software and analytics platforms to extract meaningful information from large volumes of data. Enhanced software intelligence is key, offering actionable information that adds significant value and enables more efficient predictive maintenance." Maryam Zafar

Innovation is happening on two fronts in the SHM market. First, it is happening on the hardware edge with a shift to smaller data loggers and DAQs, greater edge processing capabilities, and a more extensive variety of sensors and technologies.

Second, it is happening with the software. Many companies seek an analytics platform, often compatible with other third-party sensors. Vendors also want to see how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can improve predictive capabilities and generate more value for asset owners and managers.

One of the biggest markets for SHM is the rail industry, as demand for rail transport is expected to double in the next two decades.

As demand for passenger and freight travel increases, so does the need to prevent delays. By digitizing rail infrastructure and monitoring critical areas of concern, such as rail tracks, switches, and slopes, rail operators know when failures will happen and can implement more efficient predictive maintenance strategies. Wireless sensor technology is essential here.

“The lack of awareness in this market combined with expensive technologies means that this market has hitherto seen low penetration. New technologies should change this, shifting from end-of-life maintenance to solutions designed into projects,” says Zafar.

"Technology vendors should ensure they are taking advantage of new technology opportunities and understand how they should position themselves to target the great variety of markets within the SHM ecosystem,” she concluded.

The post Predictive maintenance is the future appeared first on FutureIoT.

“I&O leaders have little time, skills and budget to track emerging trends and the full impact of those on I&O,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, vice president analyst at Gartner. “I&O leaders should use the top trends impacting I&O for 2024 to identify which are most likely to impact their organisation and implement effective tactics to respond.”

Top trends impacting I&O in 2024

Trend No. 1: Machine customers

Machine customers are nonhuman economic actors that obtain goods or services in exchange for payment, such as virtual personal assistants, smart appliances and connected cars. Gartner expects the number of machine customers to rise over time and that by 2027, 50% of people in advanced economies will have AI personal assistants working for them every day.

Hewitt posits that there are strong upsides to machine customers that are driving interest and adoption in them, however, they come with challenges such as requiring a reworking of operating and business models.

“I&O leaders should identify appropriate machine customer use cases, the technology processes and skills required, and build capabilities around digital commerce and generative AI to align optimally,” he continued.

Trend No. 2: AI trust, risk and security management (AI TRiSM)

AI TRiSM supports AI model governance, trustworthiness, fairness, reliability, robustness, efficacy and data protection. I&O must implement and support the new forms of risk and security management that AI require. Gartner predicts that by 2026, organisations that operationalize AI TRiSM will see their AI models achieve a 50% improvement in terms of adoption, business goals and user acceptance.

“AI TRiSM improves AI implementation efficiencies and helps prevent the financial, regulatory, societal and ethical consequences of potential issues with AI,” said Hewitt.

Trend No. 3: Augmented-connected workforce

Augmented-connected workforce is the intentional management, deployment, and customization of technology services and applications to support the workforce’s experience, well-being and ability to develop their skills. It accelerates onboarding and drives business results which has a positive impact on key stakeholders.

Hewitt opines that this is a relatively new way of thinking for I&O which requires new skills and workflow views. “It also requires collaboration outside of I&O and IT which takes specific focus, and sometimes executive involvement, outside of IT to achieve that engagement,” he added.

Trend No. 4: Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

A CTEM program is an integrated, iterative approach to prioritising potential threats and continually refining security posture improvements. Technology growth requires a new approach to dealing with potential threats.

This expands the attack surface and broadens exposure beyond the average IT environment. CTEM is a new approach that prioritizes exposures rather than centring on fixing all vulnerabilities.

According to Hewitt, CTEM produces a shift from a preventative-only approach to more mature, strategy-augmenting-preventative controls with detection and response capabilities. He recommends organisations establish a CTEM team within I&O to cover on-premises infrastructure as well as cloud and edge vulnerabilities.

Trend No. 5: Democratized generative AI (GenAI)

GenAI enables the democratization of knowledge and skills by enabling the use of conversation and natural language. A Gartner poll of 1,400 executive leaders in September 2023 found that 55% of organisations are in piloting or production mode with GenAI.

GenAI products are democratizing due to the confluence of cloud and open source. GenAI for I&O has two main aspects – the use of GenAI within I&O and the impact of GenAI on I&O.

Hewitt says democratized GenAI offers a new working paradigm and can present agility, adaptability and composability improvements for I&O. “If it is overused or used unnecessarily, it can generate unacceptable costs and negative environmental impacts,” he added.

Trend No. 6: Nationalism versus globalism

Nationalism versus globalism consists of country-led initiatives to reduce dependencies on foreign products, talent and services. International conflicts create a focus on more nationalistic views that push a more domestic approach to technologies which will put pressure on I&O teams to seek solutions that keep more technologies, resources and talent in their own country.

“There are many initiatives in place today that impact the focus of IT resources from a more global view to a more nationalist approach. Shifts in these initiatives can produce new risks for countries that are currently using providers outside their country,” said Hewitt.

He suggests that I&O leaders should identify dependencies and their risks and lead in the creation of action plans to deal with the potential impactful shifts that may occur in national regulations and policies that affect I&O.

The post Gartner outlines the top trends impacting I&O for 2024 appeared first on FutureIoT.

10 Wi-Fi predictions for 2024 and beyond

10Gbps will be commonplace

Fibre broadband deployments will continue to expand in most developed and developing markets, creating a need for an upgrade of home Wi-Fi networks to pass on the increased bandwidth to the device, which will drive the rapid adoption of Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7.  The rapid adoption of Wi-Fi 6E/7 will also be driven by its ability to access additional spectrum in the 6GHz band as more countries open the band.

Wi-Fi 7 to drive immersive experience and online gaming

A recent Bain & Company report forecasts that global revenue for video gaming could increase by another 50% over the next five years.  In a sport where milliseconds count, networking equipment will be just as crucial to the game as the speed of the gaming rig. Wi-Fi 7 will be critical for speed and near-zero latency, and game developers will break new barriers with immersive experiences. Wi-Fi 7 client devices have already been released in 2023 with Qualcomm chipset with more to come in 2024.

OpenRoaming to integrate with private 5G and IoT networks in 2024

OpenRoaming’s growth will reach a critical point of exponential growth by 2026 when tens of millions of hotspots will be enabled. Deployments of OpenRoaming (with Passpoint), continue to rise as more brands and identity providers recognize the value of the federation to enable seamless connectivity access across different networks.

Convergence will enable access to private and/or public 5G services over Wi-Fi

The WBA expects network executives will continue deploying Wi-Fi and cellular in the coming years, with Wi-Fi 6E/7 for indoor, on-campus, and fixed network situations and 5G/cellular for outdoor, off-campus, and mobile environments. Rather than competing with 5G over emerging high-performance use cases, the Wi-Fi community continues to work on coexistence with 5G, especially around identity management, authentication, and policy management.

Network as a Service adoption to rise driven by cloud use

NaaS (Network as a Service) will rise beyond early adopters (e.g. managed Wi-Fi in multi-apartment units) spreading quickly to traditional enterprises where networks provide cloud-first, software-defined, application-centric environments. NaaS is attracting customers because it accelerates and simplifies the deployment of devices in today’s shortened equipment replacement and improves security with the delivery of continuous security updates that prevent and reduce breaches and outages.

Adaptive AI is coming

The role of AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) cannot be overstated, with Adaptive AI set to explode on networks, from enabling Automated Frequency Coordination (AFC) to predicting network resourcing needs. AI will help enterprises and ISPs speed up troubleshooting; streamline monitoring; and proactively anticipate outages, equipment failures, and performance degradation.

Outdoor AFC is also coming

Outdoor AFC (automated frequency coordination) will initially be successful in rural connectivity, in countries that have opened large portions of the 6GHz spectrum to Wi-Fi. We expect 6GHz low-power indoor (LP) devices with an average transmit power of 24 dBm to proliferate quickly for indoor applications such as residential mesh, indoor public venues, and high-density enterprise networks. We also expect 6GHz very low-power indoor (VPI) devices with 14 dBm maximum transmit power to be quickly adopted for short-range indoor applications such as AR/VR/XR, streaming, and gaming. These device classes do not require AFC coordination with the incumbents.

Standards to unify connectivity

New IoT technology will help unify connectivity across multiple home devices, transforming home users’ experience with IoT devices. Matter — a new industry standard launched in 2023 provides reliable, secure connectivity across multiple device manufacturers. Given the weight of players involved (e.g., Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung SmartThings), WBA expects the adoption of Matter-certified products will be exponential in the next three years, validating Wi-Fi’s central role in the smart connected home and buildings.

TIP Open Wi-Fi tests underway

Pilot projects and trials of TIP Open Wi-Fi will proliferate in developing countries and price-sensitive markets due to its cost-effectiveness and the benefits offered by an open disaggregated model. Well-established wireless local-area network (WLAN) vendors will continue working to make themselves more cost-effective in these markets through massive investment in machine learning and AI and an integrated Wi-Fi + 5G offering to enterprises.

Deeper adoption of AR and VR

Broader adoption of augmented and virtual reality will require indoor broadband networks to adapt with improvements in user interfaces and network capabilities to cater for larger groups of users. According to Bloomberg, the metaverse’s economy is expected to generate $800 billion by 2025 and $2.5 trillion by 2030. Thus, the metaverse is the universe of the future. Major brands are making substantial investments in this technology.

Rodrigues says: “There has never been a more exciting time for Wi-Fi with technologies such as OpenRoaming more widely available than ever and addressing the challenges in areas including Guest Wi-Fi provision, IoT deployments and private cellular networks. The HaLow program is creating huge interest in low-power extended-range Wi-Fi and we are looking forward to working with the Wi-Fi ecosystem to develop industry trials for Wi-Fi 7 (IEEE 802.11be) during 2024.”

The post WBA unveils Wi-Fi predictions for 2024 appeared first on FutureIoT.

Building on these findings, LambdaTest’s new research, Future of Quality Assurance 2023, has shown that companies are working to respond to the need for greater software reliability with 72% of organisations involving testers in “sprint” planning sessions, signalling a substantial shift towards software quality being considered earlier in the software development lifecycle.

The survey shows that there has been rapid adoption of AI technologies. Uses of AI reported by software testers have included automating the creation of test data (51%), writing code for automated tests (45%), test result analysis and reporting (36%), and formulating test cases (46%). Additionally, 89% of organisations are automating the deployment and running of tests through CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery) tools.

Persistent gaps

The research has also highlighted that gaps continue to exist in software testing. Teams are spending 10% of their time on setting up and maintaining test environments and a further 8% of time is spent fixing flaky tests. 74% of teams lacked a structured prioritization system, potentially overlooking factors like risk levels and customer feedback when running automated tests.

Finally, many teams lack data-driven insights to measure software reliability – 29% lacked Test Intelligence infrastructure to provide insights on how automated tests are running and 12% lacked reporting systems.

Asad Khan, CEO and co-founder of LambdaTest, pointed out that the study highlights the need to address bottlenecks affecting productivity like brittle tests alongside the set-up and maintenance of test environments. “This presents us with an opportunity as well as a challenge – to develop and implement tools that will efficiently address these bottlenecks to keep driving software quality forward,” he continued.

Commenting on the study, Dr Ali noted that organisations are attempting to close the gap between the market’s expectations of software reliability and the current state. Artificial Intelligence has seen rapid adoption amongst software testers; however, efficiency challenges remain key to improving the cost, speed and effectiveness of software testing.

“Software testers and QA staff face great pressure in the software development lifecycle, whilst practices in the industry like engaging them earlier in the process is a step forward, new tools offer a significant opportunity to help close the gap.”

Dr Junade Ali

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The combined technology enables auditors to establish an accurate network architecture and cybersecurity posture baseline. This information can then be used to set up continuous monitoring that enables immediate response and adaptation to disruptions.

Network assessment automation is fundamental to cyber resiliency best practices, enabling security and audit teams to transition from point-in-time spot-checking to real-time verification.

“While performing regular reviews of compliance metrics is important, accessing that data and analysing it can be time-consuming, tedious, and limited depending on where you are looking,” said Robin Berthier, CEO of Network Perception. “As cybersecurity risks grow, reviews need to become more comprehensive and frequent and be managed in a way that will not overburden security and audit teams. Integrating technology with Claroty makes this critical assessment possible at a glance.”

According to Stephan Goldberg, VP of business development at Claroty the exponential growth of unmanaged OT and XIoT network assets has made critical infrastructure more vulnerable to external threats.

“Our integration with Network Perception empowers customers to quickly discover and protect their XIoT assets, detect and respond to the earliest indicators of threats, and seamlessly extend their existing enterprise security and risk infrastructure and programs to harden their industrial networks,” he continued.

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While water covers 71% of the earth’s surface, only 3 per cent of it is fresh water with only 0.3% found in lakes, rivers and swamps.

The scarcity of fresh water may be apparent among city dwellers, but safe and clean water is even more scarce in the less developed regions of Asia.

Gregg Herrin, vice president for water infrastructure at Bentley Systems, says water scarcity in Asia presents different challenges depending on which part of Asia you are looking into.

“There are areas of Asia where people do not have water infrastructure at all. So, bringing clean drinking water, bringing sanitation services, is important for people who don’t have access to it,” he revealed.

Speaking to FutureIoT at the 2023 Year in Infrastructure and Going Digital Awards, Herrin acknowledged the wide disparity of development when it comes to water management, citing places like Singapore where advanced infrastructure exists, and efforts exist to further optimise how the resource is consumed and managed, and to do so while reducing their energy consumption, their carbon footprint, improve reliability and reduce service interruptions.

On the other extreme, he goes on, are regions that are looking to just build infrastructure and provide that service.

The impact of decades of legacy infrastructure

Herrin comments that much of the current water and wastewater infrastructure is buried (under the ground). And because pipes are hidden, this presents the challenge of managing what is not easily visible.

He concedes efforts to bring technology that would make it possible to visualise and measure the water flowing through the networks of pipes, as well as simulate (model) how water is flowing through that underground network of pipes.

He cited the potential to use data collated from sensors that monitor water flow or pressure to determine the condition of the pipes and pumps.

“Combining it digitally lets you see things through this network of systems that you wouldn't be able to see if you were just using traditional methods,” he continued.

The state of water management

Herrin concedes software tools are used to help design the network of water systems as these can be complicated. However, a growing trend is in the use of digital twin technologies, particularly in complex use cases like water treatment facilities where complex issues like chemistry, biology, or the hydraulic characteristic of water (and wastewater) come together to undergo some treatment prior to distribution.

“All sorts of different types of engineers and other professionals are working together to try to make sure that everything functions the way it should,” explained Herrin. “If the plant process engineer decides that they need to change something, the structural engineer needs to make sure the building won't fall.

“There's an aspect of working with digital twins that helps those different collaborators be more effective in doing that type of work together,” continued Herrin.

He further cites the example of a (water) pump that will gradually degrade over time. “The pump may not operate as efficiently as it could, or if the conditions in the network are dramatically different from the initial design – the pump might not operate at all,” he posited.

Click on the video to see Herrin’s responses to the following:

1. In Asia, what are the current constraints towards better water management?
2. What does digital transformation look like in the water utilities sector?
3. What is meant by digital water management?
4. How do you see digital technologies enabling the water industry to support GHG emissions reduction?
5. Do you need to go digital, and to what extent, to achieve ESG/sustainability targets?

The post Water management trends for Asia in 2024 appeared first on FutureIoT.

Gartner says SASE has emerged as a leading framework already influencing these enterprise buying decisions and forecasts that in 2026, 60% of new SD-WAN purchases will be part of a single-vendor SASE offering, up from 15% in 2022.

SASE vendor Netskope claims that its Borderless SD-WAN will transform how organisations manage their most critical networking and security functions and optimise enterprise branches everywhere.

“The era of the hyper-distributed enterprise - where workers can be anywhere and applications are everywhere - is causing organisations across the globe to transform their network and security strategies,” said Brandon Butler, IDC research manager for enterprise networks. “Key capabilities for next-generation architectures include deeply integrated networking and context-aware security, cloud-based management, and advanced automation enhanced by AI/ML.

Challenges by current branch infrastructure

• Rely on legacy SD-WAN and multiple disjointed network security technologies that were not built to extend performance to cloud-first, hybrid work environments;
• Can’t accommodate the explosion of cloud applications or IoT devices now in use throughout the enterprise;
• Struggle under collections of security point products and connectivity services that aren’t cleanly connected or integrated, but incur significant ongoing maintenance costs;
• Contribute to an overall status quo of inefficient, un-optimized branch infrastructure and inadequate security controls.

The Netskope answer

The new Netskope Next Gen SASE Branch, powered by Borderless SD-WAN, converges a unified SD-WAN and security appliance (the Netskope SASE Gateway) with a context-aware SASE Fabric, zero trust-based security, and a SkopeAI-powered cloud orchestrator. Available as a single, cloud-delivered offering, the solution also includes a thin branch that optimizes and secures traffic from all locations and users to cloud and on-prem locations.

“We’ve designed the Next Gen SASE Branch with the biggest needs of enterprise businesses in mind, both today and in the future,” said Parag Thakore, SVP, Borderless SD-WAN at Netskope. “Organisations no longer need to manage a complex stack of solutions to properly operate their enterprise, nor do they need to sacrifice performance for security. With Next Gen SASE Branch, they can take full advantage of a one-platform, one-software, one-policy approach that’s uniquely and fully enabled by Netskope Borderless SD-WAN.”

The post Netskope claims borderless SD-WAN to transform enterprise networks appeared first on FutureIoT.

While traditional RAN vendors currently dominate the mMIMO market, momentum for Open RAN is building as the technology matures, with pioneering deployments from operators like Rakuten and DISH.

“Advanced AI and ML techniques are poised to help close the performance gap by enhancing key capabilities such as beamforming and channel estimation,” states 5G, 6G and Open RAN research analyst Larbi Belkhit. “Integration of these models, likely in the Distributed Unit (DU), will be instrumental for Open RAN vendors to maximize spectrum efficiency.”

Companies such as DeepSig are already demonstrating that AI-powered software can improve Open RAN mMIMO efficiency. Its OmniPHY solution leverages ML for improved channel estimation, beam optimization, and interference mitigation in 5G networks.

As AI/ML matures, such solutions applied to Open RAN mMIMO will boost performance and energy consumption closer to traditional RAN levels.

Belkhit predicts that the integration of AI and ML techniques, along with other innovations in energy efficiency and GPU acceleration, will accelerate performance improvements closer to traditional RAN networks.

“This will remove critical barriers to Open RAN adoption and pave the way for flexible, interoperable 5G deployments for network operators rather than reliance on radio network equipment from traditional vendors currently dominating the market, such as Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia," Belkhit concludes.

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CSPs will be increasing their spending in multi-domain, multi-vendor and multi-technology network control, management and orchestration systems that support hybrid cloud networking environments.

By 2028, 60% of the total NAO expenditure will be dedicated to 5G, WAN automation and multi-domain orchestration predicts the firm.

Michelle Lam, an analyst at Analysys Mason, predicts the coming years will be a critical time for 5G, marked by maturing technology and evolving use cases that are prompting CSPs to invest heavily in advanced automation and orchestration capabilities.

“This investment serves the dual purpose of reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) by streamlining complex operational processes, and secondly, unlocking new revenue opportunities with service differentiation,” she elaborated.

According to Lam, 5G-related NAO spending is projected to grow at a CAGR of 27.2% during the forecast period to reach USD8.6 billion, aligning with CSPs’ imperative to modernise their 5G SA infrastructure to support end-to-end network slicing, cloud-native automation and intent-based orchestration.

“CSPs will look towards enhancing these capabilities with artificial intelligence/machine learning- (AI/ML) driven closed-loop automation to enable automated slice lifecycle management across multi-vendor, multi-cloud and multi-technology environments.”

She believes these efforts will rely on open standards and the adoption of Kubernetes-based network architectures to facilitate the orchestration of cloud-native network functions (CNFs).

“Open-source initiatives, such as the Nephio project, will be the driving force to unify CNF orchestration across the RAN, core and transport network and support CNF domain orchestration in multi-vendor cloud infrastructure across large-scale edge deployments,” she continued.

The post Network Automation and Orchestration Opportunities in 2024 appeared first on FutureIoT.

Alongside huge development attention that has been devoted to connectivity and the selection of the right network, a third area – the antenna – needs to be given equal attention because of the fundamental impact it has on device performance.

However, antenna decisions are often neglected until the end of the development process, resulting in unnecessary compromises and sub-optimal siting of antennas that could have been avoided with better planning and design.

This Quectel white paper addresses the importance of antenna decisions. It examines the differences between embedded antennas vs external antennas, looks at the common mistakes in antenna specification and design, and gives tips for the designing of embedded antennas and how to overcome the challenges faced.

Review topics:

• Embedded vs external antennas
• Antenna location
• Deployment criteria
• Performance requirements
• Ease of installation
• Tips for embedded antenna design success

Click on the link to download your copy of this paper.

The post Accelerate IoT device time-to-market by combining antennas and modules appeared first on FutureIoT.

The Quectel paper describes how, as volumes of IoT devices grow, there are now many more use cases that justify the adoption of combo antennas. Until now, the adoption of combo antennas has been constrained due to their higher cost than traditional single-technology antennas.

However, although combo antennas are relatively complex to develop, they are simple to install because only a single mounting is required for the device to then be able to access multiple forms of connectivity.

This results in lower cost of operation and faster time to market for projects that utilize combo antennas than for deployments that need to connect multiple different antennas.

Click here to download this white paper.

The post Combo antennas find new markets with robust, multi-technology connectivity appeared first on FutureIoT.

This growth may be attributed to multiple factors, such as the increasing focus on addressing the digital divide in SE Asia, the rise of 5G activities in the region, and additional service revenue streams for Communication Service Providers (CSPs). By the end of 2028, the service revenue market for FWA is estimated to be valued at US$2.23 billion.

“Fixed Wireless Access is an ideal technology to bridge the digital gap in the South-East Asian region. Serving as a holistic solution to connect the underserved populations, FWA stands out due to its rapid deployment, cost-effectiveness, and coverage adaptability by leveraging wireless technologies like 4G and 5G to provide internet access to the underserved and unserved,” says Sarah Yong, South-East Asia digital transformation research analyst at ABI Research.

The rising necessity of digital connectivity in South-East Asia accelerates the demand for broadband connectivity across the region. With countries within SE Asia such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia having low Fixed Broadband (FBB) penetration rates of below 50%, FWA has emerged as the preferred solution.

In addition, the geographical challenges of archipelagic countries make it difficult to deploy fibre consistently across the islands. Thus, countries such as Indonesia have witnessed a growing interest in FWA services. Aside from this, CSPs such as Telkomsel and Globe Telecom have launched 5G FWA as the next generation of FWA connectivity.

5G FWA boasts fibre-like connectivity speeds and can offer ultra-high throughput and ultra-low latency for broadband. In contrast, countries such as Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam have widespread fibre availability, and therefore, there is less demand for FWA services.

Jake Saunders, VP for Asia Pacific, notes, “The next stage of 5G FWA in South-East Asia is using extended range mmWave. Trials between Qualcomm and Ericsson with Telkomsel in Indonesia will be key to closing the digital divide in the region.” He posits that given the mix of urban centres and hard-to-reach rural areas, extending higher-performing connectivity to those in unserved areas will be vital. “However, it is important to consider other factors such as spectrum availability, regulatory environments, and collaborations between the private and public sector when implementing FWA initiatives,” he concluded.

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As expected, the new switch will seamlessly integrate with the existing OmniSwitch portfolio to support large-scale virtualised networks using modern and scalable fabric technologies such as the Shortest Path Bridging (SPB), also from Alcatel-Lucent.

With OmniSwitch 9912 uses a high-capacity switching fabric and high-density 100G line cards to meet bandwidth requirements. With port speeds from 1G to 100G, it enables networks to grow incrementally as the needs increase.

The OmniSwitch 9912 lets operators build a resilient network core with full redundancy and multiple connectivity options to create large campus networks. Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 9912 with AOS 8.9R3 benefits include:

•            High-capacity, modular, flexible 12-slot chassis

•            High-bandwidth availability with port speeds from 1G to 100G

•            51.2Tbps switching capacity

•            Investment protection

•            Flexible deployment options for migration

•            Extended security

•            A future-ready solution

“With the region’s ongoing digital transformation across industries, we are seeing significant demand for mission-critical and high capacity switching solutions that can meet the demand of campus, data centre and cloud-based deployments across government and private sectors,” said Kenny Ng, head of APAC business development, network business division, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise.

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To adapt to this changing environment, organisations need a new modern data centre architecture that delivers reliability through automated data centre operations, scalable performance to support the most stringent workloads (e.g., AI model training) and comprehensive data security, regardless of where the data resides.

"Data centre infrastructures are getting more complex and distributed. Traditional firewalls need to become more easily extensible to dynamically align with how the infrastructure is evolving. Juniper’s new security fabric meets market demands by allowing customers to integrate existing routers and firewalls," said Mauricio Sanchez, Sr. research director, enterprise networking and security at Dell’Oro Group. 

The new Juniper Connected Security Distributed Services Architecture integrates Juniper’s unified security management paradigm with (claimed) best-in-class routing and AI-predictive threat prevention to bring much-needed operational simplicity and scale to data centre security.

In addition, four new high-performance firewall platforms deliver unmatched performance in a compact footprint that minimizes cost, space and power consumption. 

The vendor claims its Connected Security portfolio provides a secure bridge for customers to facilitate their transition to a modern data centre, at their own pace.

This is achieved via the following unique innovations:

Juniper Connected Security Distributed Services Architecture: Juniper is the first in the industry to deliver an architecture design that fully decouples the forwarding and security services layers that have traditionally been combined in a single firewall appliance.

By decoupling these layers, customers can utilise their existing Juniper MX series routers as intelligent forwarding engines and load balancers. This unique design gives customers independent scaling flexibility without chassis limitations, multi-path resiliency and cost efficiency.

When coupled with Juniper Security Director Cloud, the operational experience is as simple as managing one logical element, regardless of the quantities and form factors of any additional firewall engines added to the architecture.

AI-predictive threat prevention: Building on Juniper’s Adaptive Threat Profiling and Encrypted Traffic Insights, AI-predictive threat prevention automatically generates custom signatures unique to the customer’s environment through a proxy-less architecture. Coupled with AI, customers gain even more effective malware prevention at line rate.

Additionally, the enhanced URL filtering solution provides more granular control, with more than 200 categories to choose from and support for up to 200 languages, as well as a new portal for better insights on web content and easy recategorization.

The AI-powered security solution enables customers and partners to predict and find real threats faster, leaving human experts to focus on more strategic security tasks.

Four new best-in-class high-performance firewalls: The new Juniper Networks SRX firewalls (SRX1600, SRX2300, SRX4300, SRX4700) are 1RU in size, scale up to 1.4 Tbps and include built-in Zero Trust capabilities, delivering the industry’s highest firewall throughput performance per rack unit.

The new platforms feature wire-speed MACsec along with natively embedded TPM 2.0 chips and cryptographically signed device IDs that allow security administrators and network operators to easily verify the trust posture of devices remotely and mitigate the risks of supply chain attacks.

These new firewalls, like the whole SRX family, support industry-standard EVPN-VXLAN Type 5 integration, providing full fabric awareness to security operators and allowing them to respond to threats faster.

“A new modern data centre architecture is needed that delivers reliable automated operations and high-performing connectivity, all without sacrificing security within and between data centre locations,” said Praveen Jain, SVP and GM, AI clusters and cloud-ready data centre, Juniper Networks.

When combined with Juniper’s Connected Security Distributed Services Architecture, these additions to the Juniper SRX series family offer customers even more options to build and expand their data centre architectures securely and with sustainability objectives top of mind.

The post Embedding zero trust in the data centre appeared first on FutureIoT.

The (hybrid) approach combines the scalability of cloud technology and the control of on-premise infrastructure. This means businesses can quickly scale up their operations while keeping security at the forefront.

According to the company, the hybrid cloud enables businesses to have full control over their cellular-connected networks, with on-site process controls. By requiring on-site authentication, the risk of hacking remotely is substantially reduced. This added security layer protects against potential cyber threats, similar to the added security that two-factor authentication provides.

The company says that integrating a business’ public key infrastructure (PKI), ensures companies retain full control over their environment. The company explains that all operations require local authorization, offering separation of duties and thorough auditing of the management system. This, combined with Semtech’s unique device-to-cloud security strategy, sets a new industry standard for security and control.

“In addition to the on-premise infrastructure security component, Hybrid Cloud features leverage the inherent advantages of cloud technology, providing scalable infrastructure that evolves with a customer’s business needs, minimizing the need for hefty hardware investments and enabling rapid deployment to meet operational demands,” said David Markland, vice president of AirLink Networking Solutions, Semtech.

He went on to explain that “With this new solution, customers can rely on the expertise and robust security framework of a premier cloud platform gaining the freedom to concentrate on what truly counts - their core business operations.”

Commenting on the announcement, Dan Shey, vice president at ABI Research says Semtech’s Hybrid Cloud is a new and unique approach to an industry-wide problem for securing management.

“With the introduction of this new network management feature, Semtech is offering a solution that combines the trust and controls of on-premise security services with the scalability benefits of the cloud. For any enterprise, Hybrid Cloud is an easy-to-implement, cost-effective way to start building their zero-trust security framework,” he continued.

The post Semtech adds hybrid cloud capabilities to its AirLink routers appeared first on FutureIoT.

First developed on 23 January 1973, radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, now on its 50^th anniversary, has become a problem-solving tool for front-line workers in warehouses and other industries.

Zebra Technologies’ 2023 Global Warehousing Study revealed that 58% of warehouse decision-makers plan to deploy RFID by 2028 which will help increase inventory visibility and reduce out-of-stocks.

One of the key findings of the that was that a majority of APAC warehouse associates and decision-makers are on the same page regarding the importance of achieving better accuracy and determining availability.

Seventy-nine percent of both groups surveyed acknowledge they need better inventory management tools to drive these outcomes.

Accelerating modernization to manage returns

Globally, 73% of warehouse decision-makers have or will be accelerating timelines of modernization projects, with decision-makers in Asia Pacific (APAC) similarly aligned at 69%. This should help with returns management which climbed to the top operational challenge cited by nearly half of warehouse decision-makers surveyed (47% globally, 40% in APAC) — the study records an increase of 5 percentage points year-over-year in the APAC region.

"The surge in returns mirrors the expansion of e-fulfilment in recent years, signalling a pressing need for transformative measures throughout the supply chain,” said Christanto Suryadarma, Southeast Asia (SEA) sales vice president for Zebra Technologies Asia Pacific.

To him, this underscores the imperative for warehouse leaders to embrace technological advancements to adeptly manage returns, while simultaneously elevating agility, strengthening inventory visibility, and fine-tuning demand forecasting.

“Besides enhancing efficiency, the modernization of operations with technology also facilitates real-time, informed decision-making,” he continued.

“The focus extends beyond return logistics; it encompasses enhancing agility, bolstering inventory visibility, and refining demand forecasting. This holistic approach aims to boost operational efficiency, enabling agile and informed decision-making in the fast-paced realm of supply chain management."

Christanto Surdayamo

This comes about as the majority of warehouse decision-makers (76% globally, 75% in APAC) say they are under pressure to improve performance while adjusting to shifting consumer e-commerce demands. Inaccurate inventory and out-of-stocks continue to significantly challenge productivity according to nearly 80% of warehouse associates and decision-makers.

Both groups — associates (82% globally, 79% in APAC) and decision-makers (76% globally, 79% in APAC)—acknowledge they need better inventory management tools to achieve better accuracy and determine availability. To combat these issues, a significant portion of decision-makers (91% globally, and 88% in APAC) are addressing this need, citing plans to invest in technology to increase visibility across the supply chain by 2028.

Optimizing operations to increase visibility

Warehouse decision-makers are also augmenting their front-line workers by automating their warehouses to ultimately optimize their operations and increase their inventory visibility.

A recent study by Interact Analysis reveals that despite a recent slowdown in demand for automation projects (in part due to a reduction in warehousing construction), this demand is expected to return to growth in 2024.

The Zebra study found that seven-in-10 warehouse decision-makers (69% globally, 70% in APAC) already have or are planning to automate workflows by 2024 to support warehouse associates and shift them toward more customer-centric, high-value tasks.

Close to half of warehouse decision-makers believe automation increases worker efficiency and productivity by reducing manual picking, order errors and cycle time. Meanwhile, around eight-in-10 warehouse associates globally (81%) and in APAC (78%) agree using more technology and automation helps them meet or exceed productivity goals.

Complementing the rise in productivity, this empowers associates’ mentality towards their work - eight in ten warehouse associates (83% globally, 82% in APAC) surveyed also feel more valued when their employers provide them with technology and automation tools to help them work.

Similarly, more than eight-in-ten of global (88%) and APAC (84%) warehouse decision-makers say adding warehouse technologies, including devices and robotics, attracts and retains employees which is extremely important during labour shortages.

More than half of the surveyed decision-makers plan to implement machine learning (52% globally, 57% in APAC) and predictive analytics (59% globally, 63% in APAC) software solutions in their facilities by 2028.

“At the heart of warehouse operations, workers remain an indispensable asset, underscoring the pivotal need for decision-makers to delicately balance the requirements of both human labour and automation,” said Vivien Tay, vertical solutions marketing lead, Zebra Technologies Asia Pacific. “

She added that the synergy between workers and automation is essential, as the value of automation is realized through its augmentation of human productivity and efficiency, directly impacting throughput, capacity, and customer satisfaction.

Prioritising sustainability in decision-making

Ultimately, warehouse decision-makers are choosing solutions based on their ability to help them build sustainable operations, driven largely by regulations, energy costs or shortages along with customer, worker and investor expectations.

For example, 77% of global warehouse decision-makers are focused on reducing emissions and waste while 84% of warehouse decision-makers recognize the importance of their warehouse technology solutions maximizing battery life.

These sentiments are echoed within APAC as well, with 74% and 78% of APAC decision-makers resonating on these areas respectively.

Other sustainable elements decision-makers prioritise today include ensuring accurate mobile device swap-out time, connecting to energy monitoring software to maximize efficiency, offering buy-back and certified refurbishment/circular economy programs, and the use of reusable and recyclable materials.

Beyond their operations, 81% of global warehouse decision-makers (79% in APAC) also say it is important that technology vendors have sustainability measures in place for running their businesses. Ultimately, warehouses must continue to implement agile strategies to avoid inefficiencies, preserve resources, and provide employees with a performance edge.

The post RFID and automation are in the warehousing automation roadmap appeared first on FutureIoT.

These advancements address current challenges and open new opportunities in campus applications and markets. Network topologies are also changing, with denser WLAN Access Points (APs) handling more users and shifting toward cloud-native, controller-free architectures for more straightforward, more resilient, and scalable networks.

ABI Research noted that while the enterprise campus will remain the largest market, the industrial, large public venue, and education sectors will see the highest growth rates between 2022 and 2030, at 23.9%, 14.3%, and 12.4%, respectively.

“Of all the markets that WLAN serves, the requirements of campus networks are the most complex and evolve the fastest. For this reason, satisfying the demands of modern campus networking is one of the strongest drivers of WLAN innovation today,” explains Andrew Spivey, senior analyst at ABI Research.

Yet WLAN alone cannot address all campus opportunities, and therefore solutions which integrate the strengths of 5G and IoT technologies with WLAN have the highest value propositions for campus networking, as they can enable ubiquitous, high-performance, high-reliability wireless connectivity for virtually all campus use cases. 

Competitive landscape

There are four distinct groupings of WLAN vendors supplying campus. The first is the all-rounders addressing virtually all campus types, including Cisco, HPE Aruba Networking, and CommScope RUCKUS Networks.

The second is the vertically focused, which optimises for certain industries, such as Arista and Extreme Networks. The third is the technology specialists, which differentiate through applying unique or highly innovative technologies. Fortinet, which places advanced security at the core of its value proposition, fits this definition.

The final group is small and medium business (SMB) targeted vendors like NETGEAR and D-Link. Each strategy has its advantages and disadvantages. All-rounders enjoy the largest Total Addressable Market (TAM) but need more focus and targeted optimisations for specific sectors.

WLAN Innovations coming

The latest WLAN innovations will enable MSPs to finally provide the guaranteed SLAs for high predictability and reliability that modern campus environments require, and the introduction of OpEx-orientated Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) models will help expand access to these performance standards to a broader market.

According to Spivey, lean enterprises have been the fastest to adopt NaaS, as they rely on short-term financial planning and are keen to reduce CAPEX and cut IT budgets by shifting to an OPEX model.

“This includes those in the carpeted enterprise, retail, and hospitality verticals. In contrast, large public venues, healthcare facilities, and industrial manufacturing sites are proving resistant to handing campus networking management over to MSPs or WLAN vendors, as they wish to retain control over the network and, in many cases, are facing comparatively less pressure with talent sourcing and retention,” Spivey concludes.

The post Coming innovations to simplify campus network complexity appeared first on FutureIoT.

While cellular connectivity by far remains the preferred option for global "low power wide area" (LPWAN) wireless connectivity, the diversity of real-world commercial applications often requires hybrid solutions that also encompass technologies such as Wi-Fi and LoRa.

The ability of communications products to readily adapt to multiple radio access technologies such as cellular, Wi-Fi, and LoRa is referred to as wireless harmonization.

IIoT vendor Blues announced a series of enhanced offerings based on its flagship product, Notecard. The expanded Notecard offerings include Notecard Cell+WiFi, Notecard WiFi, Notecard LoRa, and Notecard Chips Edition options that enable additional reliable and hybrid connectivity, positioning accuracy, and scalable development.

Jim Hassman, Blues' president and chief revenue officer, says multiple connectivity options are necessary to empower businesses to transform physical products into data-driven intelligent services.

The expanded Notecard offerings give Blues customers the flexibility to optimize their connection method for sending and receiving information between devices anywhere, at any time.

"Whether our customers are developing ten devices or vastly scaling operations, or have devices located in fixed, remote, or mobile locations, our expanded Notecard offerings are affordable, accessible, and customizable," said Hassman.

Blues' industry-first Notecard Cell+WiFi offering integrates cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity options into one device. Its dynamic fallback modes deliver a more resilient and reliable network, enhanced geolocation, and expanded coverage and provide the flexibility to combine or switch between connectivity options. Blues' Notecard LoRa provides enhanced wireless penetration, as well as an inexpensive way to deploy large fleets of devices.

All Notecards seamlessly integrate with Notehub, Blues' software service designed to securely route Notecard data to the customer's cloud application of choice. Additionally, Notecards are plug-compatible and field upgradeable, enabling even non-technical users to easily swap between connectivity options or 'generations' of radio access technologies, such as from 2G to 5G.

Blues is introducing three new Notecard options beyond its existing Notecard Cellular offering:

Notecard Cell+WiFi – The new Notecard Cell+WiFi incorporates both cellular and WiFi support out of the box. Customers can default to cellular and turn off Wi-Fi, vice versa, or enable both to ensure highly reliable connectivity despite location. The offering also provides expanded international and domestic coverage with enhanced carrier support.

Notecard WiFi – The new Notecard Wi-Fi addresses customer demand for a simple, low-cost way to connect localized clusters of indoor devices securely to the cloud.

Notecard LoRa – The new Notecard LoRa offering addresses customer demand for connecting potentially large clusters of outdoor devices to the cloud. Packaging low-power LoRaWAN technology in a novel form, the offering shares the same ease of use and just works provisioning as its Notecard counterparts.

The Notecard Cell+WiFi offering is available for purchase immediately. The Notecard WiFi and Notecard LoRa offerings are available for beta testing by interested customers and will be available for purchase later this year.

A challenge facing organisations when they scale to hundreds of thousands of devices is the need to reduce costs by whatever means possible. One approach to reducing costs is a process known as chip-down design.

Blues is introducing a new Notecard design option for customers who reach that level of scale:

Notecard WiFi and LoRa Chips Editions – Blues' new chip-down design option for Notecard allows customers to scale their solutions more economically without the need to compromise security or modify firmware designed for the system-on-a-module (SOM) Notecard versions.

These new, easy-to-implement Notecard offerings enable organisations of all sizes to create intelligent, data-driven devices in industries including manufacturing, clean energy, and healthcare.

"After years of connectivity struggles, we found Blues and adopted the Notecard/Notehub solution. The Blues cellular solution solved connectivity, security, and scalability issues," said True Manufacturing Company. "Now, with this announcement of the expanded family of Notecards, Blues has really listened to customers and delivered a solution that leads industry trends. This is the kind of innovative partnership that allows OEMs to succeed in the IoT space."

The post Blues enhances IIoT connectivity with expanded Notecard offerings appeared first on FutureIoT.

A Gartner survey revealed that 86% of business leaders see sustainability as an investment that protects their organisation from disruption.

The Cradlepoint W1855-5GC Wideband Adapter is designed for distributed sites that require secure cellular connectivity or failover in the event of a primary link disruption. It enables the enterprise to guarantee connectivity while furthering sustainability goals.

Key benefits include:

Connectivity offerings for the expansion of 5G: The refreshed modem features the latest 5G standards with 3GPP Release 16 specifications, providing customers with expanded carrier aggregation and band combinations as service providers grow their 5G services.

More sustainable design: Compared to its predecessor, the W1855-5GC Wideband Adapter is 78% smaller and 74% lighter, requiring 30% less energy when under load. In addition, the device is securely packaged with 84% less packaging, and comes with an aluminium housing reinforcing Cradlepoint’s commitment to sustainably sourced and recycled materials.

Centralised device management and visibility: With Cradlepoint NetCloud Manager, lean IT teams can successfully manage the deployment, configuration, and troubleshooting of each device from centralised locations, reducing unnecessary complexity and costly on-site visits.

The post Cradlepoint wideband adapter caters to sustainability requirements appeared first on FutureIoT.

Budget constraints, skills shortages and increasing complexity continue to drive the need for automated data centre operations. The Juniper Apstra automates and validates the design, deployment and operation of multi-vendor data centre networks. It also provides a single source of truth for predicting, analysing, and troubleshooting ongoing operations.

Value proposition includes:

Simple data collection and visualization. Using Apstra’s graph database, users can now easily customize intent-based analytics probes for telemetry and visibility into network operations, then easily explore and visualize the data using the new database query interface included in Apstra 4.2.0. The easy-to-use, no-code user interface enables new users to easily query and explore the database while allowing experienced users to write customized graph queries.

Complete network visibility with integrated flow data. Multivendor flow data through Apstra provides granular visibility for in-depth analysis and insights into the application traffic flows traversing the network without the complexity and cost of a separate monitoring system.

When paired with Apstra’s telemetry and analytics features, these capabilities simplify and speed troubleshooting, enable better performance management, capacity planning and cost control, and improve security and compliance - regardless of vendor.

Automated and streamlined network provisioning with Terraform. Companies currently using the Terraform infrastructure-as-code (IaC) platform to automate their public cloud deployments can now use the Terraform provider for Apstra to automatically push configurations to the data centre through Apstra without any API programming.

By simplifying network operations, Terraform and Apstra accelerate the delivery of new services, giving organisations a data centre solution modelled after the simplicity and agility of the cloud.

The combination of Apstra’s intent-based networking capabilities and Juniper Validated Designs enables organisations to simplify and standardise data centre architectures to achieve hyperscaler-like efficiencies.

“As business demands intensify, organisations need accessible and intuitive solutions that enable IT professionals to manage data centres with the utmost reliability by taking away the complexity,” said Mansour Karam, VP of product management at Juniper Networks.

The post Intent-based networking solution to offer faster resolution of application issues appeared first on FutureIoT.

DPC is supporting the integration of sensors into Enturi’s portable and decentralised wind turbines. The turbines can then connect to DPC’s cloud platform to manage the secure communication and management of data.

Benefits of integration

• A customer application to control the turbines remotely and access live and historical data, a current challenge for the industry.
• Preventative maintenance via real-time data analysis.
• Data analysis to monitor and understand the impact of decisions on journeys to net zero.
• Transparency of data to, for example, open up data access for carbon accounting as part of companies’ decarbonization journeys.

Referring to the partnership as a perfect example of how a standardised approach to connectivity and trusted data is enhancing strategies across industries, Brian Bishop, CEO of DPC and OCF president commented that as the renewable energy industry innovates, both organisations and consumers must have complete confidence that their data is safe.

"By using the OCF framework, DPC is able to not only comply with UK green energy metering requirements but with ISO/IEC standards to ensure the secure communication of wind energy data."

Brian Bishop

In February 2023, Enturi was awarded £98,000 of Innovate UK funding to accelerate system development through advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation and rapid prototyping.

Alex Shakeshaft, CEO and Co-Founder of Enturi, says monitoring and reporting on decarbonization in a secure yet transparent way is a huge challenge for the renewable energy industry.

"We are thrilled to collaborate with DPC to ensure both organisations and individuals can easily monitor and report on their sustainability goals. Our vision is to diversify clean technologies to enable businesses and communities to access renewable energy solutions to make significant contributions towards net zero goals, energy security, and energy costs.”

Alex Shakeshaft

The post Wind energy data transparency project adopts OCF standard appeared first on FutureIoT.

Also, the total worldwide enterprise and service provider (SP) router market recorded US$4.6 billion in revenue in 2Q23, a 9.4% year-over-year increase.

Ethernet switch market highlights

The Ethernet switch market's growth of 38.4% in 2Q23 builds on annualized growth of 31.6% in 1Q23. Through the first half of 2023, the Ethernet switch market is up 35.2% compared to the first half of 2022.

A major driver of growth in the market continues to be the easing of supply chain issues that began during the global pandemic. With improved component availability, vendors are increasingly able to recognise revenues from fulfilling backlogged product orders.

This trend is particularly relevant in the non-datacentre segment of the Ethernet switching market, where revenues grew 52.5% year over year in 2Q23, while port shipments rose 16.6%. Revenues in the datacentre portion of the market rose 21.7% year over year in 2Q23, while port shipments declined 2.4%.

Meanwhile, the higher-speed segments of the Ethernet switch market continue to see strong growth in the datacentre segment, driven by hyperscalers and cloud providers building datacentre network capacity.

Market revenues for 200/400 GbE switches rose 61.9% year over year and 100GbE revenues increased 18.5% in 2Q23. Revenues for the 25/50 GbE segment increased 54.2% year over year. ODM (original device manufacturer) Direct sales continue to be an important part of the datacentre segment, rising 12.2% compared to 2Q22 to make up 12.6% of the datacentre segment's revenues.

Lower-speed switches, which are typically deployed in enterprise campus and branch locations, showed strength too, driven in part by the continued easing of supply chain constraints. Revenues for 1GbE switches rose 53.1% year over year in 2Q23.

10GbE switches rose 18.1% year over year in the quarter. And 2.5/5GbE switch revenue – also known as multi-gigabit Ethernet switches – rose 157.5% year over year in 2Q23.

In the Asia/Pacific region, the Ethernet switch market grew 7.7%, with the People's Republic of China market falling 7.8% year over year and Japan's market growing 18.9%.

"The Ethernet switch market's continued growth momentum is indicative of enterprises, hyperscalers, and services providers worldwide continuing to efficiently invest in higher-speed and feature-rich platforms to support new applications such as Generative AI workloads," said Vijay Bhagavath, research vice president, Cloud and Datacentre Networks at IDC.

He noted that the component shortage issues continue to ease, allowing vendors across the Ethernet switching market to recognise revenues from backlogged orders and book new orders.

"The Ethernet switching market will continue to be dynamic in the quarters and years to come as supply chains normalize and high-performance network capacity continues to be built out," he concluded.

Router market highlights

The service provider segment, which includes both communications SPs and cloud SPs, accounted for 77.5% of the market's total revenues in 2Q23. Revenues in the service provider segment increased 14.8% year over year while revenues in the enterprise segment declined 6.1% in the quarter. The Asia/Pacific region the market rose 3.0% year over year.

Vendor highlights

Cisco's Ethernet switch revenues increased 55.3% year over year in 2Q23, giving the company a market share of 47.2%. Cisco's combined service provider and enterprise router revenue grew 18.1% in the quarter, giving the company a market share of 35.9% in 2Q23.

Arista Networks saw Ethernet switch revenues increase 42.6% year over year in 2Q23, giving the company 10.4% market share.

Huawei's Ethernet switch revenue increased 17.7% in 2Q23, giving the company a market share of 9.0%. The company's combined SP and enterprise router revenue rose 10.8%, giving the company a market share of 33.3% in the quarter.

HPE's Ethernet switch revenue increased 78.8% in 2Q23, resulting in a market share of 7.1%.

H3C's Ethernet switch revenue declined 10.9% year over year 2Q23, giving the company a market share of 4.1%. In the combined service provider and enterprise routing market, H3C's revenues decreased 10.0% in 2Q23, resulting in a market share of 2.0%.

Juniper's Ethernet switch revenue grew 35.2% year over year in 2Q23, resulting in a market share of 2.9%. Juniper's routing revenue increased 2.5% year over year in 2Q23, giving the company a market share of 10.3% this quarter.

The post Easing supply chain fuels switch and router growth, says IDC appeared first on FutureIoT.

In June 2021, Soracom completed a joint iSIM Proof of Concept in collaboration with Sony Semiconductor Israel (Sony), a leading cellular IoT chipset provider, and Kigen, which focuses in secure authentication for cellular IoT devices. These partnerships have now been expanded to include new iSIM-compatible modules from Quectel and Murata.

“iSIM technology matches perfectly with Soracom's Subscription Containers feature, which lets users download new profiles over the air as needed,” said Ken Tamagawa, CEO and co-founder for Soracom.

Soracom is a technology partner to more than 20,000 startups, SMBs, and enterprises, connecting more than 5 million IoT devices globally. The company offers robust solutions specifically designed to make it easy to build, operate, and scale IoT deployments.

“iSIM represents the future of SIM technology, and this collaboration puts our customers at the leading edge of IoT development.”

Ken Tamagawa, Soracom

A game changer in IoT development

iSIM technology offers significant advantages over existing SIM and eSIM technology, including reduced physical size, simplified circuitry, minimal board footprint, improved processing capacity, greater energy savings, higher security, lower cost and simplified commercial distribution.

The iSIM standard integrates communication modules, SIM and eSIM functions into a single System-on-Chip (SoC) device and offers a hardware-secured area within the chip for optimal data integrity.

“iSIM technology is a game changer for anyone who wants to secure data originating from connected devices whether it’s for delivering unique customer experiences or for AI solutions."

Vincent Korstanje, CEO of Kigen.

“The commercial availability of iSIM on Soracom’s network is the result of extensive collaborative testing of the Kigen iSIM OS using the market-leading modules and chipsets," he added.

According to Dima Feldman, VP of product management and marketing at Sony Semiconductor Israel, noted that the development of iSim technology will greatly contribute to the evolution of cellular IoT devices.

“The combination of Soracom’s LPWA modules and iSIM technology accelerates implementation efforts for customers, allowing them to develop advantages in cost, size, security, and power consumption.”

Increased interest

Customer interest in iSIM-compatible products has increased steadily since 2021 and module vendors have expanded related product offerings.

Soracom’s expanded partnerships will allow interested customers to secure the Quectel BG773 and Murata Type 1SC iSIM-compatible modules for use in IoT deployments.

"This product is a compact, power-saving, low-cost cellular LPWA module that can be used in a variety of IoT applications,” said Akira Sasaki, general manager, communication module division, Murata Manufacturing.

"Together with leading companies in the cellular IoT industry, we have developed a solution that will let our customers bring a new generation of IoT products to market."

Akira Sasaki, Murata

Michael Wallon, SVP sales APAC + ANZ, Quectel Wireless Solutions, said: "By combining our iSIM-enabled communication modules with the Soracom connectivity platform, customers can easily implement integrated, cost-effective, sustainable and secure IoT solutions at scale, while streamlining their global IoT deployment and paving the way to a smarter world."

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The analyst attributes continued spending on IoT to come from rising demand for remote operations, supply chain efficiency, deployment of commercial 5G, and increasing digital footprint are driving IoT adoption in the region. IoT investments are expected to reach US$435 billion in 2027, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.7% between 2023 and 2027.

"IoT connectivity technology both fixed and wireless continues to improve and play an increasingly important role in IoT adoption," says Bill Rojas, adjunct research director for IDC Asia/Pacific.

He goes on to add that power-saving IoT devices built with 5G enhanced Machine Type Communications technologies such as 5G Reduced Capacity (RedCap) will start to be introduced into the market to gradually replace LTE Cat 3/4 devices.

He posits that the result will be more video-enabled endpoints and advanced analytics. 5G Non-Terrestrial Network satellite connectivity is expected to be introduced to the market during the forecast period further extending the reach of IoT to remote areas. 

Industry use cases

“Use cases include disaster recovery and response, oil & gas, mining and resources monitoring. 5G-enabled mobile private networks in manufacturing, transportation and utilities will take advantage of mid-band and mmWave IoT device connectivity enabling 4K video cameras and ultra-low latency for automated mobile robots.

Fibre-connected smart sensors for many applications including monitoring of bridges and highways, and control of smart elevators, traffic lights, and streetlights are starting to gain traction and be combined with wireless technologies to provide robust scalable solutions", he added.

Discrete and process manufacturing will see the largest investment in IoT solutions in 2023 and throughout the forecast period, accounting for more than one-third of all IoT spending in the region. State/local government and professional services are the following largest industries in terms of IoT spending.

Use cases beyond industry and into processes

The potential to improve the quality, efficacy, and customer experience of their products and services is what motivates these organisations to invest in IoT. State/local government and telecommunications will deliver the fastest spending growth over the five-year forecast with CAGRs of 15.1% and 14% respectively.

IoT use cases that see the highest spending in 2023 are manufacturing operations, production asset management, supply chain resilience, inventory intelligence and public safety and emergency response which follow similar growth patterns as the host industries.

Together these use cases will make more than one-third of the overall IoT spending in the region. The use cases that will experience the fastest spending growth represent the diverse application of IoT technologies – electric vehicle charging, next-generation loss prevention and agriculture field monitoring.

“Organisations are more focused on data-driven operations to address specific business goals and customer challenges, and investing in the IoT ecosystem is crucial. The majority of the enterprises indicated in an IDC survey that they are collecting or plan to collect biometric, video, and transactional data to achieve the above goals”, says Sharad Kotagi, market analyst at IDC IT Spending Guides, Customer Insights & Analysis.

From a technology perspective, in 2023, the largest portion of spending is expected to remain in the services category, representing roughly 40% of the overall IoT spending in the region. The emphasis on IT/OT convergence, as organisations build cross-functional IoT centres of excellence, has increased their reliance on system integrators and other outsourcing partners.

The hardware market for IoT will be the second-largest technology group in 2023, primarily driven by purchases of modules and sensors. The software will be the fastest-growing technology category with a five-year CAGR of 13% with a focus on application and analytics software purchases. Connectivity spending will grow at 7.6% CAGR during the forecast period and will account for 7.9% of the total spending in 2027.

Country landscape

China (PRC) - continues to hold the largest share, with more than 60% in 2023, followed by South Korea and India. Countries with the fastest IoT spending in 2023 are China, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The advent of smart factories and Industry 4.0, along with government-led IoT programs and policies, has sped up IoT adoption across the Asia Pacific nations.

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With unique cellular capabilities and the simplicity of Cradlepoint’s cloud-based management platform, NetCloud Manager, Cradlepoint 5G SASE features zero trust, cellular intelligence along with cloud and SIM-based security to address the challenges and threats faced by today’s extended enterprise.

As enterprises evolve beyond fixed sites to include mobile and IoT, they are looking to the flexibility and agility of Wireless WAN and 5G. These geographically dispersed networks, combined with the proliferation of connected devices and ill-fitting network security solutions, can significantly increase security vulnerability.

With IoT device deployments projected to reach 30 billion by 2027, and the perennial IT talent shortage, the seamless integration of 5G-centric SASE solutions to manage Wireless WAN infrastructure is critical.

"A full SASE solution that is optimised for 5G will allow IT organisations to manage network security, network access policies, and observability across wireless connectivity in any hybrid WAN," said Shamus McGillicuddy, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

The Cradlepoint 5G SASE will be delivered in phases over the next 12 months:

Cradlepoint Cellular Intelligence: Available today, cellular telemetries, such as signal strength and data plan usage, can be leveraged for SD-WAN traffic steering. As 5G StandAlone (SA) networks become mainstream, Cradlepoint’s network slicing capabilities will work with carriers’ services to offer prioritisation and slice-based isolation.

SIM-based Security: Cradlepoint offers SIM management and GPS tracking to secure the physical devices and to detect rogue movement. Cradlepoint’s vision for the future is to work with carriers for tighter SIM-based security using SIMs as the basis for authentication, regardless of the connecting hardware.

Connect-and-Go Zero Trust Security: Creating WANs in just a few clicks, 5G SASE replaces complex VPNs. Zero trust shrinks the lateral attack surface—devices connected to a Cradlepoint router are immediately dark to the outside world and other sites. Soon, this capability will be delivered from the cloud, offering an easier deployment option.

Cloud-Delivered Security: Ericom’s full suite of SSE solutions, including SWG, CASB, RBI and DLP, protects users browsing in fixed and mobile environments from threats such as phishing and ransomware. Cradlepoint will integrate these capabilities with existing zero trust and SD-WAN solutions into Cradlepoint NetCloud for a single pane of glass user experience for IT teams.

"As enterprises evolve and become more diverse in terms of their connectivity to branch, mobile and IoT, they need a more 5 G-centric approach to security and management. An updated approach to SASE is essential for today’s modern organisation to defend against elevated attack surfaces," said Todd Krautkremer, CMO, Cradlepoint.

"Current SASE solutions are not optimised for 5G. Cradlepoint’s strategy is to provide lean IT organisations with a security solution that is aligned with the realities of a changing business and network profile."

Todd Krautkremer

The post Coming in phases: secure 5G connectivity to address extended enterprise appeared first on FutureIoT.

With unique cellular capabilities and the simplicity of Cradlepoint’s cloud-based management platform, NetCloud Manager, Cradlepoint 5G SASE features zero trust, cellular intelligence along with cloud and SIM-based security to address the challenges and threats faced by today’s extended enterprise.

As enterprises evolve beyond fixed sites to include mobile and IoT, they are looking to the flexibility and agility of Wireless WAN and 5G. These geographically dispersed networks, combined with the proliferation of connected devices and ill-fitting network security solutions, can significantly increase security vulnerability.

With IoT device deployments projected to reach 30 billion by 2027, and the perennial IT talent shortage, the seamless integration of 5G-centric SASE solutions to manage Wireless WAN infrastructure is critical.

“A full SASE solution that is optimised for 5G will allow IT organisations to manage network security, network access policies, and observability across wireless connectivity in any hybrid WAN,” said Shamus McGillicuddy, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

As an industry leader in Wireless WANs and with the recent acquisition of Ericom, Cradlepoint is uniquely positioned to deliver a comprehensive 5G-optimised SASE solution that enables organisations to seamlessly match the security challenges of extended networks. Cradlepoint 5G SASE will be delivered in phases over the next 12 months:

Cradlepoint Cellular Intelligence: Available today, cellular telemetries, such as signal strength and data plan usage, can be leveraged for SD-WAN traffic steering. As 5G StandAlone (SA) networks become mainstream, Cradlepoint’s network slicing capabilities will work with carriers’ services to offer prioritisation and slice-based isolation.

SIM-based Security: Cradlepoint offers SIM management and GPS tracking to secure physical devices and to detect rogue movement. Cradlepoint’s vision for the future is to work with carriers for tighter SIM-based security using SIMs as the basis for authentication, regardless of the connecting hardware.

Connect-and-Go Zero Trust Security: Creating WANs in just a few clicks, 5G SASE replaces complex VPNs. Zero trust shrinks the lateral attack surface—devices connected to a Cradlepoint router are immediately dark to the outside world and other sites. Soon, this capability will be delivered from the cloud, offering an easier deployment option.

Cloud-Delivered Security: Ericom’s full suite of SSE solutions, including SWG, CASB, RBI and DLP, protects users browsing in fixed and mobile environments from threats such as phishing and ransomware. Cradlepoint will integrate these capabilities with existing zero trust and SD-WAN solutions into Cradlepoint NetCloud for a single pane of glass user experience for IT teams.

“As enterprises evolve and become more diverse in terms of their connectivity to branch, mobile and IoT, they need a more 5 G-centric approach to security and management. An updated approach to SASE is essential for today’s modern organisation to defend against elevated attack surfaces,” said Todd Krautkremer, CMO, Cradlepoint.

“Current SASE solutions are not optimised for 5G. Cradlepoint’s strategy is to provide lean IT organisations with a security solution that is aligned with the realities of a changing business and network profile.”

Todd Krautkremer

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The combination of NTN-based NB-IoT connectivity and cloud-based IoT network management represents the next generation of IoT connectivity: highly available, highly affordable, ubiquitous, and deeply integrated with the hyperscale cloud platforms that serve as the backbone of today’s IoT.

Soracom’s fully virtualised global platform provides full MVNO capability paired with powerful connectivity management tools.

Skylo's satellite NTN lets chipsets, modems, modules, and devices designed for terrestrial networks to connect via existing satellites using the global 3GPP Release 17 standard.

While the network is grounded in 3GPP specifications, much of the development of the network operates on what Skylo refers to as the “Standards Plus” approach.

Skylo’s engineers add additional technical specifications to improve the functionality, interoperability, and ubiquity of the satellite-based network over and above the 3GPP standards, delivering an exceptional user experience.

In combining Soracom protocol conversion and authentication offloading features, the customer can also minimise the amount of data transmitted over the satellite link while maintaining integration with a cloud service of their choice.

"Combining breakthrough NTN NB-IoT network, we can enable customers to add satellite coverage to their existing hardware with minimal data overhead for hyperscaler cloud integrations," said Kenta Yasukawa, CTO and Co-Founder of Soracom.

On the partnership, Dr. Andrew Nuttall, CTO and Co-Founder of Skylo, says the aim is to empower businesses and industries to unlock the full potential of IoT, regardless of their location or infrastructure constraints, enabling real-time data access, monitoring, and control in areas not currently served by cellular connectivity.”

The post Coming soon: cloud-native IoT non-terrestrial network connectivity anywhere appeared first on FutureIoT.

This collaboration will enable customers to develop solutions that combine LoRaWAN and Sigfox 0G technologies, providing global coverage for more IoT use cases such as asset management through ultra-low power geolocation in industries including supply chain and logistics.

LoRa Edge and the LoRa Connect transceivers feature multi-band connectivity, ultra-low power Wi-Fi and GNSS scanning capabilities in a single monolithic silicon. These make them highly cost-effective platforms for IoT and geolocation applications in the global unlicensed LPWAN market, ensuring wide coverage.

Simplifying IoT deployments and enhancing global availability based on the combined network’s coverage will enhance the options and opportunities for developers to create world-class solutions.

UnaBiz joined the LoRa Alliance as a Contributor member recently following a series of partnership announcements with several LoRaWAN ecosystem members.

In April 2023, UnaBiz opened up the Sigfox device library to the public and IoT community to build bridges with all IoT communication technologies and power sustainable business growth.

The open device library facilitated the validation of the Sigfox 0G technology with the LoRa Edge platform.

Tom Mueller, executive vice president and general manager of the IoT System Products Group, Semtech, says the collaboration aims to create a cost-effective, single SKU platform for customers to benefit from the best available network coverage globally and we are enabling LoRa Cloud geolocation across these networks, bringing ultra-low power Wi-Fi and GNSS sniffing for logistics and asset tracking.”

For his part, Remi Lorrain, vice president of convergence at UnaBiz says: "By accelerating technology convergence at the device and software layer, we provide our customers the freedom to select the most effective and relevant connectivity, leveraging both Sigfox 0G network and LoRaWAN coverage, based on their business requirements and sustainability goals.”

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It predicts that this growth will be driven by the acceleration of 5G standalone deployments, with intensifying rollouts in home markets providing increased momentum and a strong value proposition for 5G standalone-specific roaming agreements.

Standalone networks provide greater network functionality over non-standalone 5G networks by leveraging next-generation network cores to provide these greater network speeds and latency to 5G IoT roaming connections; improving the value proposition of a roaming model.

West Europe as a key market for 5G IoT roaming

The research forecast that 21% of global 5G IoT roaming connections in 2027 will be found in West Europe, despite only accounting for 5% of the global population. It identified leading efforts from operators in the region to launch 5G standalone networks as key to incentivising IoT users to implement a roaming business model, thus driving the growth of IoT roaming connections.

Report author Elisha Sudlow-Poole opines that to further capitalise on the growth of 5G IoT roaming in West Europe, operators must form roaming agreements that leverage standalone 5G networks to improve network performance for roaming connections and provide the same level of service when roaming as they do on home networks.

Value-added services key to managing revenue leakage

In addition to 5G standalone-specific roaming agreements, the report urged operators to implement roaming analytics tools that leverage AI to maximise roaming revenue, as they enable operators to efficiently assess the significant amount of roaming data generated by 5G roaming connections in real time.

The report anticipated that key verticals, such as autonomous vehicles, will necessitate these advanced roaming solutions, owing to their data-centric nature. With this, the research emphasised that roaming analytics must be integrated directly into platforms to maximise their value proposition to network operators and enable swifter reconciliation of clearing for stakeholders.

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Since the early days of industrial automation, manufacturers have adopted a variety of purpose-built protocols and systems for highly specialised control applications, instead of using standard Ethernet technologies.

As the IIoT continues to expand, industrial networks in the future will be required to transmit much larger volumes of data between interconnected devices and to collect information from remote devices for both OT and IT engineers to access. With these growing demands on the horizon, network preparedness may determine an enterprise's success.

Moxa offers three tips to prepare IIoT networks for the future. These include:

Achieve greater integration with a unified infrastructure

Over the years, various devices using different protocols have been deployed on industrial networks to provide diverse services. Under these circumstances, network integration usually costs more than expected or becomes more difficult to achieve.

Manufacturers can either choose the status quo, that is, maintain their pre-existing isolated automation networks with numerous purpose-built protocols of the past, or seek solutions to deterministic services and that can integrate these “islands of automation” into one unified network.

If the goal is to be ready for future demands, the choice is obviously the latter. The rule of thumb is to take potential industrial protocols into consideration and ensure you can redesign networks in case any new demands arise in the market.

One approach is Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN), a set of new standards introduced by the IEEE 802.1 TSN Task Group as an advanced toolbox. With TSN, you can build open, unified networks with standard Ethernet technologies that reserve flexibility for the future.

Enable anywhere access with hassle-free cloud services

Cloud-based remote access offers many benefits to IIoT customers, such as reducing the travel time and expenses of sending maintenance engineers to multiple remote sites. Furthermore, cloud-based secure remote access can offer flexible and scalable connections to meet dynamic, fast-changing requirements.

However, operational technology (OT) engineers may find it cumbersome to set up and maintain their own cloud servers for new services and applications. Indeed, there is considerable effort associated with setting up new infrastructure, even in the cloud.

Fortunately, OEMs and machine builders can now deliver secure cloud-based services and remote access to their customers, therefore eliminating the need to maintain in-house cloud servers.

One key issue that demands scrutiny is the cloud server license scheme. Often, upfront costs may seem low for limited server hosts. Yet these apparent cost savings on server hosts may actually make a project uneconomical due to a limited scale of connections.

Second, you may also need to consider central management capabilities in order to flexibly expand remote connections as your needs change. With this said, carefully weigh the costs and benefits of incorporating secure remote access to industrial networks. Always select solutions that minimise hassles and will help deliver more value to customers.

Get better visibility of network status

When complexity increases due to greater connectivity on industrial networks, it can become very difficult to identify the root cause of problems and maintain sufficient network visibility.

Control engineers often must revert to trial and error to get the system back to normal, which is time-consuming and troublesome.

To facilitate and manage growing industrial networks, network operators need integrated network management software to make informed decisions throughout network deployment, maintenance, and diagnostics.

In addition, as systems continue to grow, it is important that you pay attention to several network integration concerns. First, only managing industrial networks in local control centres may not be feasible three or five years from now, especially when existing systems need to be integrated with new ones.

It is therefore important to use network management software with integration interfaces, such as OPC DA tags for SCADA system integration or RESTful APIs for external web services. Furthermore, an interface to facilitate third-party software integration is also a key criterion for ensuring future flexibility.

For many industries, the IIoT presents as many challenges as opportunities. It is this new frontier where traditional OT and IT silos converge is clearly the way of the future. Successfully deploying an IIoT application requires careful planning and attention to detail from the moment you decide to begin the journey.

The post Getting IIoT networks ready for the future appeared first on FutureIoT.

IoT development in Europe reflects enterprises' evolving digital transformation investment objectives related to cost reduction, process streamlining, automation, and enhanced customer experience. There are, nevertheless, varying dynamics in regional markets.

Central and Eastern European (CEE) organisations' investments, for example, remain significantly below the European market average, with expected single-digit increases over the forecast period.

In the last three years, many investments were put on hold in CEE, due to the various challenges related to the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the overall pressured macro-economic environment.

However, as IoT has proven to be integral to cost reduction, process optimization, automation, and enhanced management and monitoring capabilities, IDC expects investments to accelerate by the end of the forecast period.

From an overall industry perspective, European IoT spending will be driven by investments from manufacturing, utilities, and professional services organisations. Prominent use cases will include production asset management, distribution automation, and infrastructure for smart buildings.

The fastest adoption of IoT will be seen across use cases such as irrigation management in the resources industry and fleet management in transport.

Notable updates in its latest IoT spending guide were made to the use case taxonomy across multiple industries (i.e., discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing, retail, resource industries, transportation, and telecommunications).

Updates to the use case taxonomy reflect enterprises' evolving DX investment objectives, some of which were spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent business and societal disruptions.

In terms of technology, modules and sensors will continue to drive IoT-related spending.

This was followed by related services such as industrial maintenance to support the ongoing operation of device hardware ("things"), vertical business process outsourcing services, infrastructure as a service, and data as a service.

Low power wide area networks (LPWANs) will see the fastest-growing investments and will be a critical IoT area for telecom providers in the next few years.

Spending on analytics software will also increase, as organisations strive to turn data collected by connection endpoints into actionable insights.

"Due to the uncertain macroeconomic context, European organisations are expected to continue feeling pressure on budgets, with additional investments restrained in the short and medium term," says Alexandra Rotaru, senior research analyst with IDC's European Data & Analytics Team. "However, IoT will remain a critical tool for improving performance and efficiency and increasing automation capabilities. It will continue to be a key investment area, helping organisations to reduce costs and enhance productivity despite challenges."

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Juniper Research forecasts that enterprise spending on private networks will be near US$10 billion globally by 2028; rising from US$1 billion in 2023.

Key sectors & market share

Growing by 722%, the three verticals driving the market were identified:

1.    Manufacturing - 35%

2.    Energy - 20%

3.    Public Services - 16%

Manufacturing drives demand for 5G private networks

The manufacturing market demands more frictionless coordination of automated processes and devices, thus requiring high-levels of orchestration via software-defined networks. This complexity means that manufacturing will be a key use case for the more rapid adoption of 5G private networks, due to its infrastructure supporting high-device density operations and ultra-low latency properties.

As network complexity increases, the report urges private network vendors to offer an ongoing managed service approach to enterprises. This will enable private network vendors to maintain a continuous relationship with their customers and benefit from recurring revenue. Ongoing technical support and other value-added services will be necessary to maximise the value proposition to customers.

Ensure high quality of service for the end user

Additionally, the research predicts that spectrum resource management will be the key determining factor in the quality-of-service provision to minimise network interference. As a result, network slicing will emerge as a key technology for vendors to ensure that high throughput to private network connections is guaranteed for end users.

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The AWK-3252A aims to optimise mobile automation and IP surveillance systems in mining, manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, and other industries, driving improved outcomes especially where Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) are at the heart of boosting productivity and operational safety.

Capable of concurrent dual-band Wi-Fi, the Moxa AWK-3252A offers 802.11ac performance with DFS channel support, the latest WPA3 encryption for an additional layer of WLAN security, aggregated data rates up to 1.267 Gbps, and millisecond-level client-based Turbo Roaming for <150 ms recovery time between APs.

Two redundant DC power inputs increase the reliability of the power supply, and the AWK-3252A can be powered via PoE to facilitate flexible deployment. Combined, these features simplify industrial wireless operations and the integration of mobile systems outfitted with complex sensors and cameras, while ensuring high performance to address the requirements for reliable and futureproof systems.

The AWK-3252A is compliant with IEC 62443-4-2 and IEC 62443-4-1 industrial cybersecurity certifications -- which cover both product security and secure development life-cycle requirements -- helping system integrators meet the compliance requirements of secure industrial network design, resulting in lower development risk, time, and cost.

Built for demanding industrial use, the AWK-3252A is protected within a metal IP30-rated housing with DIN-Rail mounting or optional wall mounting. Integrated antenna isolation safeguards against external electrical interference.

For those installing network devices in hazardous locations, the AWK-3252A is certified for Class 1, Division 2 (C1D2) areas where the risk of explosion exists. An extended temperature version of the device is safe to use from -40 to 75°C to ensure smooth wireless communication in exceptionally harsh environments.

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The UTokyo Compass initiative has prompted the university to enhance its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) strategy. This entails a comprehensive reassessment of the network infrastructure and the transformation of its operations to facilitate active communication throughout all campus locations.

"Since its establishment, the University of Tokyo has remained dedicated to providing a world-class research and education platform," Junji Tamatsukuri, associate professor and deputy general manager for the information systems division at The University of Tokyo. "The network plays a vital role in facilitating access to crucial resources and active communication for our students and faculty."

He noted that an efficient and user-friendly network is equally important, enabling his team to address issues that may arise swiftly."

The process

Embarking on this transformative journey, UTokyo established a cross-organisational UTokyo Wi-Fi Task Force focused on enhancing the wireless network infrastructure, reinforcing its pivotal role in improving students' and faculty's educational and research experiences.

The team placed significant emphasis on building a reliable, secure, and high-performing wireless network capable of accommodating large numbers of users, with multiple devices per person on each campus.

A major focus was implementing a network solution that offered the team from different departments consolidated management across all departments while giving them appropriate management authority.

This objective would be achieved through a single dashboard, enabling a unified view of the entire network, as well as the ability to observe and visualise faults and user experience. The University of Tokyo (UTokyo) has selected Juniper’s AP32 Access Points to provide a seamlessly unified wireless experience across its campuses enabling flexible management.

These networking upgrades will enable the multiple departments in UTokyo to deliver a high-speed wireless network infrastructure to its 48,000 students and faculty actively engaged in learning and research across 10 faculties and 15 graduate schools.

Juniper's solutions powered by Mist AI, with a successful track record in local and global implementations, proved to be the ideal choice, meeting all the required criteria for this transformative initiative.

The deployment of Juniper AP32 Wireless Access Points across its three main campuses in Hongō, Komaba and Kashiwa, has successfully streamlined network management and operations for the different departments and provided them with a unified view of the entire network on a single dashboard powered by Mist AI. The team also utilises the capabilities of the Juniper Mist rich API-centric architecture, which visualises the necessary data for each site to improve operational efficiency.

Post-implementation

Since implementing a Juniper-powered wireless network, the experience for the school's team and its students has significantly improved. Additionally, the network can seamlessly support the simultaneous connection of approximately 18,000 devices during peak usage period. The expansion is being carried out progressively, aiming to cover all campuses.

As UTokyo looks towards the future, it is actively exploring the potential integration of Mist AI throughout its entire network, aiming to establish it as a fundamental component of its IT infrastructure.

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In Japan, neutral host service provider JTOWER has chosen CommScope as a partner in providing network operators with greater access to shared broadband infrastructure. The partnership will enable JTOWER to provide outdoor infrastructure sharing for network operators using CommScope’s RF technologies and solutions such as antennas, filters (duplexers) and coaxial cables.

 “In Japan, 5G networks are currently being rolled out by various network operators, and JTOWER's solutions will enable telcos to develop its base station infrastructure more efficiently,” stated Yusuke Kiriya, senior managing director & general manager of Infrastructure Sharing, JTOWER. “We have high confidence in CommScope’s long years of global experience, high level of expertise and flexible support that is tailored to our requirements.”

Maximising the potential and cost-efficiency of 5G

The promise of autonomous vehicles, augmented reality, 8K video quality and enhanced cybersecurity that will run on 5G networks is fuelling expansion across Japan. As operators focus on pragmatic implementations of 5G networks, they will need to determine which type of technology will maximise its potential.

For example, massive MIMO substantially increases spectral efficiency to deliver more network capacity and wider coverage. However, operators will have to determine if the extra costs and real-world power requirements associated with active MIMO deployments are justified, or if an antennae configuration will suffice.

Farid Firouzbakht, senior vice president and segment president for outdoor wireless networks at CommScope, noted that countries like Japan focus on the next decade of communications infrastructure, and they will collaborate with partners who are committed to rapid connectivity and data delivery.

“At the same time, it’s crucial they drive innovations that boost efficiency, deliver energy savings, and optimise processes, to support the wider economy’s net-zero transition." He opined that antenna technology that enables a shared model is a win-win for JTOWER and mobile operators in Japan.

Choosing optimal technology to speed 5G rollouts

JTOWER’s tower-sharing business will provide shared access to CommScope’s Mosaic and HELIAX products to network operators. The trusted HELIAX solution portfolio has expanded from coaxial offerings to include fibre-to-the-antenna (FTTA) and cluster connector solutions like the ones being integrated into JTOWER’s infrastructure.

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The collaboration aims to provide customized and scalable solutions that specifically address the unique requirements of government and enterprises, thereby facilitating their digital transformation goals. 

By leveraging their combined expertise, ZTE and Smartfren Business will provide cutting-edge solutions that actively drive the transformation of network infrastructure in Indonesia.

According to Musa Gan, sales director for ZTE Indonesia, the MOU marks a significant milestone in our joint pursuit of network infrastructure market development. "Through this collaboration, we aim to leverage our respective strengths and expertise to deliver cutting-edge solutions that address the evolving needs of government and enterprises,” he elaborated.

Smartfren Business' chief enterprise business officer, Alim Gunadi, says the company is committed to providing advanced solutions to meet the needs of government and enterprises in achieving digital transformation goals while expanding service coverage throughout Indonesia.

This partnership represents a significant stride towards building a more interconnected and technologically advanced future. Together, ZTE and Smartfren Business aspire to introduce the advantages of advanced technologies to the Indonesian market, promote digital inclusion, and stimulate economic growth in the country.

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This alliance will bring together Paessler’s expertise in IT network monitoring and PATLITE’s capability in operational technology (OT) to help enterprises across Southeast Asia accelerate digital transformation in OT.

“The convergence of IT and OT is proving to be a boon for enterprises, whether it is optimizing operations or gaining a competitive edge. However, siloed stacks of IT and OT can result in challenges that prevent organisations from reaping the full benefits of digital transformation at scale," said Jim Lee, business development manager of Paessler for Asia Pacific

He claimed that tje partnership with PATLITE is designed to help customers take a comprehensive and coordinated approach to monitor both IT and OT systems which will enable organisations to better understand their infrastructure, increase business agility and ultimately drive business growth.

The partnership will enable Paessler to combine its PRTG network monitoring solution with its extensive experience in OT to provide its customers with comprehensive visibility into their entire infrastructure.

Paessler's PRTG network monitoring solution is designed to help organisations monitor their IT infrastructure, which includes servers, switches, routers, and other devices, while PATLITE’s expertise in OT includes signalling devices, industrial network devices, and other products that can help organisations gain visibility into their operational infrastructure.

“We fully comprehend the significance of technology and expertise in driving successful transformation journeys for industrial businesses,” said Edmund Gan, general manager of PATLITE Singapore.

He added that the collaboration between PATLITE and Paessler will benefit all its customers with the simplified joint solutions, namely the PATLITE Network Tower Light and Paessler PRTG monitoring software.

He further noted that these solutions are easy to understand and facilitate improved productivity and comprehensive process understanding for our customers.

The alliance is said to help organisations across the Southeast Asia region achieve a holistic view of their entire infrastructure, enabling them to make better decisions and improve operational efficiency.

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"Today's threat actors are like shape-shifting masters, continuously adapting their tactics to slip through the cracks of our interconnected network. With a cunning blend of evasion tools and camouflage methods, the bad actors have weaponized the threats,” says Steven Scheurmann, regional vice president for ASEAN at Palo Alto Networks.

"Threat actors have become adept at exploiting vulnerabilities, and by the time security researchers and software vendors close the door on one vulnerability, cybercriminals have already found the next door to creak open."

Steven Scheurmann

Organisations must, therefore, simultaneously guard against malware designed to exploit older vulnerabilities while proactively staying ahead of sophisticated new attacks," he added.

Some of the key findings from the report include:

The exploitation of vulnerabilities has increased: There was a 55% increase in vulnerability exploitation attempts, per customer, on average, compared to 2021.

PDFs are the most popular file type for delivering malware: PDFs are the primary malicious email attachment type, being used 66% of the time to deliver malware via email.

ChatGPT scams: Between November 2022-April 2023, Unit 42 saw a 910% increase in monthly registrations for domains, both benign and malicious, related to ChatGPT, in an attempt to mimic ChatGPT.

Malware aimed at industries using OT technology is increasing: The average number of malware attacks experienced per organisation in the manufacturing, utilities and energy industry increased by 238% (between 2021 and 2022).

Linux malware is on the rise, targeting cloud workload devices: An estimated 90% of public cloud instances run on Linux. Attackers seek new opportunities in cloud workloads and IoT devices running on Unix-like operating systems. The most common types of threats against Linux systems are botnets (47%), coinminers (21%) and backdoors (11%).

Cryptominer traffic is on the rise: Doubling in 2022, cryptomining continues to be an area of interest to threat actors, with 45% of sampled organisations having a signature trigger history that contains cryptominer-related traffic.

Newly Registered Domains: To avoid detection, threat actors use newly registered domains (NRDs) for phishing, social engineering and spreading malware. Threat actors are more likely to target people visiting adult websites (20.2%) and financial services (13.9%) sites with NRDs.

Evasive Threats will Continue to Become Increasingly Complex: While attackers' continued use of old vulnerabilities shows that they will reuse code as long as it proves lucrative, there comes a point where creating newer, more complex attack techniques is necessary. When basic evasions became popular and security vendors started detecting them, attackers responded by moving toward more advanced techniques.

Encrypted Malware in Traffic will Keep Increasing: 12.91% of malware traffic is already SSL encrypted. As threat actors adopt more tactics that mimic those of legitimate businesses, it's expected malware families using SSL-encrypted traffic to blend in with benign network traffic will continue growing.

"As millions of people use ChatGPT, it's unsurprising that we see ChatGPT-related scams, which have exploded over the past year, as cybercriminals take advantage of the hype around AI. But, the trusty email PDF is still the most common way cybercriminals deliver malware," says Sean Duca, VP and Regional Chief Security Officer at Palo Alto Networks.

"Cybercriminals, no doubt, are looking at how they can leverage it for their nefarious activities, but for now, simple social engineering will do just fine at tricking potential victims. Organisations must therefore take a holistic view of their security environment to provide comprehensive oversight of their network and ensure security best practices are followed at every level of the organisation."

Sean Duca

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This sharp increase, also supplemented by the increased use of IoT devices by consumers around the world, was first noticed at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict but has since spread to other parts of the world, with botnet-driven DDoS attacks being used to disrupt telecom networks as well as other critical infrastructure and services.

The number of IoT devices (bots) engaged in botnet-driven DDoS attacks rose from around 200,000 a year ago to approximately 1 million devices, generating more than 40% of all DDoS traffic today.

The most common malware in telecommunication networks was found to be a bot malware that scans vulnerable devices, a tactic associated with a variety of IoT botnets. There are billions of IoT devices worldwide, ranging from smart refrigerators, medical sensors, and smartwatches; many of which have lax security protections.

The report also found that the number of trojans targeting personal banking information in mobile devices has doubled to 9%, putting millions of users around the world at heightened risk of having their personal financial and credit card information stolen. A trojan is nefarious software code disguised as being safe for use.

The report, however, did find some encouraging news, showing that malware infections in home networks declined from a Covid-high of 3% to 1.5%, close to the pre-pandemic level of 1%, as malware campaigns targeting the wave of at-home workers tapered off, and more people returned to office work environments.

Based on data aggregated from monitoring network traffic on more than 200 million devices globally where Nokia NetGuard Endpoint Security product is deployed, the report underlines both the scale and sophistication of cybercriminal activity today.

Hamdy Farid, senior vice president for business applications at Nokia noted that a single botnet DDoS attack can involve hundreds of thousands of IoT devices, representing a significant threat to networks globally.

"To mitigate the risks, it’s essential that service providers, vendors, and regulators work to develop more robust 5G network security measures, including implementing telco-centric threat detection and response, as well as robust security practices and awareness at all company levels."

Hamdy Farid

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The OMDIA survey of 250 senior technology leaders in North Asia revealed that 32% of firms have seen an increase in cyber-attacks over the past 12 months across their entire IT stack, most notably endpoints, network, and operational technology devices. Also, 66% of those that experienced significantly increased serious security incidents also observed a surge in serious breaches.

The research also revealed that 40% of firms lost revenue due to these attacks, whilst 38% suffered reputational damage and 34% sustained operational downtime. However, security leaders are confident that with better security automation, they could reduce nearly 50% of all serious security incidents.

The research found that only 24% of regional organisations are advanced in leveraging security automation, confirming that the rate of security automation is relatively low in North Asia, with limited use across the region.

Adam Etherington, a senior principal analyst for digital enterprise services at OMDIA, says security is becoming a growing concern and a potential constraint to digital ambitions in the region. He stressed that security automation is vital to address this challenge.

"Leveraging automation in SecOps can enrich threat telemetry, unify toolsets, and harness AI/ML advancements to better protect, detect and respond to advanced persistent threats. However, technology alone won't solve the problem."

Adam Etherington

"Third-party expertise is critical to address people, process and tool impacts within each firm's industry context, regulatory requirements, and corporate objectives,” he continued.

Toolset sprawl

Although many organisations are investing in additional cybersecurity platforms to overcome rising incidents and breaches, this has resulted in sprawling toolsets that generate a higher volume of alerts and false positives.

The survey found that a large volume of threat alerts, alarms, tickets, and possible incidents generated by various security tools are causing issues for security professionals.

The false positives overwhelming security teams are caused by a dramatic increase in the attack surface as more operational technology (OT) devices become integrated with IT systems, lagging patch and device management across legacy technologies and a wide variety of non-integrated toolsets.

“Security executives must continually assess their organisational cybersecurity resilience to support ongoing digital transformation, leverage the right cyber partner and unlock value from security tools. Reaching optimised automation can be a long journey."

Paul Abfalter

"It is important to work with experienced and trusted specialists to discover the best adoption and operational model for your organisation,” Abfalter added.

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ABI Research forecasts that 5G subscriptions will increase from 934 million in 2022 to 3.1 billion in 2027 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 27%. It also forecasts that 5G traffic will increase from 293 Exabytes (EB) in 2022 to 2,515 EB in 2027, at a CAGR of 54%.

“5GC holds potential for operators to monetise further existing cellular connectivity for traditional mobile broadband (MBB) use cases but also offers scope for operators to expand cellular capabilities in new domains. Additionally, 5GC also offers innovation potential for committed telcos to establish new operating models for growth outside of the consumer domain,” explains Don Alusha, senior analyst for 5G Core and Edge Networks at ABI Research.

With 3G and 4G, communications service providers’ (CSPs) positioning in the global production frontier was anchored to hard-to-duplicate network assets that continue to yield profits in the consumer domain.

But now, there is a realisation in the industry that using existing infrastructure and Evolved Packet Core (EPC) may not be sufficient for new value chains.  With 4G EPC, CSPs drive value with a centrally governed operating model. CSPs’ growth strategy with EPC revolves around technical excellence and integration in cellular.

According to Alusha, “It is that integration that sets the (consumer) business agenda. So CSPs’ operating model has been universal and uniform - centralised control and cellular integration to provide mass market, country- or region-specific static voice and data services."

"A “build it, and they will come” strategy is the starting point, and “what tech we can build?” is the foundation of that model. That is an all-control, all-top-down operating model.”

Don Alusha

In contrast, 5GC presents CSPs with a fluid and dynamic landscape. In this landscape, there is no static offering (requirements constantly change), no uniform offering (one shoe does not fit all), and no singular endpoint (one terminal with multiple applications).

5GC guides the industry into edge deployments and topologies. CSPs step out of the four walls of either their virtual Data Centre (DC) or physical DC to place network functionality and compute as close to their customers as possible. This constitutes decentralisation, a horizontal spread of network assets and technology estate that calls for a ‘spread’ in the operating model.

The shift from a centralised business to a decentralised business stands to be a significant trend in the coming years for the telecoms industry. Against that backdrop, the market will demand that CSPs learn to drive value bottom-up.

“What customers need” is the starting point for companies like AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, and Vodafone. In other words, in this emerging landscape, there will be enterprise-specific, value-based, and niche engagements where the business strategy sets the technology agenda.

It is rational to conclude that a “bottom-up” approach may be required to deliver unique value and expand business scope. That said, CSPs may be better equipped to drive sustained value creation if they learn to build their value proposition, starting from enterprise and industrial edge and extending to core networks.

According to Alusha, a 5G cloud packet core can potentially unlock new transactions that supplement existing volume-centred modus operandi with a local, bottom-up value play for discrete engagements. But the power of a bottom-up model is not enough.

He suggested that to monetise a 5G cloud packet core at scale, some of the existing top-down intelligence is needed too.

Learning how to operate in this hybrid top-down and the emerging bottom-up, horizontally stratified ecosystem is a journey for NTT Docomo, Rakuten Mobile, Singtel, Softbank, and Telstra, among other CSPs.

"In the impending cellular market, an effective and efficient operating model must contain both control and lack of control, both centralisation and decentralisation and a hybrid of bottom-up plus some of the ‘standard’ top-down intelligence. The idea is that CSPs’ operating model should flexibly fit and change in line with new growing market requirements, or new growth forays may hit a roadblock,” Alusha concluded.

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Enterprise Wireless WAN, the new naming convention of this market, has matured greatly over the last five years, with LTE evolving and 5G solutions bringing an enhanced set of reliability to wireless WAN offerings. IDC has observed Enterprise Wireless WAN evolve beyond simply a fail-over for other access technologies to become a primary connectivity solution, in many cases.

"5G Enterprise Wireless WAN solutions scaled rapidly in 2022 across both the branch and mobile markets. Internet of Things (IoT) use lagged a bit in comparison but saw double-digit growth as well. Overall, Enterprise Wireless WAN has moved from not just a supporting technology, but to a critical capability in its own right," said Patrick Filkins, research manager, IoT and Telecom Network Infrastructure at IDC.

"Beyond simply connectivity, 4G/LTE and 5G solutions are playing an increasingly important role in SD-WAN and enterprise edge initiatives as well as being deployed en masse to connect public safety vehicles, public and private transportation, and across industrial environments where mobile solutions are required."

Patrick Filkins

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The FiRa Consortium is dedicated to transforming the way we interact with our environment by enabling precise location awareness for people and devices.

Keysight Technologies has obtained a FiRa Consortium validation for its automated ultra-wideband (UWB) PHY Conformance Test Tool, enabling device makers and chip designers to quickly test the physical layer (PHY) conformance of their FiRa UWB-based products.

Using Keysight´s automated test solution based on the M9415A VXT PXI Vector Transceiver with PathWave Vector Signal Analysis (VSA), X-Series Measurement Application (X-apps), and Signal Generation, design engineers can perform a range of UWB measurements including frequency, time, and amplitude domain analysis, as well as antenna characterization and system-level testing. The testing solution was built on Keysight's expertise in radio frequency (RF) and microwave technologies to perform an advanced over-the-air (OTA) approach to map the angle-of-arrival (AoA) using its general-purpose VXT transceiver platform.

Peng Cao, vice president and general manager for Keysight's Wireless Test Group, said: "By providing a FiRa Consortium validated test tool based on our vector transceiver, we are enabling our customers to quickly and easily test their UWB devices for conformance with FiRa PHY technical requirements."

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MWave Consulting designs products that address the expanding demand for machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity that requires resilience and real-time synchronization – applications for smart buildings, autonomous robots, and factory automation processes such as smart lighting control, smart elevators, smart traffic lights, charging stations, airport navigation systems and fire alarms.

MWave will use MaxLinear G.hn technology in its industrial IoT (IIoT) devices. MaxLinear says the G.hn technology can be applied to industrial IoT networks where devices connect through Ethernet PHY, MII, SGMII or RGMII interfaces.

G.hn is a specification for home networking with data rates up to 2 Gbit/s and operation over four types of legacy wires: telephone wiring, coaxial cables, power lines and plastic optical fibre. A single G.hn semiconductor device is able to network over any of the supported home wire types. Some benefits of a multi-wire standard are lower equipment development costs and lower deployment costs for service providers

“With G.hn's capability to handle real-time two-way traffic and high bandwidth, this technology is naturally well-suited as a backhaul for a complete range of smart buildings and automated factory devices,” said Richard Welland, director of international sales & marketing at MWave.

“Partnering with MaxLinear provides a modular G.hn solution that we can easily embed into our products that provide superior IIoT solutions, allowing the transport of multi-gigabit-per-second IP data reliably over any existing wire.”

Richard Welland

Will Torgerson, vice president of the Broadband Group at MaxLinear, says high-speed G.hn networking solutions enable shorter design cycles and significant design flexibility.

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About 12.4% of telecom carrier respondents in Asia/Pacific consider Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) as one of the important reasons for rolling out 5G services according to IDC’s 2022 Telecom Carrier Transformation Survey.

According to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, sustainability is the fundamental business strategy for the future. These involve supporting initiatives, such as smart manufacturing, energy-efficient construction, and low-impact industrialisation. Industry 4.0 fills this gap by fusing traditional manufacturing processes with digital technology, AI, and IoT.

IDC forecasts that Asia/Pacific 5G connections, both mobile subscriber and IoT connections, will grow from 574 million in 2021 to 3,234 million in 2025, growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 87.9%. According to the IDC Carrier Transformation Survey 2022, most telecom carrier companies saw vital industries, including manufacturing, Smart Cities with smart mobility, and smart buildings, as the most critical use cases for the introduction of 5G.

"The shift to a greener, lower carbon future will be made possible through digitisation and connectivity," says Piyush Singh, IDC senior market analyst for telecommunications and IoT in Asia Pacific. "One of the concepts in Industry 4.0 is efficiency equals energy saving. Anything and everything organisations do to save energy ultimately increase efficiency,” Singh ends.

5G plays a key role in bringing a whole set of new ecosystems for organisations, which can help in achieving their sustainability goals in much easier and more robust ways. Manufacturing facilities all throughout Asia/Pacific have implemented private or dedicated networks for controlling various pieces of equipment on-premises. Unstable wireless communication and latency are the barriers for the adoption of digital transformation in any firm which can be solved with the help of 5G. IoT devices require very dependable communication, which may also be provided via private 5G network easily.

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BTW: Gartner estimates that annual worldwide enterprise network connectivity services spending will top $260 billion in 2023.

While we are on the topic  . . .

Here is a Cheat Sheet of the Top Five Trends We Are Watching, and the Advice to Enterprise Sourcing Teams

Secure Access Service Edge

SASE ranks near the top of the list of Gartner client questions in this space. Many networking vendors, as well as security vendors, have pivoted their strategy to provide SASE capabilities and are now heavily marketing the concept to enterprises. Communication service providers have already launched managed service offerings too. However, capability analysis shows most single vendor offerings are immature and/or incomplete.

Recommendation: Cut complexity and cost by consolidating vendors at contract renewals for WAN firewall, VPN refresh and ZTNA, cloud access security, web browsing security or SD-WAN.

Multicloud Networking Software

Multicloud networking software is trending primarily because organizations find that hyperscalers' own networking frameworks lack feature depth in single cloud use cases. Also, they lack management consistency and functionality breadth for multi-cloud environments. According to a Gartner survey, 76% of organizations that use the public cloud are using multiple public clouds. t Increasingly, enterprises need simplification and management consistency for cloud-to-cloud data traffic routing.

Recommendation: When investing in multi-cloud networking software, remain flexible by taking advantage of consumption-based pricing options and avoiding long-term contracts.

5G & FWA

We are watching the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) space closely where a wider range of edge-delivered applications continue to emerge. Many clients ask about how 5G FWA can be their backup connection or primary in remote areas.  The challenge is that 5G coverage continues to be spotty making it less favoured in a global application.  The supply market for 5G industrial IoT endpoints and communication interfaces for the OT also needs further development.

Recommendation: Go ahead with pilot trials of 5G IoT and edge networking applications as proof of concept, but delay investment until you can confirm coverage and service support.

NetDevOps

Organizations that implement NetDevOps typically automate more than half of their networking activities. This is in stark contrast to most enterprise network teams that typically automate 10% to 25% of network activities, centred on simple workflows and activities that are easy to automate.

Recommendation: Invest in network automation tools that offer customizable workflows that allow you to leverage automation already in place.

Network as a Service

Disruption. Since organisations have been comfortable with the “as-a-service” model for their cloud, it’s natural to see their interest to use it for their on-premises networking infrastructure too. From switches, routers and SD-WAN devices, gateways and firewalls to self-service capabilities and on-demand delivery for connections to the cloud.  We are tracking this disruption and see it offering up more flexibility and OpEx pricing models.

Recommendation: Snapshot the “before” environment to lay claim to the ROI of the “after”.

First published on Gartner Blog Network

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“The satellite industry is undergoing a major transformation, driven by accelerating technology development in the commercial space sector and is now turning out new designs with vastly reduced cycle times,” said Greg Patschke, general manager of Keysight’s aerospace/defense and government solutions group. “The need for high fidelity simulation and emulation as well as testing expertise, has never been greater to ensure successful mission and business outcomes.”

The Coleman Parkes Research survey, conducted on behalf of Keysight, found that 76% of industry professionals see software test automation as the top challenge, followed by 53% for system-level modelling and simulation, and 46% for design validation.

These findings highlight the need for advanced automation and emulation tools that can accelerate design and engineering processes. This is reflected in the top industry trends identified by respondents, with 43% citing shortened product development times as the leading trend, followed by 37% for advanced payload systems, and 34% for artificial intelligence.

Other findings

Satellites driving industry trends – When looking at the top ten industry trends for the next three years, respondents mentioned satellites most frequently. The top trend identified was small satellites in geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO), followed by very high throughput satellites, cybersecurity, in-orbit services, and large constellations in low earth orbit (LEO).

Data gathering and communications top impacts – When identifying the applications that will impact the industry the most, respondents most frequently cited data gathering, research, and communications. The top application cited was big data gathering and analytics, followed by uses including earth observation, global positioning/time services, science/research, and internet/voice/broadcast services.

Costs and supply chain greatest risks – When asked to assess the greatest risks to their projects, respondents reported that costs and supply chain were their primary concerns. The top risk cited was unpredictability in costs, followed by part/subsystem supply, technical scope, and program funding.

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The LoRa Alliance ecosystem delivers end-to-end solutions across the value chain, which enable holistic digital transformation––encompassing technology, data, new workflows, and operational realignments––needed to achieve industry 5.0’s objectives.

Donna Moore, CEO and chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance noted that over the past few years, the LoRa Alliance has demonstrated how LoRaWAN supports people, the planet and profit.

“These concepts are fundamental to the ideas of Industry 5.0, which aims beyond efficiency and productivity as the sole goals and reinforces the role and the contribution of industry to society with more human-machine collaboration and human-centric solutions,” she added.

“Globally, businesses are recognising that achieving business goals takes more than operational improvements, people and technology must work together to bring about change. LoRaWAN has taken a leadership position in this arena with millions of deployments that ultimately focus on increasing sustainability and improving quality of life."

Donna Moore

"The evolution to Industry 5.0 is not possible without the use of open standards, backed by a strong ecosystem that offers a choice of vendors and endless innovation. This is also why so many organisations worldwide are adopting the LoRaWAN standard to drive their holistic digitisation initiatives,” insisted Moore.

Trends Driving Industry 5.0

The growth of governmental regulations for monitoring to ensure safety, such as New York City’s requirements to monitor for gas leaks. Using LoRaWAN for real-time monitoring has accelerated shut-off times by 6X, according to LoRa Alliance members Senet and ProSentry, saving lives and property.

A rapid increase in P&C insurance premiums, reported to be more than 300% since 2017. Water damage claims are the single largest category of losses contributing to rate increases, accounting for US$300B in global water claims annually. This is leading insurers to transition to a prevention mindset, encouraging building owners and operators to adopt leak detection technology. LoRa Alliance member Kairos reports that its LoRaWAN flexible leak detection sensors have eliminated water claims for more than 8,000 apartment units since installation and achieved a 6-month ROI on average for asset owners following system installation.

The need for residents’ privacy is also driving LoRaWAN adoption in residential buildings, as it allows for facility monitoring and optimisation without capturing or transmitting any personally identifiable information.

According to Robin Duke-Woolley, CEO and chief analyst at Beecham Research, surveys consistently show that LoRaWAN is the rising star for LPWAN sensor deployments in the smart cities, buildings and utility sectors and also gaining ground rapidly in manufacturing, agriculture, and other high-priority sectors.

"The value that LoRaWAN brings as an open standard makes it inherently agile and encourages innovation across industries," he continued.

Moore added that LoRaWAN’s strengths—open standard, strong security, low power, battery-operated, long-distance transmission, low capital and operating expense—make it the leading LPWAN for IoT and the natural choice for Industry 5.0.

She added that massive LoRaWAN deployments are paving the way to meeting ESG goals and the adoption of Industry 5.0.

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The Ponemon Institute report, the 2021 State of Industrial Cybersecurity, reveals that cultural and technical differences, topped by patch management (50%) and the unique requirements of ICS vendors (44%), cause conflicts between the two functions.

Paessler claims it is bringing IT and OT closer together with the launch of a product extension for PRTG, an agentless network monitoring software developed by the company.

What is it?

Paessler PRTG is an IT monitoring software that helps businesses monitor their entire IT infrastructure – no matter if it is an on-premises, cloud, or hybrid environment.

Paessler PRTG OPC UA Server is designed for customers in the industrial sector – specifically teams in operational technology (OT) – who wish to receive information from both IT and OT monitoring displayed in their supervisory and control systems (such as SCADA, MES, DCS, and others).

IT/OT convergence will build the bridge to more efficient processes in industrial environments and solutions like OPC UA Server will provide real, tangible value to OT professionals.

Paessler CEO, Helmut Binder, says: "As we continue to evolve our product portfolio, we recognize the importance of expanding our solutions to meet the unique needs of industrial customers, especially in Asia Pacific, where the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies is gaining momentum. This product extension demonstrates our commitment to providing cutting-edge solutions that meet the demands in the world of OT.”

Together with Paessler PRTG, OPC UA Server allows OT admins and plant operators to monitor their infrastructures through their supervisory and control system architecture. OPC UA Server expands Paessler PRTG's field of application by bringing a comprehensive overview of various IT and OT elements into OPC UA-capable systems.

Further benefits are central alerting via existing alert chains, enrichment of quality control data with data from IT/OT components, as well as interactive alarm handling between IT and OT personnel.

Initially, this product extension will operate exclusively with Paessler PRTG Network Monitor with active maintenance, and its coverage will be extended to Paessler PRTG Hosted Monitor and Paessler PRTG Enterprise Monitor soon.

"We believe that OPC UA Server will help industrial customers to get a comprehensive overview of their industrial networks and environments. This also includes the reduction of downtime and therefore improvement of their plant infrastructures," said Johannes Liegert, product manager of IoT & Industry at Paessler. "Using Paessler PRTG with this product extension, operators and engineers have more data at their fingertips and can thereby make better decisions.”

As the requirements in the OT world are diverse, OPC UA Server comes in 3 feature-based pricing tiers in the form of subscription-based models. The new product extension is now available, and quotes can be requested by contacting Paessler’s customer service. Customers of Paessler PRTG with an OPC UA Server subscription will receive comprehensive support from the Paessler team, including access to training materials.

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However, system failures and downtime caused by connectivity and network issues can result in high-risk, life-threatening situations. To mitigate any potential problems, network engineers must fully test the connectivity and performance of network components and IoT devices before deploying them.

Keysight Technologies claims its Novus mini addresses this need by giving network engineers a compact, quiet, and affordable platform to test the performance and conformance of their industrial networks.

The Novus mini also supports testing based on time-sensitive networking (TSN) standards, which is a critical safety component in IoT applications such as the advanced driver assistance systems employed in autonomous vehicles.

Benefits of Novus mini

Network testing value: A combined solution offering both traffic generation and protocol testing in a single platform.

Compact, quiet, and affordable: Features the smallest footprint in the industry, outstanding cost per port, and ultra-quiet, fan-less operation.

Validates layers 2-3: Covers full performance and conformance testing.

Tests critical timing standards for industrial IoT: Supports full timing testing and automated time TSN for 802.1AS 2011/2020, 802.1Qbv, 802.1CB, and 802.1Qci.

Ed Agis, alliance work group co-chair at Avnu, said: "The Novus mini offers a comprehensive TSN conformance suite based on multiple Avnu Alliance test plans for different applications and markets, enabling companies to easily test their products on the path to interoperability."

Ram Periakaruppan, vice president and general manager for network test & security solutions at Keysight, says the Novus mini provides real-world validation and automated conformance testing for leading-edge technologies.

"Our customers must trust that their products consistently meet quality standards and comply with regulatory requirements to avoid costly fines and penalties. The Novus mini allows us to deliver this confident assurance with a compact, integrated network test solution that can keep pace with innovation as industries constantly evolve."

Ram Periakaruppan

"As a member of the Avnu Alliance community, Keysight is working with other market leaders to advance Industry 4.0 by crafting essential standards for the next generation of IoT," he added.

The post Platform answers call for improved performance and reliability of industrial networks appeared first on FutureIoT.

Competitive landscape

Fifteen years ago, the ethernet switch market began fundamentally changing when vendors began to engineer purpose-built switches for the data centre and the campus markets instead of using just one platform for both markets.

For Cisco, this was the creation of its Nexus product family, and for Juniper Networks the QFX. In addition, both Arista Networks and a category of white box networking companies entered the market, leveraging Broadcom’s Merchant Silicon.

According to ABI Research, the new report notes that the data centre ethernet switch market has further split into two unique areas, cloud and enterprise. It also posits the idea that the needs of the cloud and hyperscalers are very different from enterprise buyers.

“Today, there is demand for different kinds of data centre ethernet switches – one set for enterprises and another for the cloud. 2022 highlighted the big difference in markets with the cloud segment growing nearly 40% Y/Y driven by hyperscaler demand and the early stages of AI/ML buildouts,” said Alan Weckel, founder and technology analyst at 650 Group.

He added that cloud vendors now use specialized switch semiconductors unique to the Cloud segment. This is why we see a large push towards 51.2 Tbps ASICs in the next 12-18 months.

"Switches built for the cloud now have unique specifications compared to those built for the Enterprise, and the market share that vendors have in each market differs between enterprise and cloud. There is very little in common between market share in each segment today.”

Alan Weckel

The post Researcher claims two categories of data centre switches are at play appeared first on FutureIoT.

A 650 Group report posits that the Observability market grew by 60% in 2022 and that cloud and subscription-based offerings are predicted to be most of the revenue during the forecast period as enterprises move to hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure.

The Deep Observability Market is a critical growth component for Observability Infrastructure vendors, as enterprises need to extract a significant amount of data from networks beyond logs to secure and automate their infrastructure.

“Operation teams, such as SecOps, NetOps, and CloudOps, are key beneficiaries of Deep Observability. These teams stress the importance of being proactive and less reactive to application performance, vulnerability detection, and issues in their production networks,” said Alan Weckel, founder and technology analyst at 650 Group.

“Deep Observability continues to add additional value-add features like decryption, application filtering, application metadata, and deduplication. Over the forecast years, this will help drive networking automation and AI-based networks.”

Alan Weckel

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As retailers deploy Micro-Fulfilment Centres (MFCs) to augment their distribution networks, automated picking solutions provide the speed and space maximization necessary for e-commerce efficiency and profitability.

ABI Research says Automated Storage & Retrieval System (AS/RS) revenue within MFCs is expected to reach US$1.2 billion by 2027, with uptake primarily seen in the grocery and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industries.

“The need for high-density storage and fast fulfilment capabilities allows technologies to scale down and enable a flexible, bespoke frontline distribution network,” said Ryan Wiggin, supply chain management & logistics industry analyst at ABI Research.

He added that in addition to automated high-density storage systems, retailers are also looking to enhance manual picking operations to deliver micro-fulfilment solutions using handheld devices and Goods-to-Person (G2P) mobile robots.

"With over 2/3 of MFCs currently deployed in or alongside existing stores, micro-fulfilment solutions are helping retailers re-imagine how they utilize their current infrastructure to support online delivery."

Ryan Wiggin

Delivery times are getting faster, down to a matter of hours for certain products. As demand for alternative shopping experiences like click-and-collect increases, customer attraction and retention rests heavily on effective inventory management and localized delivery capabilities.

A few critical solutions vendors have emerged offering dedicated micro-fulfilment packages, including Alert Innovation, Dematic, Swisslog, and Takeoff Technologies, while companies like Ocado Group are offering MFCs as an additional arm to their existing warehouse automation solutions. Most solutions are underpinned by cube or shuttle-based AS/RS, orchestrated by management systems increasingly incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.

Store and warehouse workers are being equipped with more sophisticated handheld devices from companies like Zebra as retailers look to deploy manually operated MFCs within existing stores or facilities and help optimize online order picking. And Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) inVia Robotics, 6 River Systems, and Locus Robotics are seeing deployment in MFCs as an alternative to stationary G2P automation.

Wiggin commented that in industries where online delivery has notoriously been an unprofitable venture, localised, automated MFCs are greatly helping to reduce both cost and picking time.

U.S.-based industry giants like Nordstrom, H-E-B, and Walgreens are leading in MFC solutions adoption. In Asia-Pacific and Europe, MFC solutions vendors are gaining traction signalling wider implementation of automated micro-fulfilment.

"End users must assess current network requirements and understand where micro-fulfilment solutions could offer significant value. Technology vendors must ensure that solutions can be scaled and be adaptable to retailer’s requirements,” concluded Wiggin.

* Editor's note: Comments and stats provided by ABI Research.

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The report concludes that with IoT-enabled solutions being introduced in various verticals and applications ranging from transportation and logistics to energy and utilities; digitalisation and IoT have become the only path towards a connected future.

SPTel provides unique connectivity and digital services for customers to become the digital services provider of choice.

Titus Yong, chief executive officer for SPTel, says most businesses want to collect as much sensible data as possible. The aim is to derive insights to automate processes, improve efficiency in an operation, and improve customer experience.

"The challenges many businesses face today is the large amount of information generated on the ground and the lack of a homogeneous platform to harmonise this information to derive insight easily, which can be applied regularly into operational decision making," he elaborated.

Beyond the awareness challenge

In its Worldwide Internet of Things Spending Guide, IDC forecasts the global IoT market to reach US$1.1 trillion in 2023. Just as important identified 18 technology categories, 70 use cases and 19 industries that have a potential real-world use for IoT.

In addition to the broad list of possible applications of the technology, there are at least three competing protocols: MQTT, CoAP, and HTTP; and at least three standards: IEEE, IETF, and ISO. The lack of unified standards and protocols continues to limit IoT from seeing wider adoption.

"Across multiple domains, there is no standard expectation of what IoT can really do for businesses and that is an opportunity for industries to level up on the knowledge of what basic IoT to more complex IoT, e.g., video analytics as IoT, can do for businesses."

Titus Yong

He reckoned businesses should start by embracing basic IoT, to collect information in a simple format to benefit from the insight. "The state of knowledge is not as deep as we would like it to be," he opined.

Connecting the dots

Digital transformation initiatives have opened the imagination of leadership, and users of technology, to the possibilities to change or transform the way work is conducted. IoT extends the spectrum of possibilities provided organisations are able to connect the dots.

Yong acknowledged that even internally at SPTel, there are many moving parts as he called them – from the network to the applications.

"Despite being probably the most digitalised telco in Singapore today, we have to leverage many pieces of information on the ground to determine whether the network is stable for customers.

"To connect the dots will require the operational technology (OT) player, from our engineers running the network, to our application guys using the information to produce a capability for customers to get their services in a digital manner. It's a long chain," he conceded.

Where are the disconnects

According to Yong, there are different appreciations of IoT depends on the industry. He cited, as an example within the power industry, OT has been collecting data for a long time, albeit in a very proprietary environment.

"Today, the power industry has realised that if they deployed the latest generation of sensors, they could get insights that will upstream, allowing them to automate the process of pre-emptive meetings. There are people who have played with IoT, and today translate the OT capability insight into a more automated upstream to the application, which can speed up the whole automation end to end," he continued.

With climate change awareness at an all-time high, it is natural to see an increase in the launch of innovative ideas that merge new emerging technologies while supporting social causes such as sustainable initiatives.

SPTel announced Singapore’s first Sensor Network powered by LoRaWAN Gateways which runs on solar energy, a first-of-its-kind network built for national scale, to increase the accessibility of IoT technologies and sensors for business applications, government projects, and Smart Nation initiatives, supporting Singapore’s digitalisation and sustainability ambitions.

Considerations for fuelling IoT Adoption

Yong believes that harmonising information from IoT to fit into an automation process requires a huge investment. He understands that infrastructure costs will deter many businesses.

"In Singapore, we built a common platform to collect data from different types of sensors, because we don't worry about the communication protocol. We can rationalise this on a common platform, which provides a common dashboard that can be easily customised to different verticals, lowering the cost to serve and deliver.

Arguably, setting common standards and platforms is important but that is just the first step. The ability to talk to the different technologies in the network is important.

"Most importantly, sensors have to talk to the backend, which is why we invested in the islandwide LoRaWAN network in Singapore, which allows sensors to easily turn on, plug and play, to talk to a common network," concluded Yong.

Click on the PodChat player and listen to Yong elaborate on how markets in Asia may be poised to accelerate IoT in the years post-pandemic.

1. What are the main obstacles faced by organisations when it comes to enabling technology and innovation in their processes?
2. Focusing our attention on IoT – what do most businesses know about IoT as it relates to their business operations?
3. When it comes to digital transformation and IoT, are our business, operations and technologies connecting the dots?
4. Can you highlight where the disconnects are?
5. What is your general view of IoT adoption in Asia? Where is it more mature and where are there significant opportunities ahead for those willing to adopt IoT?
6. As we start to hear more leaders commit to and call on their organisations, to sustainable practices, how do you see IoT supporting such efforts in the near and long term?
7. What will be critical considerations for organisations undergoing digital transformation, as it relates to the use of IoT?

The post PodChats for FutureIoT: Accelerating IoT in Asia appeared first on FutureIoT.

For example, perimeter-based security systems are insufficient to reduce security exposure as computing moves to support Software as a Service (SaaS), cloud computing, and colocation-based computing.

In addition, new technology must work to identify and lock down access to corporate resources as workers become increasingly mobile and data becomes increasingly multi-cloud.

“We anticipate that the security and networking industries will continue to consolidate in the coming years as DevOps, NetOps, and SecOps silos continue to converge, and product offerings come together,” said Chris DePuy, Technology Analyst at 650 Group.

“There is a tremendous opportunity for vendor growth as vendors push to simplify an increasingly complex compute and networking environment.”

Chris DuPoy

The 650 Group report, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Quarterly and Forecast Report, estimates the market size for Deployed SASE grew over 40% Y/Y in 2022. The report identified Versa, Cisco and Fortinet as the top three vendors in Deployed SASE in the same period.

The post Edge consolidation is on the way appeared first on FutureIoT.

The new report by 650 Group, SONiC Market Forecast 2022-2027, forecasts that the worldwide market for SONiC in data centre switching will exceed US$8 Billion in revenue by 2027. SONiC’s role outside of hyperscalers will increase significantly during the forecast period.

The SONiC market is very different for hardware and software, and subsequently, vendors are looking to create a broader solution and support an ecosystem that reaches well beyond the primary operating system.

“Open Networking has always been a topic of interest in data centre networking. The trend started almost 20 years ago with OpenFlow and the interest in the broader ecosystem of emulating the rapid innovation in the Cloud,” said Alan Weckel, technology analyst at 650 Group.

He foresees two approaches to SONiC, the first and more common one will be enterprises using SONiC in combination with branded boxes from Arista, Cisco, Dell, and Juniper to get their feet wet and benefit from SONiC without huge risk.

The other approach is among pureplay SONic vendors where it is installed on white-box switches and the existing network is replaced with SONiC, making it a true replacement for branded vendor infrastructure.

"There are a lot of cloud automation pieces in SONiC that enterprises can use to complement existing vendors, which is why the first path will be more common," said Weckel.

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The routing market is experiencing a significant shift towards software-based routing, driven initially by architecture changes within cloud hyperscalers. This has driven interest in purchasing decisions for ASICs, hardware, software, and optics separately.

The 650 Group report, Disaggregated Router Forecast 2022-2027, forecasts that the global disaggregated router market will exceed US$5 Billion in revenue by 2027.

“The development of software-based routing technology that can be sold separately from routing hardware has spawned the disaggregated routing market, causing soaring growth,” said Alan Weckel, a technology analyst at 650 Group.

"Telco SPs benefit from the economies of scale of Ethernet and the massive scale-out architectures of the Cloud. In 2022, we saw significant expansion at Telco SPs, and trials moved toward production deployments. As time passes, we will also see the deployment of ZR/ZR+ optics, and the optical metro edge collapses into the routing tier.”

Alan Weckel

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Wireless networks are a key foundation for businesses and essential to the IT infrastructure of their systems. But they’ve been mistaken as mere operational technologies for too long. Today, they’re enabling real-time insights and changing the connectivity game.

Usage is growing exponentially, and in Asia-Pacific, industries including manufacturing, logistics and transportation and healthcare will present the biggest opportunities for private 5G networks. According to some reports, out of all the potential deployments, these three industries are expected to account for over 60% in 2025.

For those still considering a private network option, untapped potential awaits. Private wireless networks offer greater control and security, while also acting as conduits for data that enables AI and ML.

This technology provides high-speed coverage across large industrial settings, boosts worker safety and productivity, increases business efficiencies, and enables a wide range of new capabilities including augmented reality applications, autonomously guided vehicles, precision robotics, and the ability to generate real-time actionable data to make better-informed business decisions. 

And when it comes to the future of private wireless networks, the opportunities to create value are just beginning.

The potential of private networks

Traditional Wi-Fi for connectivity was largely reliant on collaboration with service providers. A private network, on the other hand, is one built on spectrum frequencies reserved exclusively for a customer environment that uses technology leased from a carrier or another spectrum owner, such as a government.

Private networks allow businesses to gain independence from telecom service providers and take full control over managing their networks. They can determine exactly what can connect to the network and how. It’s even possible to set usage policies around what a device can access once it’s on a private network.

Going down this route not only gives companies the control they need to adapt their network for their individual use but is also a cost-effective solution. When it comes to savings, the total cost of ownership (TCO) of private networks is considerably lower than traditional wireless networks and enables enterprises to better prioritise operational costs and remain agile with faster deployment of applications.

Private networks can be especially useful for industrial environments where Wi-Fi connectivity may be spotty and difficult to deploy. They help solve the problem of black spots, for example, where the signal is too weak or unstable to maintain connectivity.

Black spots can be caused by interference, physical obstruction, and distance — all issues private networks seek to alleviate. As such, they can be extremely valuable specifically around industrial settings that have highly reflective environments or sites that are difficult to reach with traditional networking infrastructures.

Private networks also provide substantial security benefits. They allow organisations to apply more advanced measures, including SIM-based authentication methods and strong air interface ciphering. They enable the allocation of security roles by devices, making it easier for businesses to control their systems and stay secure.

These wireless environments and the devices they control represent critical functions. Therefore, any attempt from malicious actors to interfere or sabotage needs to be dealt with with a robust security system, which can only be attained through a private wireless network.

Private networks in action

When it comes to application, some of the customers we’ve worked with have demonstrated the benefits of implementing private networks. For example, Dow Chemical, a multinational materials science company with multiple presences in ASEAN, recently undertook its journey to deploy a private network.

The organisation has been digitally transforming its manufacturing operations for more than a decade, and one of the primary issues this transformation aimed to solve was improving and streamlining the process of operations and maintenance tasks.

Dow Chemical wanted to ensure that the necessary information was available and at the fingertips of the front-line professionals, for them to interact, collaborate, and solve problems with precision and promptly. Ultimately the goal was to enable operations teams to work more efficiently and safely, whilst increasing plant productivity and reliability.

Initially starting with a proof-of-concept, in 12 months, Dow worked together with Kyndryl and Nokia to fully deploy and scale a private wireless and edge network at the largest integrated chemical manufacturing complex in the Western Hemisphere, spanning over one million square feet.

The real-time digital transformation enabled augmented reality applications, remote audio and video collaboration, real-time smart procedures, on-site personnel tracking, better worker safety, and vehicle telematics.

Given ASEAN’s status as one of the world’s top suppliers of raw mineral and metal products, this makes it a prime candidate for the implementation of 5G networks. The high bandwidth and low latency of 5G will enable the delivery of new services that were previously unattainable.

Similar to Dow’s experience, 5G has the potential to open up a new level of automation, operational efficiencies, and sustainable growth for ASEAN’s organisations by unleashing the untapped power of AI, data analytics, IoT and cloud computing.

Partnership for success

Despite the benefits private networks can provide, technology leaders are sometimes reluctant to adopt private 5G networks. Some misconceptions installing private 5G networks will require an overhaul of a company’s existing digital infrastructure, disrupt operations, or there may be a knowledge gap about the availability of spectrums and the benefits of 5G private networks.

To ensure wider and seamless adoption across industries, enterprises must understand the spectrum they’re going to use and match it to the technologies they’re going to deploy. They should select a partner who understands how to secure the spectrum in the country, as well as how to integrate with the local area network, wide area network and the public cloud, so the data can be transferred and analysed.

Select a trusted and informed partner to help secure the right spectrum, as industries are often unaware of what’s available to them. A good partner will guide the organisation in finding what is available and works for them.

The future of intelligent networking

While there are certainly challenges associated with deploying wireless solutions, it’s a critical technology for driving digital transformation and a catalyst for business growth. As advanced wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi 6 continue to develop, we should also expect a rise in hybrid approaches to connectivity. A one-size-fits-all solution just won't work.

As the number of connected devices in the industrial environment continues to increase, it will be paramount for ASEAN organisations to deploy private 5G networks to drive insights from their vast amount of data.

Private wireless networks will prevail across industries and become an integral part of enterprise infrastructure. In the next five years, as organisations look back and reflect, they’ll realise the gains from tapping into the potential of private wireless networks.

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eIM is a standardised eSIM provisioning tool allowing large-scale deployment and management of eSIM‑enabled IoT devices. eIM is defined in SGP.31 by the GSMA and standardises the process for the mass deployment of eSIM-enabled IoT devices.

eIM to accelerate IoT deployments

The report found that incumbent eSIM provisioning solutions, such as SMSR (Subscription Management Secure Routing), have hindered the growth of eSIMs in the IoT market by limiting the number of devices that can be provisioned and managed via a single user interface.

However, eIM solutions will reduce the cost of deployments by enabling multiple connections to be deployed at the same time; increasing the value proposition of eSIM use cases requiring mass deployments.

Only 2% of all eSIMs in use will be attributable to the IoT sector in 2023, according to the report. However, with the increased adoption of eIM tools, it predicts the growth of eSIM IoT connections will outpace the consumer sector which includes smartphones, over the next three years. By 2026, 6% of global eSIMs will be attributable to the IoT sector.

Logistics and Oil & Gas extraction to drive growth

The report anticipates that eSIM-enabled IoT devices in service will grow 780% globally over the next three years. It identified two key sectors that will benefit from eIM: logistics and oil & gas extraction. By 2026, it forecasts that these two markets will account for 75% of eSIMs in use globally; owing to their reliance on LPWA (Low-power, Wide-area) business models that necessitate the use of mass deployment processes.

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“The demand for data centres has been exponential, driven by the growth of cloud hyperscalers, such as Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure," said Yih-Khai Wong, distributed and edge computing senior analyst at ABI Research.

He explained that the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 accelerated the thirst for public cloud platforms.

"Organisations are moving existing workloads to public clouds and exploring the feasibility of running specific applications that require high processing power on public cloud data centres to ensure business continuity."

Yih-Khai Wong

"Large businesses using SmartNICs, DPUs, and IPUs as intelligent offloading engines for high-compute data processing tasks, resulting in a decrease in compute cost and highly optimised CPU performance,” he continued.

Although the current ecosystem is still in its infancy, this market is characterised by highly innovative solutions. As the demand accelerates, further consolidation of vendors will happen, with the more established players acquiring niche innovative vendors to boost their value proposition further.

Opportunities for the SmartNIC, DPU, and IPU markets:

Networking is the most common use of SmartNICs, DPUs, and IPUs. AMD’s Xilinx Alveo portfolio provides network functions virtualization (NFV) that decouples network services from dedicated hardware for high-performance network acceleration.

Cloud Computing Platforms where SmartNICs, DPUs, and IPUs are deployed to accelerate data-intensive workloads flowing through the cloud platform. Intel partnered with Google Cloud, with its E2000 IPU powering Google’s new C3 virtual machine.

Security: Provide the ability to offload security functions from the CPU, optimising CPU processing power for core applications. NVIDIA’s BlueField-2 DPU delivers platform security by enabling high-speed encryption and decryption, stateful packet filtering, and pattern matching.

“This market promises to be an exciting area. While we might not see mass adoption of intelligent accelerators in the short term, a scenario where a server is equipped with either a SmartNIC, DPU, or IPU by default might happen sooner rather than later,” Wong concludes.

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As one of the world’s leading technology events, Mobile World Congress gives attendees a good sense of what the main themes are that relate to network infrastructure, cloud infrastructure, and the emerging world of connected solutions.

My main observations were that:

More carriers are migrating network infrastructure elements into the cloud. Public cloud providers play an ever more important role in network service provisioning. Carriers and hyperscalers emphasized in discussions the trend to make network and IT infrastructure more service-oriented and its cost base more flexible by embracing cloud computing.

Forrester survey data shows that network as a service is the top network infrastructure priority. Infosys told me in a discussion, “If you want to empower the enterprise customer, you have to open the network.” Google shared that many carriers are moving part of the operations support system and business support system into the cloud. Network equipment vendors such as Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, or Juniper are developing their own cloud offerings.

But carriers also work with large hyperscalers like Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud to use cloud platforms for radio access network (RAN) and core network elements. Multivendor environments invariably raise interoperability issues, affecting quality of service and service-level agreements. Hence, virtualization providers such as VMware or HPE are helping to minimize the integration complexities.

Not surprisingly, a new generation of carriers is emerging. For instance, Rakuten Symphony is a cloud-native, open RAN mobile network provider. Several carriers hinted that, as prices for public cloud computing are increasing, they are evaluating their decision-making on when and what to move into the cloud more carefully.

The prospect of tougher carrier-hyperscaler competition is growing. The relationship between carriers and hyperscalers will be redefined against the network cloudification trend. To be clear: There is nothing inevitable about hyperscalers eating the carriers’ lunch.

But it would be naive not to contemplate the potential for more competition between these two camps. During the event, I heard several comments about the potential risks for the carriers’ value propositions as a result of deploying public cloud solutions inside their core and radio access networks as well as their business and operating systems.

Hyperscalers need to be careful not to abuse their increasingly powerful position vis-à-vis the carriers if they want to build long-term, trusted relationships with them. Also, regulators might at one point focus more on hyperscalers in the debate from a national security perspective.

Carriers are forming deeper alliances with each other.

Carriers sense that the competitive landscape is changing. To succeed, they need to work together. Of course, carrier alliances are nothing new. They have been around for years and focus on tactical objectives, with, for instance, the FreeMove Alliance on sourcing.

At Mobile World Congress, 21 carriers with a combined customer base of 2.5 billion users and the GSMA formed Open Gateway. GSMA Open Gateway is a framework of common network APIs designed to provide universal access to operator networks for developers.

The goal is to help developers and cloud providers enhance and deploy services more quickly across carrier networks. GSMA Open Gateway addresses the challenge for carriers to deliver reliable end-to-end customer experience and service levels.

Open Gateway’s goal is to deliver services consistently across carrier networks in an API world. The initial APIs focus on issues such as SIM swaps, quality on demand, number and location verification, and edge site routing — and will be defined by the open-source project CAMARA.

Carrier customers will benefit from Open Gateway as communication networks transform into platforms for software-as-a-service providers like Salesforce or Microsoft. Open Gateway underlines the macro trend of IT and network infrastructure moving ever closer.

Carriers are still searching for financially attractive 5G use cases.

The GSMA estimates that carriers will spend $1.1 trillion on 5G between 2020 and 2025. Given the challenge to charge a 5G premium in the consumer segment, the focus for 5G monetization remains on the business segment.

In my discussions with carriers, network equipment vendors, and professional services firms, however, I did not hear about any new 5G use cases that offer carriers realistic and attractive returns on their 5G investments.

Most enterprise decision-makers tell me that they don’t care about 5G as a technology. They are keen to drive better customer experiences or boost their internal efficiency and employee experiences, but it is these non-tech-minded stakeholders who are increasingly involved in deciding which solutions to buy from which vendors.

Hence, carriers must become better at translating the benefits of 5G network functions for supporting business outcomes. In most instances, existing technologies such as Wi-Fi or LTE suffice. The private 5G network pitch is also at times countered by alternatives like Siemens’ Wi-Fi-based connectivity solutions.

Hence, there are still very few 5G stand-alone solutions. The lack of IT and operational technology convergence is further delaying the 5G uptake. An additional challenge relates to the budget-holder complexity: Professional services providers told us that they are often dealing with different budget holders for IT and networking projects.

Carrier consolidation in Europe looks likely.

A study by PwC highlights that 46% of carrier CEOs believe that their carrier will no longer be economically viable a decade from now. Predicting the carrier doomsday is of course nothing new and has prompted consolidation in many markets. The North American carrier market is dominated by three large carriers.

A similar picture exists in other large markets like India and China. In Europe, meanwhile, there are dozens of carriers, with three to four carriers even in small markets. Consolidation might be one way to build greater resiliency for carriers.

At Mobile World Congress, the EU’s industry chief pointed to the ongoing discussions regarding the cross-border consolidation of carriers in the EU and the benefits of an integrated radio spectrum market.

In light of the high inflation levels and the pressure of the cost-of-living crisis on households, this debate is exposed to two underlying dynamics: Carriers could benefit from economies of scale, and price rises would only follow if carriers abuse their oligopolistic positions — something that regulators need to be watching out for.

What was refreshing at Mobile World Congress 2023 was the absence of the doom and gloom that has infiltrated many technology discussions, with their stories of headcount reductions and revenue slowdown.

Clearly, these market adjustments will continue and reflect cyclical patterns of the technology sector. But Mobile World Congress shows that there is still a lot of dynamism in the tech sector.

One startup from Barcelona told us that every tech professional in the city has at least five job offers, despite the headcount reductions by the large tech vendors. A dose of normalcy can help focus minds to get many of the projects and initiatives that were the focus of Mobile World Congress 2023 done

First published on Forrester Blog

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ABI Research forecasts that global deployments leveraging the newly available Standard Power 6 GHz APs will multiply almost six-fold between 2024 and 2028, from just over 52,000 to more than 0.3 million.

Automated Frequency Control (AFC) Systems certification will facilitate the rollout. These database lookup schemes enable higher power transmissions by preventing interference with incumbents by national regulators worldwide beginning in 2023.

“AFC Systems are especially vital for industrial environments not only because mission-critical applications demand the higher power 36 dBm transmissions, but also because they will permit the finely tuned external antennas that OT requires for optimal operation and avoidance of interference hazards,” says Andrew Spivey, Industry Analyst at ABI Research. “One consequence of the resultant performance and range boosts of Standard Power 6 GHz will be the partial diminishing of 5G’s advantages over Wi-Fi in OT environments.”

The advances brought by Wi-Fi 7 and Standard Power 6 GHz will drive the adoption of Industrial Manufacturing WLAN access points. ABI Research forecasts annual shipment growth from 3.5 million in 2022 to 5.5 million in 2028.

Major Vendors in the Industrial WLAN market include the likes of Siemens and Moxa, with Enterprise WLAN leaders Cisco and Aruba continuing to service the industrial market.

A new generation of connectivity solutions

These next-generation high-performance WLAN APs will not only support emerging use cases like Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) but also allow machines that have traditionally relied on Ethernet to finally transition to 802.11, helping to reduce network installation costs, operational complexity, maintenance requirements, and the physical footprint.

The industrial manufacturing and logistics verticals are desperate for the additional capacity of 6 GHz, and so will be the first OT sectors to adopt 6 GHz-compatible equipment. The mining and oil & gas sectors are comparatively less congested, therefore, will migrate later.

Industry business models are also transforming as OT clients prefer Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) solutions. NaaS models are favoured over outright ownership because they offer reduced financial risk, rapid deployment, greater scalability, and negate the need to expand headcount or train staff on new complex equipment.

Drivers of this interest are more significant short-term financial pressures, labour shortages, and the fact that the ecosystem has now developed sufficiently to support these offerings. Part of this development is advancements in industrial Network Management Systems (NMSs), which enable the centralized, remote management of dispersed networks powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) automation.

Spivey adds that strategic partnerships across the entire value chain – from the system integrators delivering NaaS solutions to the AFC System Operators enabling Standard Power 6 GHz operations – are becoming increasingly important for ecosystem vendors.

“The strengths of these partnerships will ultimately determine a vendor’s ability to deliver end-to-end solutions to their clients, and thus will become a strong vendor differentiator going forward," he concluded.

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Using Cradlepoint 5G routers at the WAN edge and leveraging Optus’ 5G standalone live network based on Ericsson’s 5G Core and RAN with network slicing capability enabled, this was the world’s first demonstration of dual network slicing for businesses using a live production network.

The demonstration showed how carriers can create different network slices, each with its own performance characteristics and security rules, to uniquely support the different types of applications businesses rely on.

“The 5G slicing capability demonstrated by Optus, Ericsson and Cradlepoint will enable customers to prioritise connectivity to different things on the same network. In a retail setting, a business could prioritise connectivity for CCTV camera footage and EFTPOS transactions and deprioritise in-store customer Wi-Fi or music streaming,” said Zorawar Singh, VP product, enterprise and business at Optus.

Another example he referred to would be in an emergency services vehicle, it could prioritise camera feed data, enabling critical application connectivity. "Network slicing will allow us to offer resilient, reliable services over 5G to support diverse enterprise-critical applications,” he added.

Demo setup

The demonstration showed premium and default slices, with the ability to recognise, classify and steer corporate applications into the correct slice. For the fixed wireless use case, the demo used Cradlepoint’s recently introduced NetCloud Exchange (NCX) 5G-optimised SD-WAN with the E3000 Series Enterprise Router and the W1850 Series 5G Wideband Adapter. The Cradlepoint R1900 Series 5G Ruggedised Router was used for the in-vehicle use case, with Cradlepoint connectivity enabling reception of high priority, low latency symmetrical traffic with one network slice and Wi-Fi traffic for passengers on a standard MBB asymmetrical network slice. Secure firewall capability was also part of the demonstration.

Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core and Ericsson RAN enabled the two end-to-end slices for both use cases from the network side.

Nathan McGregor, senior vice president, Cradlepoint said, “The ever-evolving capabilities of 5G connectivity are such an exciting part of network infrastructure today. This was a strong example of how Cradlepoint and Ericsson are working together to deliver solutions that will help carriers monetise their 5G infrastructure investment and facilitate the transition to 5G as essential WAN connectivity.”

Martin Wiktorin, head of Ericsson global customer unit, Singtel, said: “Network slicing is a key enabler for unlocking opportunities through service differentiation and guaranteed performance. Using an end-to-end approach, Ericsson has developed the most complete network slicing portfolio including 5G Core and 5G RAN Slicing with quality-of-service differentiation for automated and fast service delivery of new and innovative 5G use cases.”

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Connected buttons are sometimes described as "smart buttons," but what makes the LTE-M IoT button so effective is its simplicity. A single click or press sends an event over the built-in LTE-M connection to the Soracom or UnaBiz platform endpoints, where the real intelligence resides. From there, the possibilities are nearly limitless.

Users can configure the button to trigger serverless functions on popular cloud services such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. After registering the device, a user can simply select a cloud service, apply a piece of code and associate a button click to trigger any logic deployed in the cloud.

Developers looking to quickly understand and apply Soracom or UnaBiz platform capabilities can use the LTE-M button as a standalone device or with sensors and other devices (like a flood sensor or magnet relay) for more industrial applications.

Based on the code that users choose to deploy to their cloud of choice, the button can be used for any purpose. With the push of a button, users can order products and services (like ride-hailing or meal ordering), start or stop a task (as in a home automation context), generate an alert, provide feedback, and more.

Industries such as eCommerce, call centres, hospitality, maintenance, and transportation can use the IoT button to automate operations, streamline workflows, and improve customer service.

“The magic of the LTE-M Button is that it's a very simple device, but its applications are limited only by the user's imagination. Because it includes both connectivity and cloud integration, users can incorporate it into their own IoT use cases immediately on registration,” said Kenta Yasukawa, CTO and co-founder of Soracom.

He claimed that it's a very effective reference device for getting started in IoT, but it can also serve more sophisticated use cases, like connecting sensors and relays.

"Adding Soracom's platform capabilities lets the LTE-M button serve advanced cloud-based IoT systems using serverless cloud functions, data lakes, machine learning services and more,” he added.

With Soracom, UnaBiz is now pursuing LTE-M devices that allow enterprises and developers to easily integrate with existing business workflows and systems.

“Building on our deep knowledge of Sigfox-based low-power devices design, it was only natural for UnaBiz to partner with Soracom team expertise in LTE-M integrations,” said Alexis Susset, CTO of UnaBiz.

According to Susset, the collaboration has enabled both parties to jointly deliver a simple, evolutive and elegant IoT button which will last years on a single battery charge and benefit from the growing LTE-M networks coverage.

Features of the LTE-M button include Soracom’s eSIM technology, a three-colour LED status indicator, FOTA (or firm over the air) support, replaceable AA batteries, IP54 grade, and a recycled plastic casing. The button is pre-configured to send events to the companies’ cloud endpoints.

The post LTE-M IoT button opens limitless opportunities appeared first on FutureIoT.

The positioning technology tracks mobile and portable devices connected to the 5G network, accurately determining their positions where no global navigation satellite service coverage is available, for instance in factories, warehouses or underground facilities.

As part of the factory test, an enhanced private 5G network was able to determine the precise position of assets such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs), mobile robots and mobile control panels – tracking their movements throughout the plant in real-time.

5G positioning works by measuring the time it takes for mobile signals to travel from a mobile device to different base stations and anchor nodes in the network. As signals take longer to reach nodes that are further away, the positioning system can triangulate its source.

Nokia and Bosch have built upon that foundation by equipping 5G nodes with multiple receive antennas, which enable the network to detect the incoming angles of signals.

Advanced Nokia Bell Labs algorithms interpret this time delay and angle-of-arrival information to determine the most probable position of the mobile device. Their proof-of-concept achieves a level of accuracy well beyond the current cellular position state-of-the-art, providing a sneak peek at what 5G networks, both public and private, will be capable of in the future.

Precision localisation is important for many applications in industrial environments, such as robot navigation, asset tracking and worker safety. Realising both high-performance connectivity and high-accuracy positioning within a single private network’s infrastructure also has many operational benefits, such as reducing the complexity of IT infrastructure, leading to a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and higher returns on investments.

Andreas Mueller, chief expert and responsible for the 6G activities at Bosch, commented that knowing where things are is generally very valuable information in manufacturing.

“While today usually separate systems are used for connecting and locating devices, this may be done via an integrated private 5G solution in the future. The proof-of-concept conducted jointly with Nokia underpins the leading role of Bosch in exploring new opportunities for our customers and developing the Factory of the Future,” he explained.

A long history of collaboration

Nokia and Bosch have a long history of collaboration, announcing their first strategic collaboration in 2017 to develop industrial IoT and sensing solutions. The collaboration effort to build precise positioning technology is a key milestone, but it is only one of the innovations the two companies are pursuing.

Nokia and Bosch have begun conducting joint research in the next generation of networking, investigating how future 6G networks could be used for both communications and sensing when they are commercially available by the end of the decade.

While 5G has the potential to determine the location of devices connected to the network, 6G will have the ability to track the position of any object – whether connected or unconnected. This will allow 6G signals to function similarly to radar, giving users an awareness of their surroundings beyond their traditional senses.

Peter Vetter, president of Bell Labs Core Research at Nokia, said: “Bosch and Nokia Bell Labs foresee a future where networks do far more than communicate. Soon, 5G will track connected devices more precisely than satellites, in places satellites can’t reach. In the next decade, 6G will be capable of sensing all objects in their coverage areas regardless of whether they contain active radios. We are creating networks that will endow humans with a digital 6th sense.”

The post More accurate positioning using 5G appeared first on FutureIoT.

Expanded SD-WAN offering

By building a unique virtual overlay network on top of an underlying transport(s), VMware SD-WAN enhances application reliability by responding to wireless or wired network issues in milliseconds – a requirement for Over The Top (OTT) applications.

VMware SD-WAN and SASE support a wide range of transport services including LTE/3G, satellite transport and wired transport options like MPLS and broadband allowing for greater flexibility in WAN connectivity.

With VMware SD-WAN, customers can use any of these transport services as real-world tests have shown VMware SD-WAN can provide more than 40% improvement in quality of experience (QoE) for voice and video applications when using satellite and cellular, per VMware internal testing.

The platform enables higher network utilisation through adaptive thresholds designed from real-world learnings from more than 100,000 cellular and satellite connections used today by VMware customers.

These enhancements set the direction for management plane APIs and AIOps integration with 5G carrier platforms to support advanced service customizations using network slicing and RIC integration, allowing service providers to better address the WAN demands of enterprises.

The combination of APIs, AIOps, and network slicing will enable enterprises to benefit from better economics, service provisioning, and service management.

VMware SD-WAN and SASE will enhance connectivity, compute, and intelligence in rapidly evolving edge use cases with the help of VMware Private Mobile Network.

The post VMware client extends SD‑WAN to Operational Tech appeared first on FutureIoT.

Meanwhile, India is still underway with its nationwide coverage and intends to reach 98% by 2024. ABI Research says overall mobile operator 5G Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) commitments across the region will rise through 2027. 5G RAN Capex is expected to plateau from 2024 while investments in 5G Core Network investments will continue to rise through 2027. Core Network and Backhaul expenditure is expected to reach US$79.5 billion annually by 2027.

Sarah Yong, 5G markets research analyst at ABI Research noted that these mobile CapEx investments are significant. Operators are seeking to mitigate their infrastructure costs as best they can.

“Active network sharing has been gaining traction in APAC as a number of operators set up joint ventures to roll out coverage or sell off their infrastructure towers to tower management companies,” she continued.

With its 5G deployment and infrastructure developments, China remains ahead of the curve. In addition to its existing co-build, co-share infrastructure plan, the Chinese government has granted its mobile telcos spectrum in the 700 MHz, 2.6 GHz, 3.5 GHz, and 4.8 GHz bands to operate their 5G networks, as opposed to holding a spectrum allocation auction.

This coordinated government initiative has helped to accelerate the rollout of 5G in the country. South Korea and Japan follow closely behind. In their evolution to 6G, these markets are committed to 5G-Advanced and carrying out 6G testbeds.

ABI Research identified China Mobile, NTT DOCOMO, and SK Telecom as presently looking to explore both 5G-Advanced deployments and 6G concepts.

Despite being the second largest telecommunications market in the world, India lags other countries in APAC with its 5G deployment and infrastructure developments due to delays with spectrum allocation and network infrastructure construction.

Nevertheless, the commercial rollout, which began in October 2022, marks the beginning of a steady and sustained growth in Indian telecoms investment to support the needs of the largest end-user data consumption markets in APAC. Total end-user data consumption stood at 12 Gigabytes (GB) per user per month in 2022.

However, the overall adoption of 5G by end users in India has slowed in recent quarters. The affordability of 5G handsets is slowing adoption in India. In Thailand, on the other hand, the government is aggressively driving the adoption of 5G in its Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) with 5G smart cities, ports, hospitals, and airports being deployed. Despite the initial slow uptake of 5G in the country, Thailand displays the potential to be a significant 5G hub for Southeast Asia.

Jake Saunders, VP and managing director of ABI Research Asia-Pacific, says 5G-Advanced will significantly impact the Asia-Pacific region “5G-Advanced enables a range of policy control and value-added services for the mobile telco – especially in the 5G to Business (5GtoB) sector. We have witnessed several hundred 5GtoB case examples, and the count is rising,” he added.

The post 5G RAN investments nearing end appeared first on FutureIoT.

From avionics and automotive to steel manufacturing and shipping, hoisting applications play a critical role in supply chain and manufacturing operations, where heavy materials and goods are transported over what can be hundreds of meters. These crane applications are designed to operate in challenging industrial environments, for example, under extreme temperatures and over large distances.

The three companies say they are pleased with the test results of the 5G-enabled automated hoisting solution and plan to pilot it in several end-user sites this year with an eye on eventual global deployment at scale.

Schneider Electric, Capgemini and Qualcomm Technologies designed and installed the solution at Schneider Electric’s hoisting lab in Grenoble, France.

Replacing wired connections with wireless and unifying existing wireless connections from Schneider Electric’s industrial automation system, the 5G Private Network solution shows how it can simplify and optimise digital technology deployment at scale across industrial sites — from steel plants to ports.

“Digital transformation is helping Schneider Electric customers generate step-change advancements in productivity, efficiency, and sustainability, but not one company can do it alone,” said Marc Lafont, vice president for innovation Innovation and upstream marketing at Schneider Electric. “This breakthrough end-to-end 5G private network hoisting solution is a perfect example of the power of working together as we pilot it at end-user sites this year.”

The private 5G automated hoisting solution was unveiled today at the Mobile World Congress 2023 in Barcelona.

“In the short-term, we will validate more industrial 5G use cases in various discrete manufacturing, hybrid automation, and process automation applications. In the mid-term, we will experiment with deeper integration of 5G technology inside our automation equipment.”

Marc Lafont, Schneider Electric

The 5G private network hoisting solution:

• Replaces wired and other wireless connections for several critical PLC control flows and time-sensitive video flows powering numerous use cases
• Operates in the 3.8GHz radio frequency band, with an enterprise-grade Athonet core network and Airspan Small Cells using the Qualcomm FSM100 5G RAN Platform, significantly improving connectivity performance and enabling new use cases

Innovating with 5G and edge computing

Capgemini has worked closely with Schneider Electric to design an optimised end-to-end 5G solution and identify business outcomes on Schneider Electric’s industrial use case. It has also provided the systems integration support based on Qualcomm Technologies' latest innovations and assisted Schneider Electric to integrate the 5G network with their use cases, to characterise and optimise the system.

“This collaboration with Schneider Electric demonstrates Capgemini’s unique ability to partner with clients to take advantage of technologies to innovate and create new use cases for their industry. The 5G end-to-end solution customized for Schneider Electric’s hoisting system is a good example of the added value of 5G for industrial communication and really illustrates its potential to transform an industry segment,” said Fotis Karonis, group leader of 5G and edge computing at Capgemini.

“Advanced connectivity, 5G, and edge computing technologies are strong enablers and accelerators for this move towards a digital economy and innovative use cases. They allow industrial clients to redesign systems and processes and make them more efficient, agile, and intelligent.”

Fotis Karonis, Capgemini

Automated hoisting systems increase productivity, safety, and operational performance but require fast reaction times, high precision and reliability, 24/7 availability, and both manual and autonomous capabilities.

Furthermore, several systems need to coexist on the same network with video cameras for monitoring and remote operation, and PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) for various control functions, including automation, remote control, and safety functions.

5G’s native low latency characteristics allow the system to replace fibre cables in remote-control operations, addressing the need to simplify network complexity, reduce wires, and provide long-term reliable connectivity.

“The opportunity to use 5G to propel enterprise connectivity forward is tremendous, thus we are investing in this emerging ecosystem by providing practical innovations for 5G Private Networks,” said Enrico Salvatori, senior vice president, Qualcomm Europe and president, Qualcomm Europe/MEA.

Schneider Electric’s expertise in industrial automation combined with Qualcomm Technologies’ heritage in wireless technologies, compute and AI innovations, plus Capgemini’s hands-on experience of network deployment and systems integration intersect to improve performance while eliminating complexities, resulting in faster time to market and improved KPIs for automated hoisting customers.

“By enabling a pre-integrated solution with multi-vendor choice along with Open RAN automation and management technology to streamline deployment, management, and customisability of private networks, we’re helping reduce complexities and accelerate time to market globally.”

Enrico Salvatori, Qualcomm

 Beyond its core industrial functions, the Private 5G automated hoisting system can now be leveraged to deliver additional digital use cases, such as augmented operators enabled by XR (eXtended Reality) and wearable devices.

The post Wireless solution to accelerate 5G industrial automation appeared first on FutureIoT.

Instead of investing to build their own network, businesses and IoT solution providers can now connect to this network with ease, speed and cost efficiency, which was not possible previously. Data collected from LoRaWAN sensors can be sent for analysis to automate manual processes, enable predictive maintenance, increase productivity, and improve overall operational efficiency.

Dubbed the first-of-its-kind network built and marketed as national-scale enabled, the LoRaWAN gateways will use solar power thereby delivering on what SPTel claims as a cost-efficient and fast-to-deploy solution.

Why LoRaWAN

The LoRaWAN is a long-range, bi-directional communication protocol with very low power consumption. This makes it a highly sustainable solution for the long-term deployment of sensors and a boost to scale massive deployment of potential smart solutions quickly such as asset tracking, street lighting, waste management, water level and flood management, air quality control and rodent monitoring system in hawker centres and wet markets which enable targeted and effective pest control.

These are but some of the use cases which will herald not only a new era of business management efficiency in environment and building management but also improve citizens’ lives in the areas of public health and services.

SPTel’s Sensor Network coverage currently extends to more than 70% of heartlands, 42% of hawker centres, and 52% of town councils, and will continue to expand to meet the growing needs of partners and customers.   

According to SPTel CEO, Titus Yong the SPTel Sensor Network is a great leap towards a comprehensive and reliable offering for IoT solution providers. Businesses can tap on this ready infrastructure to jumpstart their IoT applications in a fast, flexible, and affordable manner.

“With the assurance that gateways are implemented on ultra-secure critical infrastructure locally and on a robust end-to-end IoT-as-a-Service platform, there is peace of mind over data sovereignty and security,” he asserts.

“Businesses and government agencies can focus on ramping up their digitalisation efforts towards IoT adoption nationwide. Besides being another step forward in our digital roadmap, this new solution places us in a strong position to capture growth opportunities from growing IoT demands.”

Titus Yong

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Perhaps this was the thinking behind computer scientist Kevin Ashton, then working at Procter & Gamble, when he proposed putting radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips on products to track them through a supply chain.

That was 1999. Fast-forward to 2023, IoT devices and sensors are expanding their influence from the production floors of manufacturers to warehouses all the way to retail shelves, and homes. Most remain designed for a specific, single purpose, their value now extends from innocuous public lights to critical systems that power cities.

The recent cyberattacks against public organisations, such as healthcare, and critical infrastructure like power and utilities, reveal the extent to which organisations need to enhance the security of these facilities while at the same time responding to business and consumer demands for faster, better, and more reliable service.

Can you have your cake and eat it too? How do you merge the unwieldy world of IoT with the controlled, predictable environment that IT is built upon? And do so while delivering it securely, faster and cheaper?

The IoT conundrum for the CIO and IT

Dee Dee Pare, senior marketing manager at CradlePoint says “the cloud is the de facto way that everyone delivers applications and stores data.” She points out that applications work as if they are next door. In contrast, IoT is messy, outdoors, usually at a larger scale, is distributed, and is found in environments where things just don’t operate (in a predictable fashion).

“IoT is not necessarily the most clean-cut way of doing things,” she added.

She hints that edge computing may be just the answer for IoT – “by having a lightweight version of your application, you can bring this closer to wherever the IoT device is,” she explained. “That way you minimise latency, also filter out some of the unnecessary traffic that goes back to the cloud (presumably saving bandwidth and data storage).

She called the increasing popularity of using containers, a self-contained application, inside a router.

“What you have is a low-footprint device closer to the IoT Edge. You only have one device to manage, figure out how to power it. Everything happens very quickly within the router, you have the connections back to the cloud,” she elaborated.

The other benefit is business continuity. “If the cloud goes down, the router with the containerised application can continue to work with the IoT devices connected to it. When the network comes back up, the router can send the necessary traffic back to the host,” she added.

Critical components of an edge strategy

What would be the critical components to developing an edge strategy that involves IoT, Pare suggested calling the containerised application running inside a router a “customer edge”. She then goes on to comment there are other edges.

She referred to Amazon Web Services as an example of the Internet edge. These tend to be distributed (in the cloud) and have more processing capability. She cautioned that by its design (in the cloud), the Internet edge will be further away from the devices – hence some latency can be expected.

The other edge is the 5G edge. “You can set up an edge in the cell tower as well – as some carriers are doing. That way you can improve and enhance performance as it goes out for the application and out from the cell tower,” she added.

Conceding that the customer edge provides the ‘most bells and whistles’, she advised anyone developing an edge strategy to keep in mind where the edge is located. “It is about balancing between the placement, the quantity of data processing, the latency from the application to the IoT devices, as well as how much you need to customise,” she elaborated.

Getting IT started with edge technology

Asked how easy it would be for traditional IT teams to build these applications around the edge, Pare noted that the challenge lies in developing lightweight versions of current applications. Pulling examples from within, she noted that among managed service provider partners, developing lightweight applications is their value-add.

She cited a partner in the US that developed an application for car wash operators. Running off a CradlePoint router, the solution ran the point of sales, the surveillance cameras, as well as the automated car wash machinery. An entire running on one router.

Getting IoT/OT to work with IT

Pare says IT needs to collaborate with the operational technology (OT) team. In the converging world of IT and OT, it is not feasible to manage each technology in a vacuum. She acknowledged that IT, throughout most of its history, has worked in predictable environments and therefore may not be ready for what she described as the ‘messy world of OT’.

“OT tends to work with machinery that is not the latest technology. In some cases, these types of machinery cannot be updated. OT needs to educate IT on these projects,” she added.

She conceded that the mixing of IT and OT will blur as the two start working together. But ultimately, she believed IT will own a little bit more of the onus because they have to understand it end-to-end.

“They (IT) must make sure things such as security are in place end-to-end, and they are ultimately responsible for that. There are several scenarios where the end-to-end fits a bit more cleanly in the IT side, but they can't do it without the help of the OT side, because OT knows the reality of what's happening on the ground."

Dee Dee Pare

The post Supercharging IoT with edge computing appeared first on FutureIoT.

As in-vehicle applications have rapidly advanced, more use cases have emerged, along with diverse deployment requirements. Designed to be mounted on the rooftop of a vehicle or attached to IoT cabinet enclosures, the R2100 integrates the modem, antennas, and router into a single aerodynamic, IP67-rated casing that guards against weather, vibration, and shock. The R2100 is sold with or without Wi-Fi 6 and can be deployed as a self-contained router or to supplement an existing router as a 5G adapter.

Key benefits include:

Simplified router installation: Since antenna cables are no longer needed, many vehicle installations will only require one power cable and a single small hole in the router on the roof. Organisations with large fleets can significantly reduce installation complexity and cost.

Seamless 5G extension: Customers can add 5G to a current installation by deploying the R2100 in Captive Modem mode as an adapter that is controlled by an attached Cradlepoint router. The NetCloud management system treats the R2100 as an internal modem; eliminating the need for a separate license (saving the customer money)

Streamlined Wi-Fi addition: The R2100 Series can serve as an additional Wi-Fi source in captive mode to expand coverage for applications such as video offload, enhanced customer broadband, Computer Aided Dispatch connectivity while in the station, and more. Adding this Wi-Fi capability won’t incur an additional expense as all control and licensing is attributed to the incumbent router.

Straightforward 3rd party 5G add-on: The R2100 can take the form of a 5G adapter that can be added to a third-party in-vehicle router via the WAN port.

Easy edge computing with integrated containers: The R2100 is designed to support local containers for edge computing functionality. NetCloud handles container creation as well as container and workload distribution and connectivity, making deploying edge computing applications a simple and secure process.

“Modern public safety operations leverage data to make operations safer and more effective, and the data demands in and around vehicles continue to grow,” said Ken Rehbehn, a principal analyst at CritComm Insights.

"Simplified integrated antenna form factors that bring high-performance 5G capabilities without running additional antenna cables will translate to reduced installation costs, faster installation, and improved radio performance."

Ken Rehbehn

“Organisations are entering the next phase of their transformations, extending their reach through vehicles that need reliable connectivity to access cloud-based applications,” said Donna Johnson, senior vice president of marketing at Cradlepoint.

“The R2100 Series underscores how Cradlepoint is expanding the capabilities of today’s police, fire, EMS, and transit organisations, helping these agencies and first responders alike take advantage of 5G connectedness in a streamlined, more efficient way.”

Donna Johnson

The R2100 Series 5G Ruggedised Router is powered by Cradlepoint NetCloud, providing an enterprise-class, unified edge security solution for in-vehicle and IoT networks. For example, NetCloud gives vital public service agencies end-to-end encryption, industry-leading threat detection, and defence functionality to enable secure direct cloud and internet access for applications and IoT devices, with or without Wi-Fi.

The R2100 also supports the NetCloud Exchange services which provide Zero Trust Network Access and 5G Optimised SD-WAN.

The post Mobility freedom moves further with “router-on-the-roof” appeared first on FutureIoT.

In-building wireless solutions are critical for 5G’s success in the consumer and enterprise markets. However, traditional solutions such as Distributed Antenna Systems (DASs) do not support frequencies above 3 GHz and require major reconstructive engineering work to increase their capacity.

The ever-growing need to increase network capacity and costly on-site infrastructure upgrades motivate infrastructure vendors to invest in other innovative technologies.

A new wave of technology

ABI Research says some revolutionary technologies include distributed massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (mMIMO), radio stripes, holographic beam forming (HBF) antennas, pCell technology, Open Radio Access Network (RAN) DASs, and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs).

Among the technologies, Distributed mMIMO, HBF, and pCell are already available and expected to be deployed on a larger scale in 2023.

“Distributed mMIMO integrates mMIMO into indoor systems to enable gigabit connectivity and sustainable network capacity expansion. HBF antennas are tailored for mmWave and software-defined antennas to employ the lowest possible architecture in terms of Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWaP-C), which is acknowledged to be an important consideration by network operators in denser 5G networks. pCell technology exploits interference in wireless networks through large-scale coordination among distributed transceivers and synthesizes a cell for each user. It multiplies the spectrum capacity with uniform and high data rates in the entire coverage area,” explains Fei Liu, 5G and Mobile Network Infrastructure Industry Analyst at ABI Research.

“Moving toward 5.5G Open RAN DASs could be another technology where there are open interfaces between the Radio Units (RUs) and Virtualized RAN (vRAN) functions operating on cloud infrastructure, resulting in a reduction of the number of transmitter elements and, thus, the related power consumption, addressing one of the major issues that network operators face. In the longer term, RIS and Radio Stripes are viewed as promising for enhancing indoor coverage,” Liu adds.

A RIS is nearly passive, does not have power amplifiers, and does not transmit new waves. Hence, the power consumption is much lower. A radio stripe is another technology expected to improve network quality and performance while enabling easy network deployments.

“Academic research on RISs has been going on for several years, and now is the time for industry players, including vendors and network operators, to be heavily involved and provide clearer feedback on which directions to prioritise. A RIS requires time and experience to build up as a revolutionary technology.”

Fei Liu

The post New wireless technologies to extend 5G value proposition indoors appeared first on FutureIoT.

The single biggest opportunity for 5G IoT

The report anticipates that 5G networks will experience significant growth in smart city services; owing to its cost-effectiveness in deployment and ability to carry significant amounts of data.

By 2026, there will be over 60 million 5G smart city connections globally, and the report urges city-planning authorities to leverage 5G connectivity as high-bandwidth gateways.

It found that the monitoring of transportation networks, including road and rail networks, will be key services that require 5G-enabled high-bandwidth cellular connectivity.

DX in healthcare drives 5G adoption

Investment from healthcare providers into 5G-based services will be driven by the need to modernise services, as the global COVID-19 pandemic exposed inefficiencies in healthcare provision. The report identified services including telemedicine, connected ambulances and emergency services, and real‑time remote monitoring as key services that will be immediately improved by the integration of 5G services.

Research co-author Olivia Williams commented: “5G will enable more efficient and dynamic healthcare provision that was not feasible with 4G or Wi-Fi. However, healthcare providers must first implement 5G in areas which provide a strong return on investment; most notably connected emergency services.”

5G: Where is the money

The Juniper Research paper, 5G: Where is the money? posits that 5G is progressively becoming the network of choice because of its performance and reliability. However, for network operators and CSPs (Communication Service Providers) to harness the potential it will require innovative business models and agile, automated infrastructure to monetise it effectively.

Demand for 5G services is key to the future growth of 5G adoption because it can be monetised. For example, Korea has built out 5G, enabling three-to-five times faster speeds than 4G because consumer demand is strong. Demand for 5G services is projected to be significant in the field of VR (Virtual Reality), AR (Augmented Reality), and UHD videos among others.

The post Healthcare and smart city services to lead 5G IoT adoption appeared first on FutureIoT.

The firm says COVID-19 has increased the adoption of connected devices across various end-user industries with their ease-of-use feature. Connected devices help in improving customer experience and provide enhanced services. The increased use of IT devices will likely spur demand for IoT device management.

China

GMI noted that in China, smart manufacturing applications will achieve nearly 30% gains leading up to 2028 fuelled by digital transformation efforts across the manufacturing sector. These include the adoption of advanced technologies like augmented reality and remote control among others.

The 2021 Ericsson IndustryLab report forecasts that manufacturing enterprises will become 80% automated in the next 10 years. Among the tools said to see greater use include AI software, video recognition, augmented and virtual reality, co-bots, video recognition, digital twins, automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and exoskeletons.

As many as seven-in-10 manufacturing enterprises say that they plan to deploy five or more production tools enabled by advanced wireless networks, such as 5G, within five years.

The Ericsson report pointed out that most manufacturing enterprises have emerged largely unharmed from the worst effects of the global Covid-19 pandemic, with 69% reporting an unchanged, or even improved, financial performance since lockdowns began.

Device management

GMI says industry participants are forming strategic partnerships to develop advanced and integrated IoT device management platforms. In February 2022, Device Authority and Avnet for end-to-end IoT security management. Avnet has integrated Device Authority’s KeyScaler platform into its cloud computing IoT device management platform to help customers manage their IoT devices.

The post Device management solution flourish pulled by IoT deployment appeared first on FutureIoT.

Iveda’s technology will enable the local government to tap into the existing power to equip cities with Utilus capabilities. With Iveda Pole Gateway and IvedaSPS, the system acts as a microgrid, providing power to mission-critical infrastructure as needed.

Once light poles are equipped with Utilus, they are able to communicate with one another, establishing a network that provides distributed video surveillance with AI video search technology and remote management of local devices such as trackers, water and electrical meters, valves, circuit breakers, and sensors.

The possibilities

Utilus consists of a smart power management and wireless mesh communications network with WiFi, 4G, and 5G small cell capabilities, plus other wireless protocols as required. It also includes an energy storage battery system for continuous operation and backup in the case of multiple power outages.

Utilus’ smart, multi-purpose poles will help Kaohsiung solve a myriad of urban challenges, from improving parking and traffic management and charging electric vehicles to detecting and notifying officials about street flooding, all through real-time data and alerts.

What to expect in 2023

“As we dive into 2023, we’re seeing more municipalities lean into the rapid development of AI, Internet of Things (IoT), and smart city technologies. Automation is the way of the future and Iveda’s Utilus smart poles add to the foundation of physical infrastructure necessary to deploy critical smart city functions,” said David Ly, CEO and founder of Iveda.

“Integrating smart street poles with multiple functional benefits will open doors for safer and sustainable modern development and construction of our cities and communities. As the supplier of Utilus, Iveda is enabling Kaohsiung to be at the forefront of true smart city innovation, they will be a showcase both nationally and globally.”

David Ly

What’s included in the Kaoshiung project

At the bottom: Iveda’s Smart Pole Cabinet which includes power meters from the investor-owned utility (IOU) or current power companies, power distribution panels, fibre distribution box (FDB), small modular reactor (SMR) which will automatically convert AC to DC for sensitive electronics, dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM)/IoT Gateway/PoE Switch support for TSN, Layer 2 and 3 LAN, and backup battery. The bottom of each Utilus pole will provide all-in-one management of power and data.

In the middle: The city will have the ability to scale as required with the flexibility to add AI cameras, environmental sensors, advertising/messaging displays, intelligent/autonomous traffic sensors, etc.

At the top: 5G small cell antennas with IP65 service cabinets.

As cities continue to grapple with the increasing need for cellular network densification in the form of 5G and future 6G small cells, smart poles are an imminent and crucial part of smart city evolution. Utilus use cases span from the reduction of emergency response time and the improvement of city services to air quality monitoring and crime and hazard protection for residents.

Smart Poles will also help cities like Kaohsiung address growing environmental concerns while providing key monetization opportunities for local municipalities.

The post Kaoshiung to deploy smart poles as part of its smart city development appeared first on FutureIoT.

Speaking at the IoT Asia+ event in Singapore, Sathvik Rao, principal director of Accenture’s Industry-X, noted how the pandemic has permanently changed the landscape. “Covid-19 has thrown up many uncertainties and changed the way we live, work and play. It has also accelerated the adoption of IoT – in fact, we have leapfrogged five to seven years in the past two,” he added.

Rao cautioned that several issues that need to be addressed as priorities. “The most immediate challenges relate to ensuring operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) security. In addition, several developments including device security and operation, power constraint and battery management issues, as well as the growing problem of chip shortages, also need to be resolved,” he continued.

For his part, Anson Bailey, the head of Consumer and Retail for the ASPAC region for KPMG China, posited that maintaining that the retail world is on the cusp of a new normal. He called for organisations to be more agile and resilient.

“The rise of IoT is a key enabler, but trust and purpose are going to also be key drivers, especially in the case of Gen Z consumers, a demographic that sees businesses through quite a different lens. Retailers, meanwhile, are looking at new technology and new innovations, while turning to AI, VR, big data and 5G to drive customer experience,” he added.

FutureIoT spoke to Paul Jesemann, regional chief technology officer for Asia-Pacific at Mavenir for his take on where IoT deployment is headed in the region.

Where is the concentration of IoT deployment? Why is that? What is driving this deployment of IoT?

Paul Jesemann: To pinpoint a region or market for the concentration of IoT deployment would be difficult, especially in a region as diverse as the Asia-Pacific (APAC). For different countries, various IoT projects have gained prominence, driven by demand within a sector or government and societal development initiatives.

For instance, advanced solutions for the mining industry in Australia differ from the smart city and digitalisation projects and initiatives in India, Singapore, or Thailand. Commonalities in driving the deployment of IoT is the need for and focus on value, whether derived or delivered.

Which industries are leading the deployment? Compared to other regions outside Asia, how sophisticated (mature) is the level of use of IoT?

Paul Jesemann: Different industries such as mining, agriculture, healthcare, and governmental or societal initiatives, such as smart cities, lead to IoT deployment in various ways.

The global IoT market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 25.2%, between 2022 and 2028, and the APAC region is projected to grow significantly during the forecast period. The growth is driven by several factors including urbanisation, mega-cities, population growth, and migration, amongst others.

Demand for IoT development is growing and made easier to meet. Combined with the innate innovation mindset, APAC can witness rapid growth in IoT solutions.

Within the leadership of these organisations deploying IoT, what do you see are the primary motivations?

Paul Jesemann: A primary reason why organisations deploy IoT is the numerous societal benefits derived from smart cities and government-driven initiatives. According to the UN, more than 60% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2030 and, if implemented properly, IoT can help optimise city functions, improve quality of life, and promote economic growth.

Another motivation is the opportunity for businesses to expand their digital capabilities and improve their operations to be more cost-effective and efficient. In fact, IoT is expected to reduce maintenance costs by more than 25% and downtime by 35%.

How do you see these IoT deployments impacting other initiatives like transformation, modernisation and many more?

Paul Jesemann: IoT deployment is often the result of digital transformation projects, and these are inextricable. The early IoT projects have led to the development and adoption of digitalisation initiatives and will do so in the future.

Consider the ecosystem effect, where technological advancement and cost-reduction initiatives driven by demand have led to further advancements in space.

"Cloud connectivity and edge solutions have enabled larger, more integrated projects that allow us to rapidly evolve through scalability, agility and leveraging cost-efficiencies. Human behaviour and expectations against IoT solutions, whether explicit or implied, will also change, further driving IoT deployments."

Paul Jessmann

Given that security is a rising concern for businesses, how should enterprises deploying IoT manage the security strategy of the company?

Paul Jesemann: Security remains an integral part of any business process or solution. The threat vectors and exposure to security breaches increase as the complexity and size of a project grow. The key to success is to make IoT deployments as secure as possible by including all solution components and mitigation measures against the worst possible scenario.

In mission-critical private network deployments, specifically for IoT projects, security is a key driver, top-priority requirement, and design criteria. This includes extending sophisticated access control to network services for devices or behaviour drift detection, in addition to the traditional aspects of security solutions.

As we step into 2023, how should enterprises review IoT deployment strategies to ensure that these initiatives meet expectations?

Paul Jesemann: Enterprises should review IoT deployment strategies according to the size and maturity of their organisation. As a starting point, it is important to recognise the business value and identify what problem it solves, the benefits the intended project delivers, and the costs.

Another consideration is choosing the right IoT partner to work with. An experienced partner that has executed implementations in your industry will help save you time, and money and guide you throughout the pilot phase. Another key consideration is to ensure a secure network that is robust, prevents any potential attacks and addresses any cybersecurity issues immediately.

The post State of IoT deployment and what to do next in 2023 appeared first on FutureIoT.

This growth of 91% will be driven by the advancement of both ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and increasing the capabilities of in-vehicle infotainment systems. The research identified 5G’s high speed and low-latency capabilities as transformative to these goals, requiring effective collaborations between automotive OEMs and operators to realise.

Connected vehicles are equipped with communication technologies that allow the exchange of information between the various elements of the transport system and third-party services.

The research found that operators are critical to unlocking new use cases, such as autonomous driving and data-heavy infotainment via 5G; representing a US$3.6 billion opportunity for providing 5G connectivity enablement in 2027 globally.

Research co-author Nick Maynard explained that 5G can allow automotive OEMs to upgrade the in-vehicle experience. In a vehicle market transitioning to electric vehicles, improving the user experience is key.

“Operators hold the critical role in enabling this in a reliable way, making them the partners of choice as their 5G networks rapidly expand.”

Nick Maynard

Commercial use cases lagging behind

The research predicts that by 2027, commercial vehicles will only account for 20% of connected vehicles worldwide, representing a small increase from 16% by the end of 2023.

The research found that commercial vehicle design is not leveraging connectivity beyond simple emergency call features and basic connected infotainment systems, although this is changing, as businesses prioritise tracking and logistics capabilities.

The research recommended that automotive OEMs prioritise integrations with common fleet tracking systems out of the factory to maximise the benefits of connectivity, and to enable commercial fleet owners to maximise efficiency in their processes.

The post Operators critical to unlocking the connected vehicle future appeared first on FutureIoT.

“When it comes to data centres, monitoring solutions support the monitoring of all IT components, which includes external facilities and security, as well as customisable alerts and reporting,” he commented.

In this article, Krueger provides insights into how networks of sensors are deployed in the data centre and used to monitor and predict the status of a data centre facility, including cooling systems, lighting, and security.

He explained that predictive maintenance anticipates future problems with IT infrastructure through forecasts and predictions made by analysing real-time data obtained from sensors and IoT, allowing organisations time to identify and work on anticipated risks.

“Predictive maintenance employs technologies such as machine learning to model and analyse real-time data and optimise the execution process, drastically reducing infrastructure downtime.”

Sebastian Krueger

He explained that by providing a centralised overview of the entire data centre infrastructure, a holistic monitoring solution supports a predictive maintenance programme in monitoring the sensors and IoT devices that provide real-time data.

What are the elements of a monitoring solution that support the monitoring of the entire scope of IT environments?

Sebastian Krueger: Sensors are the building blocks of a monitoring solution - monitoring solutions usually rely on sensors and other IoT devices to gather real-time data from an application or device. These range from generic sensors for monitoring hardware devices to platform-specific, preconfigured, or customised sensors to CCTV cameras and smoke alarms that monitor the physical environment.

Sensors in a monitoring solution integrate with important technologies such as SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), and HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) to gather system and performance data and to monitor the diverse variables present across the entire data centre infrastructure, which includes servers, networks, websites, and applications, present across a range of operating systems.

Apart from monitoring, another important element of a monitoring solution is being able to access and communicate the real-time information gathered in a simplified, convenient, and efficient manner.

Interactive dashboards and maps, that are based in real-time, allow for an easy-to-read and centralised overview of the system - this is especially convenient for larger and more geographically distributed IT environments such as data centres.

Customisable alerts and notifications - for whenever there has been a status change - are another element that enhances the scope of monitoring solutions.

Why do organisations need to monitor all the sensors and systems 24/7 with regard to availability and function and, at the same time, collect surveillance data?

Sebastian Krueger: Special attention needs to be given to the data centre security which not just covers the IT network and infrastructure risks but the entire premises.

When it comes to physical risks, it is important to monitor that there are no instances of overheating, cable fires which can cause massive damage while leakages in the air conditioning systems release water that can result in short circuits or damage the IT equipment.

What is needed is extensive sensor technology which can detect humidity, room temperature, hot spots, smoke, and other environmental influences. Monitoring issues such as smoke, fire, water intrusion, faulty cooling, faulty batteries, physical intrusion, building access security, as well as CCTV manipulation is important.

Given this backdrop, it is essential to keep a constant eye to detect any potential security threat, since data centres are doubly at risk, whether on the IT level, through distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, viruses, Trojans and similar threats or on the physical level, that can cause unwarranted disruptions.

Thus, organisations need to use the right monitoring tools which can leverage extensive sensor technologies and systems 24/7, regarding availability and function, and concurrently collect the surveillance data and integrate it into a central system to be pro-actively prepared for any anomalies.

How important is environmental monitoring of the data centre?

Sebastian Krueger: Given that data centres are required to always operate, disruptions such as power failure or overheating can cause massive damage, which includes increased costs, potential downtimes, increased wear and tear, and other disruptions.

Hence, apart from security and operational hardware devices, the monitoring of environmental parameters is an extremely important component of maintaining a functional data centre. A monitoring solution can support the monitoring of environmental parameters such as power and cooling.

While data centres are usually equipped with backup power systems such as UPS and SPS in case of a power outage, a monitoring solution helps monitor the status and performance of all power systems, including the backup.

Sensors help monitor any power-related occurrences - be it outage, heavy loads, or replacement. Similarly, to avoid system overheating, it is extremely important to maintain optimum room temperature.

A monitoring solution can integrate and combine multiple systems that give a singular overview of the detection of an irregularity and its cause, allowing for a much quicker and more efficient resolution.

The post Enhancing data centre operations with IoT appeared first on FutureIoT.

As Asia comes out of the three-year economic slump because of the pandemic, what lies ahead for businesses? What is the role of IoT in the return to some form of normalcy?

FutureIoT spoke to Danny Mu, principal analyst at Forester Research on recent trends around IoT adoption in Asia and where this will lead us in 2023 and beyond.

Drawing from the Forester Report, state of IoT in Asia Pacific in 2022. Where is the concentration of IoT?

We have seen that companies in Asia-Pacific are shifting the share of IoT engagements toward production deployments.

Five years ago, in 2017, production deployments comprised just 25% of engagements, and these were predominantly POCs or pilots.

But in 2021, 61% of engagements were production deployments. That is a clear indication that Asia-Pacific firms are getting more confident in the potential of IoT initiatives to generate business value.

Among all the IoT use cases, smart industry, smart consumer services, and smart infrastructure are popular in Asia-Pacific.

Why do you say the smart city industry in Asia Pacific's leading the world in terms of IoT?

As we know, Asia Pacific contributed 35% of the world's GDP, but when focusing on industry value added, including manufacturing, construction, and utilities, Asia Pacific contributed 44%. That is why the smart industry is a leading IoT use case.

What’s driving this deployment of IoT?

Three drivers. The first appearance and rising maturity of specialised IoT solutions and cloud-based IoT. Second, connectivity technologies such as 5G. Third capabilities and offerings of IoT consultants and service providers.

In Asia, which industries are leaving the deployment?

In Asia Pacific, two-thirds of telecom decision makers say their firm is currently adopting IoT solutions.

Adoption and investment are highest in high-tech manufacturing, 81% followed by telecom, 71%. General manufacturing and pharma are broadly in line with Asia-Pacific outreach.

Adoption rates below the average are found in financial services and insurance, 60%, and retail in wholesale 56.

Compared to other regions outside Asia, how sophisticated do you see the level of use of IoT in our part of the world?

According to the survey data, the IoT solution and application adoption rate in Asia Pacific is higher than in Europe and North America. Particularly in the high-tech manufacturing sector, the adoption rate in Asia Pacific is more than 10% higher than in Europe and North America.

Within the leadership at organizations deploying IoT, what do you see are the primary motivations most surveyed?

Asia-Pacific Telecom decision-makers are confident that IoT solutions will generate significant operational efficiency. Half of them expect IoT initiatives to significantly improve customer experience and increase revenue.

How do you see these IoT deployments impacting other initiatives like digital transformation and modernization, for instance?

Impacted by IOT solutions, enhancing customer experience in public places is the most often mentioned. Other use cases related to smart consumer services are also popular.

The two years of the pandemic have likely driven this trend as customer experience in public. It's driven by private companies, public infrastructure operators, and governments.

IoT Solutions also help to enable new business models, particularly in financial services and insurance – a clear indication that those firms will spend the extra IoT budget on usage-based insurance financing and lending.  

Given that security is a rising concern among business leaders, how should enterprises deploying IoT manage the security strategy of the company? 

Security is on top of the concerns with deploying IoT 10% higher than the second option. To help protect data in IoT scenarios, confidential computing can help to isolate sensitive operations in a trusted execution environment during processing.

To support the transfer of data between edge and cloud while appearing seamless to the developers, two networking markets, zero trust/edge, and multi-cloud networking will combine to create a business-wide networking fabric.

Finally, as we step into 2023, how should enterprises review IOT deployment strategies to ensure that these initiatives meet expectations?

We have found that Asia-Pacific companies are less confident in their in-house skills to deliver IoT solutions successfully. These points will need for consulting partnerships.

We also predict that the adoption of in-region digital industrial platforms will gain significant growth. Embracing these in region platforms and industry-specific cloud solutions will help Asia-Pacific firms meet their expectations.

The post PodChats for FutureIoT: IoT in Asia in 2023 and beyond appeared first on FutureIoT.

This digital divide persists in both developed and developing countries and threatens to become “the new face of inequality,” according to UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed. In September 2022, the Biden-Harris administration announced US$502 million for high-speed Internet in rural communities to help address the issue in the United States.

The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) paper “Rural Wi-Fi Connectivity: Challenges, Use Cases and Case Studies” demonstrates why Wi-Fi is the most economical and effective technology for bridging the digital divide in small towns, remote communities and other sparsely populated areas, utilising the best available backhaul solution.

Strategies and use cases

The report includes strategies and best practices that service providers can use to ensure the right quality of service, making Wi-Fi ideal for distance learning, telehealth, e-commerce, the internet of things (IoT), streaming video and other consumer, business and government applications.

Through use cases and real-world case studies, the report explores a wide variety of deployment scenarios that address the unique challenges of rural environments, with different types of backhaul, targeted applications, market conditions and other factors.

The report also provides regulators with guidance for maximising Wi-Fi’s ability to bridge the digital divide in rural areas. A prime example is ensuring that the new 6 GHz band is available for use in their countries, giving service providers additional spectrum to support more users and deliver the requisite speeds and performance.  

Wi-Fi enables mobile operators, telcos and other service providers to address a wide variety of existing and potential use cases, giving them a much more versatile and cost-effective technology for expanding their services into rural areas.

Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance, says Wi-Fi is uniquely positioned to extend voice, video and broadband services to the nearly 1 billion people worldwide in rural areas who have poor or no connectivity.

He reasoned that Wi-Fi’s ubiquity means it has the kind of high-volume low-cost structure that’s critical for ensuring devices and services can be priced low enough to maximize adoption. This makes Wi-Fi is economically and technologically ideal to address the digital divide in rural areas.

Dr. Rajkumar Upadhyay, executive director at C-DOT India, and co-author of the report, commented that the demand for data is exponentially increasing globally. This is well supported by an affordable device ecosystem, availability of a variety of quality content, over-the-top (OTT) services, e-education, e-health and other new use cases.

Covid-19 has fuelled this demand further and uptake is increasing in rural areas. Wi-Fi, an unlicensed band technology, is key both from access and backhaul perspective.

“The use of Wi-Fi technology to establish point-to-point and multi-point links in an unlicensed band is one of the alternate and affordable technologies to extend connectivity from fibre points of presence to nearby villages."

The post Narrowing the digital divide in rural Asia appeared first on FutureIoT.

Commissioned by Telenor, the OMDIA study found that 20% of enterprises in APAC anticipate their IoT deployments to reach beyond 500,000 devices that can be connected wirelessly to a network and used to transmit information within the next 12 months.

The study forecasts that emerging IoT adoption in the region, particularly from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Thailand, is expected to push the 14.5 billion IoT devices in circulation today to a forecasted 38.9 billion IoT devices by 2030.

Seth Ryding, chief sales officer (CSO) and head of Telenor IoT Asia says digitalisation and sustainability are moving to the core of companies’ future strategies.

“IoT and digitalisation are no longer an option for enterprises in the region, but a necessity – as technology hardware, connectivity and software takes centre stage in the digital future.”

Seth Ryding

Challenges unique to APAC

Unique challenges drive APAC in ways not seen in the rest of the world – population growth in megacities combined with a need to reach widely spread remote areas, the increasing pressures of urban mobility and energy demand, and the wider political landscape (including newly introduced/revamped policies or guidelines to steer deployment).

This takes place in an IoT vendor market that is fragmented, with enterprises challenged by the complexity and concern of cybersecurity.

IoT devices include any physical object that can connect wirelessly to the internet and transmit data, such as smart watches, printers, meters, speakers, and even kitchen appliances and automobiles.

The report specifically highlights the drivers behind fast-moving automotive digitalisation and IoT efforts, particularly in fleet management.

The vertical view also covers how IoT is enabling a streamlining of processes in transportation and logistics as well as a clear link to the sustainability agenda in the growing application of IoT in APAC energy, utilities, and resources enterprises.

Conclusion

The report concludes as IoT deployment goes into high gear, enterprises should consider the following with their projects:

• Consider connectivity from the country-level
• Seek proven integrated IoT security solutions
• Build-in a sustainability-first approach
• Plan for the complexity of IoT integrations
• Choose the right partners

The post 5 point strategy for accelerated IoT adoption appeared first on FutureIoT.

With more than 43 billion IoT devices connected in 2023, Futurist Bernard Marr shares his perspective on the above four trends he believes will influence how we use and interact with these devices.

Click on the YouTube player above to watch Marr reveal his top four trends impacting IoT in 2022.

Click here to see his 2022 predictions and compare – what’s different and the same.

The post Top four IoT trends in 2023 appeared first on FutureIoT.

Promotional messages will account for 30% of this revenue loss in 2023, with enterprises embracing up-selling and cross-selling capabilities through rich media marketing campaigns.

OTT business messaging involves enterprises using messaging applications to interact with consumers.

The A2P Messaging market report found that the total number of SMS business messages sent will reach 1.7 trillion in 2023; growing from 1.6 trillion in 2022, as enterprises capitalise on the channel’s impressive open rates and unrivalled subscriber reach.

It identified that the use of SMS will remain particularly strong in the retail sector, with operator-led messaging channels in multi-factor authentication increasing in tandem with the growth of eCommerce.

How to compete against OTT apps

Despite the popularity of third-party OTT applications, the report found that the total number of operator-led RCS (rich communication services) business messages sent will also increase, from 161 billion in 2022 to 219 billion in 2023.

It urges network operators to move away from the turbulent monetisation models used for SMS, as fluctuations in RCS pricing will limit enterprise adoption of operator-led rich media messaging.

The study found that volatile RCS pricing will encourage the establishment of grey routes, with lucrative business messages concealed and transmitted within cheaper interpersonal channels.

Research author Scarlett Woodford says to support the growth of RCS business messaging, operators must ensure that pricing remains profitable without dramatic increases.

“Operators must absorb the initial cost of rich media messaging, using digital advertising and sponsorships to secure a return on investment.”

Scarlett Woodford

The post Over 2 billion in message revenue lost to OTT apps appeared first on FutureIoT.

ABI Research forecasts revenues for 5G private network and 5G network slicing deployments in the Asia-Pacific region will increase from US$732 million and US$151 million in 2022 to over US$13 billion and US$12 billion by 2028, respectively.

“5G-to-Business applications have been shown to improve productivity and reduce costs for enterprises across different verticals,” says Matthias Foo, 5G markets industry analyst at ABI Research.

“Beyond that, 5G enterprise deployments were also shown to reduce power consumption by improving equipment efficiency through data analytics and workplace safety with machine vision and AI.”

Matthias Foo

Within the private 5G cellular space, manufacturing is projected to be the vertical with the highest revenue potential for 5G-to-Business applications in the Asia-Pacific region.

Use cases

Key use cases utilize the capabilities of 5G to enable real-time robotic control for remote-controlled operations, autonomous vehicle operations, extended reality technology for training and support applications, and the collection of a large amount of sensor data for developing digital twins. Some relevant case examples include South Korea’s LG Smart Park and Japan’s Fujitsu Oyama Plant.

In the 5G network slicing domain, the logistics vertical is forecast to be the highest contributor to revenue.

Key use cases for 5G adoption include vision-based inspections for autonomous and/or remote-controlled operations, asset tracking, and smart transport applications, as illustrated by China’s Ningbo-Zhoushan Smart Port and Australia’s drone delivery operator Swoop Aero.

Opportunities ahead

While the 5G-to-Business market in Asia-Pacific is currently driven by several key countries, there continues to be a large opportunity for 5G-to-Business growth in the region as more countries, like India, begin to roll out their 5G networks and more Communication Service Providers (CSPs) deploy 5G Standalone networks.

“While the economic outlook in many regions has become more uncertain, 5G cellular coverage and innovations continue. Those firms and countries implementing 5G-to-Business applications are most likely to secure first mover advantages,” concludes Jake Saunders, vice president of Asia Pacific and research director for ABI Research’s 5G markets research service.

The post US$25 billion 5G-to-business opportunity for APAC appeared first on FutureIoT.

By the programmable logic controllers (PLC) The Stuxnet computer virus disrupted the Iranian nuclear program by damaging centrifuges used to separate nuclear material.

The United States Presidential Decision Directive 62 (issued in 1998) stated that “Critical infrastructures are those physical and cyber-based systems essential to the minimum operations of the economy and government. They include, but are not limited to, telecommunications, energy, banking and finance, transportation, water systems and emergency services, both governmental and private.”

Trending in ICS security

Tim Conway, a certified instructor and technical director for ICS and SCADA programs at the SANS Institute says globally there are common trends across multiple geographies and critical infrastructure sectors with asset owners and operators pursuing increased interconnectedness across systems, increased remote access, and increased pursuit of cloud integration.

“In addition, with this movement toward connecting and operating systems in ways they never were previously designed for, there is a corresponding increase in concern, which is driving regulation and framework adoption to ensure appropriate levels of cybersecurity detection and defence capabilities.”

Tim Conway

What are the current and emerging ICS vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure (in Asia)? What is the industry doing to address these?

Tim Conway: This is truly a global issue, while some sectors may be of higher risk in certain geographies than other parts of the world, we all face similar challenges across common ICS devices, and protocols that are used in various industries. 

In general, we are seeing a rise in ICS-targeted malware which is concerning for all vendors and the associated industries that rely on those vendor products and solutions. 

Modular malware frameworks that allow adversaries to add capabilities or customise an attack approach have been discovered and they truly provide a force multiplier capability that could enable an increased frequency of attacks across a broader scope of targets potentially.

With the increasing adoption of IIoT, to what extent are ICS vulnerabilities expanding beyond operational technology (OT)?

Tim Conway: There will continue to be a feverish pursuit of connectivity and automation to everything everywhere, our challenge is in understanding where all those trusted communication paths are, how they could be misused and what impactful effects could be achieved. 

Understanding these attack vectors, and vulnerabilities will allow organisations and individuals to make risk-informed decisions about what technologies should be pursued and where.  The phrase, “Just because you can, does not mean you should” applies well here. 

Singapore is probably one of the best examples to look at regarding guidance and thoughtful discussions on the development of a common balanced approach to pursuing innovating technologies and interconnectedness with a healthy dose of concern about how those technologies should be implemented and maintained.

Can you share common pitfalls and challenges in ICS security that impact/endanger critical infrastructure security in Asia?

Tim Conway: Every process has unique considerations and nuanced discussions around appropriate cyber-informed engineering concepts that need to be pursued.  There needs to be a focused investment in the workforce around the areas of operations, engineering, safety, and cybersecurity to begin addressing the issues truly.

What lessons can Asia learn from recent compromises and attacks in industrial companies around the world – to protect the community and national security?

Tim Conway: As a region, I would recommend any country to look to activities being pursued around the world to run national exercises throughout their critical infrastructure sectors and examine the regulation or guidelines that have been implemented elsewhere to determine if there are areas within their own country that could benefit. 

From an attack perspective, each sector should look to impactful attacks around the world and ask the questions of their teams – how that attack could occur in our organisation, would it have been worse, how would we detect and prevent it, what can we do to improve our abilities to operate through a similar attack, and then establish exercises to practice and prepare.

What are the key ICS cybersecurity critical controls that governments and organisations should deploy to adapt, to best fit their environment and risks? How has ICS cyber security evolved in recent years?

Tim Conway: ICS cyber security has greatly expanded from the perspective of solutions and guidance.

We have recently released a whitepaper on “The Five ICS Cybersecurity Critical Controls” and we feel this will significantly help organisations establish focused capital and O&M projects and programs to address the areas of greatest risk.

The post Securing the critical appeared first on FutureIoT.

This technology will be invaluable to enterprises as they look to deploy private networks. Traditionally, devices moving between a private and public network would have to switch networks manually – often causing performance issues for M2M and IoT applications.

Instead, SIMbae is an applet that sits on top of a SIM or eSIM and expands its capabilities to include things like swapping to stronger connections automatically as well as additional security features such as debugging and encryption.

“This partnership is another exciting development in the enterprise IoT space,” says Divya Ghai Wakankar, VP enterprise market and marketing. “BICS’ IoT solution already makes device activation and connection effortless for its enterprise customers. Now the powerful combination with Able Device’s applet software harmonises seamless mobility of next-generation connected devices.”

Historically, SIMs have had limited value by nature of being passive processors that require external input to trigger a predefined function. SIMbae on the other hand represents a new generation of SIM cards, transforming them into active processors in IoT systems that don’t rely on external input.

For enterprises, this is a unique technology piece that automates the more technical telecommunications aspects of the IoT and private networks – reducing the barriers to implementation.

“We’re very proud to be working with BICS to address the global market for enterprise mobility solutions,” said Roger Dewey, CEO of Able Device. “Our agreement illustrates the benefits and utility of SIMbae across the connected device solution value chain.”

BICS’ all-in-one IoT solution helps businesses reduce complexity when deploying global IoT solutions by managing the connection, control, and optimisation of the SIM ecosystem through its “SIM for Things” platform.

BICS supports IoT connectivity and roaming with its backbone network across over 200 countries, making it easy for businesses to connect IoT devices anywhere in the world.

As the use of connected devices by enterprises grows increasingly global and complex, BICS and Able Device aim to remove complexity for businesses and improve the performance of IoT applications through intelligent applications and an open global ecosystem for SIM and eSIM technology.

The post Partnership to simplify enterprise IoT appeared first on FutureIoT.

He noted that the continued shortfall in the availability of skilled workers has spurred the adoption of robotics, automation, AI augmentation and connected operations.

Challenges of IIoT adoption

As with many emerging technologies, challenges await organisations looking to tap the potential of IoT to improve the company’s competitiveness and business value.

For Rao, the most immediate challenges relate to ensuring operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) security.

“In addition, device security and operation, power constraint and battery management issues, as well as the growing problem of chip shortages, also need to be resolved,” he continued.

Ajithkumar Nandakumar, VP for strategic initiatives, IOT practice at Hitachi Vantara, says IoT pilot projects are focused on the innovation factor rather than the business outcome. He also noted that legacy systems with their proprietary protocols are still siloed. Efforts to link them to the rest of the enterprise often undermine the potential benefit.   

Part of the value proposition of IoT devices and sensors is the data they acquire. According to Andrew Ling, head of industries and customer advisory at SAP Hong Kong, there remains a lack of correlation between the IoT data collected and how it could be used to improve processes and create business value.

He also commented that data for many organisations are stored in silos. He posits that companies are collecting IoT but not holistically, as different business units within a company adopt IoT technologies for different reasons.

“They might collect IoT-generated data on the workforce, machinery, and process efficiency. But these multiple sources of data are, however, isolated, and not fed into an end-to-end platform,” he added.

“Without an end-to-end ERP or data management system that can integrate and harmonise the mass volume of data, it defeats the purpose of the investment. Having an end-to-end integrated system can facilitate data to run throughout the system and generate business insights.”

Andrew Ling

Strategies for accelerating IoT integration

While use cases abound for IoT in both commercial and industrial applications, the environment must remain conducive to encouraging adoption.

For Nandkumar, the path to IoT adoption begins with a business outcome in mind. He posits the need to plug the business-IT alignment gap.

“Most IoT programs will involve custom-built solutions combined with out-of-the-box software across multiple vendors spanning across business & IT. They must work with a partner that cannot just define a roadmap and deliver on an IoT-based innovation project but also has the experience to scale and cross the business & technology partner ecosystems.”

Ajithkumar Nandakumar

He cautioned that planning is very important in an IoT project. Typical innovation projects are kicked off with minimal planning since they are considered test beds.

He warns that scaling an innovation project (with little planning) will meet with failure since due diligence and proper planning are often skipped in urgency to test out new technology.

“The third critical factor is to look at IoT projects holistically over the longer term. This means considering combining them with other emerging technologies and looking at a longer horizon for profit and returns.

“IoT projects do take time to deliver outcomes and work best as part of a larger transformation initiative. Measuring outcomes from IoT projects in isolation does not deliver the expected outcomes, leading to early scrapping of IoT pilots,” continued Nandakumar.

Kickstarting the adoption of IoT in Asia

One strategy often cited by consultants and industry practitioners is starting small to get those quick wins.

SAP’s Ling explains that for quick wins, companies should map out how IoT technology can improve and optimize specific work processes and measure the time or resources saved.

“These use cases could illustrate what IoT technology can achieve and contribute to creating business value. Successful use cases can be baby steps for companies to develop a more holistic IoT roadmap and elicit funding and executive support,” he concluded.

For this part, Nandakumar suggests that Asian enterprises establish clear ownership for their IoT programs and form teams that cut across organisational functions and stay focused on the business value outcomes.

“Firms should also select the right pilot use cases that directly impact core business outcomes. This is where they can learn from some of the successful programs in other markets and start with such successful use cases but adapt it to their specific business context,” he added.

He commented that IoT architecture, even a pilot, should be designed with scalability in mind than just for meeting the immediate use case scope and needs. Another factor to consider upfront is on building the technical talent and skills needed in the program. This is quite crucial for execution and success.

“In addition, while designing architecture and making technical choices, it is important to focus on the interoperability of systems. It is key to solve this upfront to successfully scale and improve adoption beyond the pilot.

“Finally, there can be never enough emphasis on change management in an IoT program. Many pilots have failed because they were treated as mere technical projects. Asian firms need to approach such pilots with a change management mindset and thereby have the right talent, governance and business alignment upfront to accelerate the adoption of the IoT project beyond the pilot project,” concluded Nandakumar.

The post Realising innovation with IoT adoption appeared first on FutureIoT.

A report by Grand View Research values the global location intelligence market size at US$14 billion in 2021 and is projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6% from 2022 to 2030, largely driven by increased investment in the Internet of Things (IoT) and a growing focus on location services across industries.

Regionally, the indoor location-based services market is expected to grow by 36.7% year-on-year owing to the rising demand for digital platforms amid the pandemic.

The state of indoor location services today

The problem with indoor wayfinding is the fact that global positioning systems (GPS) simply does not work well indoors. For GPS receivers to work, they need to be able to receive signals from the constellation of satellites orbiting earth from more than 20,000 km away.

That is why GPS systems in cars take seemingly forever to initialise, and why receiving these signals through concrete walls indoors is seemingly impossible.

So, current indoor access points (APs) on their own do not provide accurate location information. Indoor location-based applications have therefore used alternative technologies such as Bluetooth or other wireless systems to improve the accuracy of indoor positioning and this is typically a separate network to Wi-Fi.

As a result, we have not seen the widespread adoption of indoor locations nor a set of standard applications like we have in the outdoor space.

Users usually end up having to manually map out the location points of their APs. This results in inaccuracies due to human error, to speak nothing of the labour-intensive nature of this process. Each time the location of this AP is changed, time and resources must be devoted towards recalibration.

Imagine the cumbersome process of manually mapping each device or machine within a multi-storey hospital that operates over thousands of devices daily, each taking about 10 to 15 minutes to manually perform.

How GPS is making self-locating indoor access points

GPS-enabled APs, on the other hand, automate this process and drastically lower the cost of operations. APs are generally static—they do not move around a lot—and they need to communicate with other APs around them to self-locate by using high-sensitivity GPS receivers that are embedded in and optimised for APs.

By combining GPS with fine time measurements (FTM), which can orchestrate and coordinate the measurements between APs across the network, AP locations are accurately represented in both latitude and longitude—meaning the true height of the access point is also calculated in the process.

Furthermore, these GPS-enabled indoor APs can be located on ceilings, with their antennas facing the floor, and even in basements—traditionally the worst kind of environments for GPS solutions. But we made it work.

The integration of APs with GPS capabilities puts an end to any abstraction in location services. Instead, these APs communicate automatically with each other and algorithmically determine an optimal anchor point for all APs within the network.

This enables a self-correction of sorts over time after the initial set-up—performed through repeated measurements and correction of anchor APs to provide businesses with the most accurate location possible.

By standardising how APs share their reference locations with the ecosystem—over-the-air and via cloud-based APIs, existing GPS navigation applications can leverage location coordinates supplied by the APs to extend their coverage indoors.

This is highly beneficial for businesses that operate on large premises. In hospitality, for instance, precise indoor location can vastly improve the customer experience by providing guests with better navigation to event halls and food and beverage outlets, as well as easy and secure access to hotel facilities and services.

Beyond navigation, GPS-enabled indoor access points introduce many potential possibilities, including asset tracking of expensive medical equipment in hospitals, and geofencing in daycare centres to ensure child safety.

These self-locating indoor access points engender greater efficiencies across all layers of operations and simultaneously improve the accuracy of today's networks to bring greater value to customers.

By working out how to successfully integrate GPS receivers into indoor access points, network administrators can manage these APs in the long term to enable the delivery of improved indoor location services that make things like object and people tracking more accurate than ever. The potential use cases across industries are staggering, and that's game-changing.

The post Bringing GPS Indoors – access points as the North Star to your buildings appeared first on FutureIoT.

Our 2023 predictions for edge computing, IoT, and networking take into account these market forces and highlight their impact on the technology triad, as well as how edge, IoT, and networking can address dynamic market opportunities.

Below is a look at three of the bold calls we’re making for edge, IoT, and networking in 2023:

Big city IoT and infrastructure initiatives to lure back citizens and workers will fall flat. In 2023, government funds, including the $89.9 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in the US, will power smart lighting, traffic management, and energy monitoring investments in cities.

5G and Wi-Fi deployments will extend connectivity to visitors, residents, and anywhere workers. However, these investments won’t lure citizens back to big cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York in 2023 due to increased crime rates and public safety concerns.

City leaders must focus on improving safety while addressing public disapproval of surveillance and public safety methods.

Smarter farming will take off in response to extreme weather and war. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, China and Russia accounted for over a quarter of global wheat exports. As global tensions rise, and weather events become more extreme, edge- and IoT-enabled food production will finally achieve meaningful scale in 2023.

One vertical farm in Dubai produces over 1 million intensely monitored kilograms of leafy vegetables each year, without pesticides and using up to 95% less water than traditional methods. In the vast mechanized farmlands around the globe, ground, air, and space-borne sensors combine with edge processing and analytics to reduce water consumption and direct environmentally damaging chemicals to specific plants.

Rising business-wide networks, confidential computing, and Zero Trust edge (ZTE) will ignite the edge. To help protect data in IoT scenarios, confidential computing isolates sensitive operations in a trusted execution environment during processing. IoT data remains protected when in use, so it’s easier to meet strict regulations for data privacy and to introduce new use cases.

To support the transfer of data between edge and cloud while appearing seamless to the developer, two networking markets, ZTE and multi-cloud networking, will combine to create a business-wide networking fabric. Multicloud overlay solutions, such as Aviatrix and F5 Volterra, enable a single multi-cloud network platform.

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Gartner defines a warehouse management system (WMS) as "a software application that helps manage the operations of a warehouse or distribution centre."

According to Data Bridge Market Research, the WMS market in Asia Pacific is expected to reach US$2434.16 million by 2029, with a CAGR of 18% during the forecast period of 2022 to 2029. Unlike traditional warehousing operations where data is typically loaded, extracting real-time statistics is no longer just preferred, but a necessity to gain prior insights into potential challenges within warehouse operations.

Unify Analytics from AutoStore is a cloud-based service and data platform for intelligent warehousing. It enables businesses using AutoStore, an automated storage and retrieval system, to leverage data-led insights from their system and easily identify the cause of operational challenges.

“Over the last two years, we have seen how businesses are startled by the sudden explosive demand and orders. Our aim is to assist businesses in ensuring their operations run smoothly without disruptions due to poor inventory management, or the inaccuracy of data storage,” says Clement Yew, director of business development for Southeast Asia at AutoStore.

“Through Unify Analytics with AutoStore, customers can now have real-time visibility and statistics for their warehouse operations to make informed and verifiable decisions. Despite the fluctuations in demand, the insights can prepare customers in adapting to the changing market trends and uncertainties.”

Clement Yew

Two versions

Unify Analytics is available in two versions, a web application where businesses can view real-time statistics and analytics, and an API that enables seamless integration with any external third-party applications.

“Businesses can reap multiple benefits by combining automated storage and retrieval, and data-led insights. This data analysis tool will allow businesses to be more proactive and respond rapidly to real-time challenges,” says Andreas Munch, product manager at AutoStore.

Monitoring with data visualisation tools

Unify Analytics consists of several performance analysis dashboards that provide graphical presentations of operational information. Examples of available data are uptime and number of stops within the system; waiting time per bin; average distance per robot; and the number of tasks a customer has prepared in the system (each hour). It also shows if the software and firmware have been updated.

“Data is only effective if we measure the right metrics. We currently include a selected list of key metrics and will develop and add new features to the software gradually, in close dialogue with our users," says Munch.

In the next stages of the technology, AutoStore developers plan to include an alert functionality. End-users will get a notification via email or SMS when set conditions are triggered, allowing businesses to respond quickly to operational challenges.

A single data platform

The AutoStore System generates vast amounts of information on a continuous basis, making it valuable to have a technology that organises all data onto a single platform, is highly protected, and meets security requirements.

“The new analytics tool secures access to real-time and logged data and is only accessible to designated end-users and distribution partners. We automatically deploy software updates when they are available, without any system downtime,” says Munch.

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ABI Research predicts that growth in the IoT MVNO market will see participants’ total revenues exceed US$2.5 billion annually by 2026, representing a five-year CAGR of 18.5% since 2021.

“Connectivity providers, the bedrock of the IoT ecosystem, continue to evolve as more connected things come online, more startups launch, and more companies are acquired,” said Jamie Moss, IoT networks and services research director at ABI Research.

Evolving market opportunities

He posits that trends include the development of cloud-native core networks, Connectivity Management Platforms (CMPs) with remote OTA (Over-The-Air) provisioning ability; and the bridging of the once-siloed management platform market through technological innovation, e.g., IoT SAFE by the GSMA.

“Therein providing a single point of onboarding for device provisioning and the Subscriber Identity Module’s (SIM) provisioning, regardless of SIM form factor,” he added.

MVNOs, long reliant on connectivity and connectivity management for raking in the lion’s share of their revenues, are increasingly diversifying their product portfolios. Both traditional and disruptive IoT MVNOs have adopted this strategy.

Even a conventional IoT MVNO like Kore Wireless is not static. It has evolved and introduced many services, including device management, managed services, and application management toolsets, especially in end markets where it has developed practical vertical expertise.

New entrants are disrupting the IoT MVNO ecosystem by challenging the business strategy of traditional players.

Moss pointed out that traditionally, IoT MVNOs relied upon wholesale licensing agreements with carriers for multi-national connectivity to build their business model. He added that disruptors go one step further, partnering with carriers to sell them a managed service to enable operation beyond the carriers’ home market, transforming those carriers into international IoT service providers.

“There are other disruptive elements too. Some focus on private networks for IoT deployments, while others have dialled in on pricing innovation,” he continued.

The IoT MVNO ecosystem has and will continue to grow strongly and will reach a global total of 220 million connections provisioned worldwide by 2026. Nonetheless, some IoT MVNOs have developed more quickly than others.

Connected use cases

“1nce is a quintessential challenger, a prime example of a disruptive IoT MVNO. 1nce was the first to introduce the IoT flat rate - 500MB for 10 Euros for 10 years - and it is more than just marketing noise. It has produced results for the company, with 1nce having already exceeded 10 million IoT connections since being founded in 2017,” Moss pointed out.

The technology landscape around IoT MVNOs continues to evolve, with the GSMA’s ongoing standardization of eSIM and IoT SAFE prime examples of recent connectivity and connectivity management developments.

Moss cautions that it’s not all plain sailing for eSIM and IoT SAFE, however, as MVNOs continue to highlight the inability to integrate eSIM with NB-IoT, and with IoT SAFE adoption still being nascent.

“These technology headwinds challenge the narrative of IoT MVNOs that deployments are straightforward for their enterprise customers. Simplifying the delivery of global connectivity at a predictable price point remains the primary concern for IoT MVNOs, and continues to be the nexus of all innovation."

Jamie Moss

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“LoRa Alliance members, working with their customers identified a new opportunity to enhance ease-of-use,” said Donna Moore, CEO and chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance.

“By doing the work to develop a standardised application payload codec API, we are greatly simplifying the onboarding process, making it easier to integrate and deploy devices, and thereby facilitating massive LoRaWAN deployments.”

Donna Moore

She posits that this new specification eliminates yet another barrier to massive IoT with a new standards-based approach.

LoRaWAN payload codec API specification

When using LoRaWAN to transport application payloads, messages are very compactly encoded to minimize bandwidth usage. As messages reach the application server, they must be decoded to be read and processed.

Previously, each device manufacturer or application developer had to write a specific codec for each device and application platform pair, which created friction for device onboarding.

With the new payload codec API specification, a codec can be developed once and used on any application platform, achieving considerable savings in terms of reduced complexity and accelerated time to market.

The LoRaWAN Payload Codec API standardises an API for the JavaScript codecs for LoRaWAN devices to enable adoption by both device makers and application server vendors.

A standard codec provides the capability to decode uplinks/downlinks and to encode downlinks, allowing new LoRaWAN devices to be easily integrated into any compatible platform.

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According to the industry body, Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), Wi-Fi 6E has now become the de facto industry standard, with 53% having already deployed the technology and a further 44% already working on plans to adopt Wi-Fi 6E in the next 12-18 months.

But as expected, technology and standards are not taking any rest.

The WBA Annual Industry Report 2023 reveals that 33% of service providers, technology vendors and enterprises already have plans to deploy Wi-Fi 7 by the end of 2023.

Wi-Fi 7 will supercharge current Wi-Fi capabilities with new technologies, such as multilink operation and time sensitive networking – ideal for Industry 4.0 applications – while leveraging the 6GHz spectrum dynamically with automatic frequency coordination.

Driving W-Fi 7 adoption

The uptake of Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 is being driven by a growing appetite for data-intensive, low-latency applications and use cases, from smart cities and immersive technologies such as the future metaverse to Industry 4.0.

Newer Wi-Fi technologies offer better scheduling and greater interference management, which respondents to the survey now see as essential in supporting high-quality video, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and other advanced consumer experiences.

The report detailed a renewed focus on the quality of experience (QoE) delivered to end-users, with 90% of service providers, equipment manufacturers and enterprises now ranking it as a key differentiator in monetising their Wi-Fi services.

The report noted that 61% of respondents identified services such as high-definition video streaming, AR, VR and potential metaverse applications as key revenue opportunities. 

Adlane Fellah, a senior analyst at Maravedis says ensuring a predictable quality Wi-Fi experience has become the main driver of innovation and collaboration in the industry.

“In a post-pandemic world, consumers and businesses expect more from Wi-Fi and rely on it more than ever. Immersive experiences, low latency applications and seamless roaming will drive the Wi-Fi industry for the foreseeable future,” he added.

WBA OpenRoaming gathering pace

Global momentum for WBA OpenRoaming, which reached a milestone of one million hotspots in early 2022, was also underlined by the report.

OpenRoaming enables users to connect automatically and securely to millions of Wi-Fi networks around the world without the need for logins, registrations, or passwords, facilitating “always on” connectivity.

Passpoint technology removes the friction usually associated with onboarding and offboarding between hotspots. The WBA report says 62% of service providers, equipment manufacturers and enterprises worldwide will have already deployed Passpoint/OpenRoaming technology or are planning to do so by the end of 2023.

A further 25% are expected to deploy the technology by 2025.  Among those adopting OpenRoaming, 51% said the key driver was improving the overall customer experience.

Convergence is critical

Other key findings from the report reinforce the need for convergence between Wi-Fi and cellular technologies in the interest of creating a seamless user experience:

• In enterprise markets, 70% said Wi-Fi and 5G will coexist, with 61% claiming convergence would support enhanced flexibility for enterprise services
• 53% said that convergence between licensed and unlicensed technologies was critical or important for the current commercial strategy

According to Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance the industry is identifying increasing value in Wi-Fi technology in the wake of highly anticipated new use cases. He added that service providers, equipment manufacturers and enterprises around the world know that those use cases are best served in a converged environment, where Wi-Fi and 5G complement each other.

“We’re seeing the industry advance at breakneck pace toward Wi-Fi 7, with mobile operators leveraging Wi-Fi as part of their 5G strategies to maximise coverage and optimise capacity – it’s all about the user experience.”

Tiago Rodrigues

“This includes how people and things connect to the networks - automatically, securely and with privacy assured and that is where OpenRoaming provides the essential ingredient,” he continued.

Hold your horses

But before you even start debating whether to upgrade straight to Wi-Fi 7, since it is backwards compatible, to reap the benefits of speed, you will need to upgrade literally all of the devices connected via Wi-Fi. That may be too steep a price to pay even during the early days when the standards are still finding roots - sometime in 2024.

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A Ponemon Institute study noted that 65% of responding organisations say that IoT/OT devices are one of the least secured parts of their networks, while 50% say that attacks against these devices have increased.

IT security practitioners in 88% of those organisations have IoT devices connected to the internet, 56% have OT devices connected to the internet and 51% have the OT network connected to the IT network.

Threat actors are aware of these trends. Forescout recently reported on how ransomware groups have started massively targeting devices such as NAS, VoIP and hypervisors. Not surprisingly, most of these devices were among the riskiest identified in the 2020 Enterprise of Things Security Report. 

Many of the device types observed among the riskiest in 2020 remain on the list, such as networking equipment, VoIP, IP cameras and programmable logic controllers (PLCs). However, new entries such as hypervisors and human-machine interfaces (HMIs) are representative of trends including critical vulnerabilities and increased OT connectivity. 

2022’s riskiest connected devices

Using Forescout’s scoring methodology, Vedere Labs identified the five riskiest devices in four device categories: IT, IoT, OT and IoMT.

• IT: Router, computer, server, wireless access point, and hypervisor
• IoT: IP camera, VoIP, video conferencing, ATM, and printer
• OT: PLC, HMI, uninterruptible power supply (UPS), environmental monitoring, and building automation controller
• IoMT: DICOM workstation, nuclear medicine system, imaging, picture archiving and communications system (PACS), and patient monitor

How organisations can mitigate risk

“We have seen two recurring themes in Vedere Labs’ research, which this report reinforces,” said Daniel dos Santos, head of security research at Forescout’s Vedere Labs, noted two recurring themes: “First, attack surfaces are growing quickly due to more devices being connected to enterprise networks, and second, threat actors are increasingly able to leverage these devices to achieve their goals.

“Unfortunately, the attack surface now encompasses IT, IoT and OT in almost every organisation across the globe, with the addition of IoMT in healthcare. It is not enough to focus defences on risky devices in one category, as attackers will leverage devices in different categories to carry out attacks. Vedere Labs has demonstrated this with R4IoT, demonstrating how an attack that starts with an IP camera (IoT), can move to a workstation (IT) and disable PLCs (OT).”

Daniel dos Santos

What to do

Forescout advises organisations to undertake a proper risk assessment to understand how their attack surface is growing. Granular classification information including device type, vendor, model and firmware version are required for accurate assessment. 

Once this assessment is complete, organisations should mitigate risk with automated controls that are not reliant on security agents, and that apply to the whole enterprise, instead of silos like the IT network, the OT network, or specific types of IoT devices.

Once the risk assessment is complete, organisations need to mitigate risk with automated controls that do not rely only on security agents and that apply to the whole enterprise, instead of silos like the IT network, the OT network, or specific types of IoT devices. 

Forescout Continuum enables these types of controls by accelerating the design and deployment of dynamic network segmentation across the digital terrain while also automating policy enforcement by enabling countermeasures to mitigate threats, incidents and compliance gaps.

Understand what makes the riskiest connected devices so risky. Then strive for full visibility into how many are connecting to your digital terrain so you can secure your attack surface.

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The paper covers the top business and technological challenges faced by stakeholders such as airlines, identity providers including mobile operators, satellite and air-to-ground backhaul services, avionics vendors and hub services that facilitate roaming.

The on-the-air connectivity challenge

One major reason is the difficulty connecting to the Internet due to the traditional captive portal method. Passengers must connect to the correct Wi-Fi (network SSID), then navigate to the correct landing page and finally determine which pass they want to buy, and how to register and pay.

In an online journey, each incremental step usually leads to dropouts, and for airlines, service providers and other ecosystem members, every dropout due to this unnecessarily complex connection process are lost revenue.

Airlines have invested in inflight portal services, and an employer’s VPN is a barrier for business travellers consuming these. Once they have internet connectivity, connecting to their VPN will prevent them from being able to access these onboard services.

To regain access, they must disconnect their VPN. This back-and-forth makes them less likely to purchase in-flight services such as inflight food and duty-free — another revenue loss for airlines and other ecosystem members.

The report claims stakeholders can overcome these and other major barriers and improve the process by implementing Passpoint.

Passpoint frees passengers from the hassle of manually entering log-in credentials every time. Instead, the aircraft’s network automatically authenticates and connects them on every flight with an automatic, secure and friction-free user experience.    

 It also lays the foundation for airlines and other ecosystem members to participate in the WBA’s OpenRoaming federation. By simply adding the appropriate Roaming Consortium Organisation Identifiers (RCOIs) to the network, airlines and other ecosystem members can leverage the enhanced security, privacy, and automatic network-attached experience afforded by Passpoint, which are key concerns for business travellers, with the convenience of OpenRoaming for authentication.

As a federated service, OpenRoaming also ensures that travellers get and stay connected at additional locations throughout their journey to and in the airport, hotels, convention centres and any other public locations, and finally on board the aircraft. Airlines can use this gate-to-gate experience to create new loyalty opportunities for travellers, and new monetization models with identity providers and partners.

Going forward, WBA members have already agreed to move one step further and start developing industry guidelines for users' digital experience when using Wi-Fi networks. This ultimately will unleash a consistent experience across networks with non-fixed backhauls, such as maritime and trains use cases. Ultimately, an integrated and consistent mechanism will be trialled initially by WBA members in real-world scenarios and create the standard for commercial rollout. 

Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance, commented that connectivity today is fundamental for daily lives and Wi-Fi is the most used wireless connectivity technology in the world.

“The in-flight Wi-Fi experience must improve to give vacationers and business travellers access to flight information, entertainment, social media and more. But a host of technological and business challenges have prevented in-flight Wi-Fi from living up to its mainstream potential.”

Bruno Tomas, CTO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance said: “Airline travel is soaring, with international traffic up 229.5% over the past year and total traffic up 76.2%, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). “That trend means now is the ideal time for airlines to take a fresh look at their in-flight Wi-Fi experience. This report shows how they can use Passpoint and WBA OpenRoaming to eliminate complexity so passengers can take full advantage of all their in-flight services.”

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The increasing frequency of OT/ICS cyberattacks is serving as a wake-up call to organisations. Cybercriminals are using a range of techniques to launch a tsunami of attacks against OT and ICS systems.

The impact of these attacks can affect the masses by causing civic unrest, and governments in some countries are taking pre-emptive measures to stop these attacks.

For instance, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) created the OT Cybersecurity Masterplan in 2019 to enhance the security and resilience of the nation’s Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) sectors in delivering essential services.

Its goal was to improve cross-sector response to mitigate cyber threats in the OT environment and to strengthen partnerships with industry and stakeholders, proving that the threat of OT/ICS attacks is imposing enough for governments to act before they happen.

 In today’s manufacturing and utility networks, feeble defences across assets, managed and unmanaged devices give adversaries the advantage to launch attacks.

Without direct action to harden OT networks and control systems against vulnerabilities introduced through IT and business network intrusions, OT system owners and operators will remain at indefensible levels of risk.

An example is Iran suffering a major attack on its fuel stations nationwide in 2021, which disabled a system that allowed millions of Iranians to use government-issued cards for fuel at a subsidised price.

In total, 4,300 fuel stations were victims of the attack with traffic in cities being widely affected in an attempt to get “people angry by creating disorder and disruption”, according to Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi.

Similarly, petroleum powerhouse Oil India suffered a cyberattack disrupting the company’s operations in Assam earlier in 2022. In the attack, they received a ransom demand of USD 7,500,000, disrupting business through its IT systems.

The company reported huge financial losses due to the attack. When securing against today’s cyber threats, it is important to understand the game plans of threat actors and proactively counteract them with solutions.

Let’s start with Sun Tzu to understand our enemy’s 5 steps into our ICS and OT environments:

1. Effects and targets: 

APT actors, or state-sponsored actors, are looking to create chaos, sow discord, or destabilisation of leadership. To do so, they typically vet out critical assets within critical infrastructure like controllers in marine ports, energy generation/distribution points, and highly visible targets where disruption may cause harm, distrust, or may psychologically or socially impact a community.

Conversely, cybercriminals are looking for a payoff and are more than happy to find high-value targets anywhere within an organisation to extort their owners. While there may have been a wide gap in the past, the skills, backing, and training between the two are narrowing.

WHAT TO DO: Define your critical protection surfaces. Not all systems and components are created equal. Begin by identifying the most critical surfaces and grow to incorporate additional surfaces over time.

Within OT, this may be a bank of Windows machines that allow for remote access into a PLC segment where third-party lateral connections are established for maintenance and support. Within IT, these may be north-south assets that allow for pivoting from IT into OT, especially if IT connections to the Internet are present.

2. Intelligence collecting on the target system: 

It is widely known that information about both OT systems and IT technologies is widely known. Publicly available documentation on both IT and OT systems and components are not hidden, including default admin credentials.

WHAT TO DO: Never allow for default admin credentials to reside on any asset and continually rotate passwords.

3. Developing techniques and tools: 

Adversaries can be quite resourceful, especially with readily available tools on the dark web. Presuming devices are secured because they run proprietary protocols is a zero-sum game as tools are readily available to exploit IT and OT systems.

APT actors have also developed tools to scan for, compromise, and control certain Schneider Electric PLCs, OMRON Sysmac NEX PLCs, and Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) servers.

WHAT TO DO: Acknowledge that standalone, islanded networks are few and far between. Do not presume a posture of security by obscurity. Monitor application usage and ICS traffic to include authorised user access and behavioural anomalies.

4. Gain initial access:

Most modern control systems have remote access capabilities that allow third-party vendors and integrators into the systems, as well as work-from-home, remote access and the supply chain. Oftentimes, these points of access into the network are attack vectors for cyber actors. Matters get worse when we add wireless access points to the mix that attract local actors into the fray.

WHAT TO DO: Audit all third-party access. Ensure the ability to pivot to high-value targets is non-existent. Take advantage of VLAN technologies to create safe holding pens for devices as they are introduced into your network prior to introducing them into the production network. Look for devices with multiple NICs attaching to differing networks, creating bridges from ‘A to B’.

5. Execution: 

The disruption, disabling, denying, and/or destruction of the system, to achieve intended results. This might include the degradation of the monitoring of a target system (Manipulation of View [T0832] ), operation of the control system (Manipulation of Control [T0831]), SCADA impairment (Block Reporting Message [T0804], Denial of View [T0815]), denial of control (Denial of Control [T0813]), or Theft of Operational Information [T0882]).

WHAT TO DO: Monitor industrial control commands and anomalous behaviours coming from unauthorised machines, unauthorised users, commands occurring outside of change control, and multiple reset, errors, and mode changes in critical infrastructure.

As system owners and operators, we cannot prevent a malicious actor from targeting our systems. Understanding that being targeted is not an “if” but a “when” is essential. By assuming that the system is being targeted and predicting the effects that a malicious actor would intend to cause we can employ and prioritise mitigation actions.

It all starts with identifying the initial system and all its sub-components within a protected surface. Once we find success, repeating across the broader OT landscape gets easier each time.

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IoT Analytics also reports record levels of VC investments for IoT firms, including acquisitions in the areas of AI and analytics. It is anticipated that despite headwinds like rising inflation and prolonged supply chain disruptions, overall sentiment will continue to be positive as the number of connected IoT devices reach 14.4 billion by the end of 2022.

With this growth, we can expect more targeted and perhaps creative ways of attacking both producers and enterprise consumers of IoT devices in the years ahead.

According to Satyajit Sinha, principal analyst for IoT Analytics, organisations tend to focus on security from a softer aspect or had network security at best.

“We have never seen security from the device aspect, and IoT demands different requirements of security such as authentication, authorisation, and identification. Most devices are secured through software security which is not adequate as they are vulnerable to attacks.”

Satyajit Sinha

“The more we create awareness about IoT devices security, the more people will implement security in their devices,” he added.

How adequately do you think current IoT ecosystems are secured, especially for unmanaged IoT devices?

Satyajit Sinha: The IoT devices do not have the capability to hold a higher level of security because of the power constraint thus security will always be a challenge. However, if these devices are connected to a gateway or a router, they can secure the touchpoint of the network and IoT ecosystems. It is not the case for small devices or unmanned devices.

Are concerns around IoT security justified? Or why does the IoT ecosystem require security?

Satyajit Sinha: People are focused on securing devices that create critical data, autonomous driving and intelligent devices for example. But this should not just be about selected devices.

A thermostat may not provide critical data so you may disregard whether it is secured or not. But, if it is linked to your home gateway, it is easy for someone to hack into your network and get all the information from all other connected devices.

What is the strategy that will secure IoT?

Satyajit Sinha: For hackers, it is a business. They will not invest their time and money in devices with multiple layers of security. So, the best strategy is to have multiple layers of security from hardware to software to network to cloud security. Connect these four and create end-to-end security, also called chip-to-cloud security.

What are the challenges or roadblocks to securing IoT end-to-end?

Satyajit Sinha: First is having the right policies and regulations. There needs to be proper regulations and direction for security implementation in the market. The second is industry sentiment.

"Treating security as an extra cost will incur a burden in the long term. We need to understand that if you don't spend on that extra secure element chip, you will have to pay more in a ransomware attack."

Satyajit Sinha

Last is device provisioning and key management services for chip-to-cloud security. It is difficult to manage security especially if you switch between service providers.

What are the key similarities and differences between traditional IT security and IoT Security?

Satyajit Sinha: The similarity I believe is that both are accountable not just at the OEM level but also platform and the cloud level. The difference is that it is new for the IT industry to manage IoT security with multiple applications. There are many standards, and numerous players come up with their own solutions.

How much is post-quantum security relevant for now?

Satyajit Sinha: All IoT devices have a lifespan of about 10 to 15 years which means they are not capable of quantum security in the long run. Security needs to be future proof and there is no extra cost for adding quantum-level security so organisations should consider having it.

Click on the PodChat player to listen to Sinha on the state of the security of IoT devices in Asia.

1. How adequately do you think current IoT ecosystems are secured, especially for unmanaged IoT devices?
2. Are concerns around IoT security justified? Or Why does the IoT ecosystem require security?
3. What is the strategy that will secure IoT?
4. What are the challenges or roadblocks to securing IoT end-to-end?
5. What are the key differences between traditional IT security and IoT Security?
6. How much is post-quantum security relevant for now?

The post PodChats for FutureIoT: Securing IoT beyond 2022 appeared first on FutureIoT.

A 5G transport network interconnects a 5G RAN and provides connectivity to the 5G mobile core network.

Various technologies can be deployed to support new 5G use cases within the 5G transport network. Among these are proven technologies such as Ethernet, and Ethernet VPN (as specified in prior Broadband Forum work such as TR-350, TR-224, and TR-221), as well as emerging technologies from Broadband Forum partners such as IEEE 802, ITU-T SG15 and IETF.

“5G cannot perform without the support of well-founded transport networks.  These transport networks must be prepared to support the vast number of use cases and services that can be realised with 5G with features including higher capacity, enhanced performance, and high reliability,” said David Sinicrope, Broadband Forum’s Access and Transport Architecture (ATA) Work Area Director.

“The publication of TR-521 provides a functional reference architecture, and equipment requirements for transport networks supporting 5G fronthaul and backhaul.”

“It benefits both operators in specifying what is expected of the transport equipment they procure and transport equipment vendors in deciding what to implement and how it will be used,” he added.

Broadband Forum has also released the specification, Mobile – Transport Network Slice Instance Management Interfaces (MMI) (TR-522) to address, as the name suggests, transport network slice management interfaces.

5G end-to-end slicing facilitates multiple logical self-contained networks on top of a common physical infrastructure platform.  In realising a 5G end-to-end slice, the 3GPP management system needs to be aligned with the corresponding transport network management to ensure that the desired performance, functionality, and connectivity are fulfilled.

TR-522 addresses the interfaces between 3GPP Management System and the Transport Network Managers helping to provide this alignment. Specifically, the work defines interfaces to support the configuration, assurance, monitoring and reconfiguration of 5G network slices in 5G networks.

Both specifications, along with accompanying Market Reports (MR-521.1 and MR-522) which explain the motivation for the work, have been completed by Broadband Forum’s Mobile Transport and Routing Project Stream within the Access & Transport Architecture (ATA) Work Area. 

The Mobile Transport and Routing Project Stream is responsible for the Forum’s mobile transport and routing architectural work, including the control, management, and data planes. These architectures leverage new industry technology and practices while protecting the investment in deployed networks.

The post New 5G transport specs to help support demanding 5G applications appeared first on FutureIoT.

Recognising this trend, the Commission is calling for organisations to take advantage of the decentralisation trends through IoT and edge computing capabilities, and leverage the expertise of its communities in the physical, industrial world and in digital world to bring the best of both worlds towards Europe’s next-generation IoT and edge computing infrastructure.

IDC says the IoT market in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) will continue to grow in 2022 by 9.1%, accelerating from 6.9% in 2021. Headwinds such as semiconductor shortages and supply chain disruption caused by geopolitical tensions have limited the growth in 2022 to single digits, and rising inflation may dampen growth.

However, rising demand for remote operations, better network coverage, and the deployment of commercial 5G and testbeds are driving IoT adoption in the region. IDC expects spending on IoT to reach $436 billion in 2026, with a CAGR of 11.8% for the period 2021-2026.

IDC’s research director for Asia-Pacific, Bill Rojas, says the ongoing deployment and expansion of 5G will drive the growth of connectivity use cases that utilize massive narrowband IoT as well as wideband/broadband IoT such as 4K IP cameras.

“Low Earth Satellites including nanosatellites and next-generation Very High Throughput Satellites will enable a wide range of remote connectivity uses cases relating to smart cities, environmental and sustainability monitoring, transportation infrastructure, energy and resources, and utilities.”

Bill Rojas

FutureIoT reached out to Kenny Ng, head of worldwide market development, network business division at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise for his take on where IoT is headed in Asia.

Do you think a decoupling of IoT hardware from software would further accelerate the adoption of IoT in the enterprise or is this a case of a solution looking for a problem to solve?

Kenny Ng: IoT adoption requires a holistic approach to meeting business needs in the digital transformation process. It will require a solution-based approach rather than approaching it from the decoupling of hardware and software.

However, there are a few challenges to surmount for enterprises in the IoT sector, including having a short time to market, airtight security, a versatile update mechanism for hardware and software and mastering device management.

Businesses need to evaluate hardware and software IoT choices pragmatically for their needs, but finding a cost-effective product that satisfies all requirements can be difficult.

For IoT-related projects, knowing the specific use case is essential to identifying the most applicable hardware. Careful software selection is also important, centring around ease of integration and maintenance.

What business problems/customer expectations are ideally suited for IoT?

Kenny Ng: IoT serves as a critical foundation and enabler for digital business processes. It also offers enormous value to businesses undergoing digital transformation. The connectivity provides also benefits enterprises that rely on collecting and processing large amounts of real-time data.

In a world where efficiency is key, IoT is best suited to enable enterprises to harness the data available at their fingertips to derive value-driven insights that can optimise workflows for better outcomes and accelerate business transformation.

As the pandemic boosted the digital transformation and sprouted the number of devices connected through IoT everywhere, the public sector saw an opportunity to leverage IoT capabilities to meet customer expectations and enhance processes and efficiency in everyday life.

IoT has the capability to transform the public sector, by significantly reshaping how governments keep track of data and information and harnessing mobility, automation and data analytics.

For you, what would constitute next-generation (next-gen) IoT?

Kenny Ng: Next-generation IoT would need to be holistic and enable organisations to scale up their digitalisation efforts securely with ease to welcome the age of digital networking. According to IoT analytics, there will be 30.9 billion IoT devices by 2030, making 75% of total devices.

With the growth of mobility and IoT, security is skyrocketing to become a top priority as networks become even more exposed to potential bad actors. And, with cyber-attacks increasing in volume and in complexity, unregulated devices can introduce security risks and chew up bandwidth unbeknownst to network operators.

With the sheer number of devices in a connected network, configuring and managing so many individual devices is unrealistic. Approaches like IoT containment must thus become more commonplace, where devices can be efficiently and safely onboarded via automation.

The ability to rapidly identify and classify every object connected to the network and automatically provision a configuration associated with a specific device, alongside virtual segmentation, are also crucial characteristics that must be present in next-gen IoT. Monitoring the objects is vital so that immediate action can be taken if there is unusual activity on the network, thus containing the impact and scale of a potential cyberattack.

Do you think culture and mindset are mature enough to accept these next-gen IoT solutions/technologies to realise real business value today?

Kenny Ng: While next-generation IoT does pose a complex challenge for enterprises, it offers massive versatility in the automation and optimisation of business processes.

Particularly after COVID-19, digitalisation has been at the top of many organisational agendas and has become a widely recognised priority in industries across the board. Though risk-averse enterprises may hesitate to make the leap when it comes to emerging technologies, organisations with a disruptor and agile mindset will be able to effect change and realise these benefits. This change in mindset must start from the top, with business leaders and decision-makers leading by example before it can become a part of their corporate DNA.

Once culture and mindsets have matured, then can concrete actions be taken to enact definite change. To unlock the potential of next-gen IoT, time and resources must be invested into building a skilled IoT workforce, such that the technology can be fully and strategically harnessed to drive core business competencies.

For those who may be limited by budget or resource constraints, an intelligent network fabric tackles this pain point by automating various manual tasks to simplify a network’s design, deployment, and operations. Automation also reduces the risks of vulnerabilities associated with manual errors.

How do you create an environment that will encourage IoT adoption and innovation within an enterprise? Who needs to own it?

Kenny Ng: As mentioned, enterprises will need to have the mindset for accepting change and embracing innovation, and this needs to start with the leaders. They will also need to invest in training a robust IT team to aid the secure operation and maintenance of IoT deployments.

The responsibility will lie with the senior leadership of the enterprises to instigate change from the top-down. IT leaders must transparently communicate both benefits and challenges of IoT adoption and push for ongoing education to overcome employees’ inertia towards change and help them understand the impact and implications of the organisation adopting IoT.

For instance, getting the message across that IoT help automate operations and streamline infrastructure, which in turn, can ease the workloads of employees may help to get their buy-ins.

The key also lies in cultivating an organisational culture and mentality that is comfortable with calculated risks. Every new technological adoption comes with its own sets of associated risks, but organisations that stay ready to mitigate risks will enhance their agility and responsiveness, and in turn their ability to compete.

Being comfortable with risk will also encourage new methods of trying out things, ultimately forming an enterprise environment that drives business innovation and constant evolution.

The post Shaping the digital future with the Next-Gen of IoT appeared first on FutureIoT.

Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) network technologies, such as 3GPP standards like LTE-M and NB-IoT, offer long-range communications with broad coverage, the ability to handle a large number of devices and low power consumption to IoT devices to operate for 10 years or more.

Relay allows for battery-operated, easy-to-deploy network coverage extensions at a fraction of the cost of adding additional gateways.

Challenges however remain. Participants in a VDC Research-sponsored study, identified several challenges related to IoT system development using LPWA including 1) minimizing power consumption; 2) securing IoT data; 3) lowering project development time, and 4) reducing the total cost of ownership.

Working on the problem, the global association of companies backing the open LoRaWAN standard for the internet of things (IoT) low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs), the LoRa Alliance has expanded the LoRaWAN link-layer standard with the addition of a relay specification.

This allows LoRaWAN to achieve excellent coverage in use cases requiring deep indoor or underground coverage, or relay data on satellite-connected LoRaWAN devices within proximity.

“LoRa Alliance members identified that end users in specific markets needed a solution to achieve full network coverage due to environmental challenges surrounding their deployments,” said Donna Moore, CEO and chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance.

“With relay, we’re providing a standardized solution that allows for full end-to-end communications in the extremely challenging underground, metal and concrete environments where sensor signals could use a boost or redirect to reach either the gateway or end-device.”

Donna Moore

She added that the new relay feature is a direct response to market needs and provides an essential building block to enable massive IoT.

Relay use cases

One of the first markets to adopt relay is metering in the utility sector. Utilities represent a massive opportunity for IoT, with VDC Research estimating that worldwide LPWAN communication services revenue will reach $2.47 billion by 2025.

Adding relay to the LoRaWAN standard to achieve coverage for even the most difficult cases (e.g., meters inside metal closets) significantly strengthens LoRaWAN’s market position in metering and utilities, and more broadly across key verticals including smart cities and buildings, and industrial IoT.

Using a relay is ideal for any application monitoring static assets in challenging environments.

LoRaWAN relay feature

The LoRaWAN standard is proven for long-range communications, however, there can be physical limits to where LPWAN communications can reach, such as around turns, underground, where a signal needs to be reflected/relayed into a specific location, etc. LoRaWAN relays allow signals to go where they physically couldn’t go before.

The LoRaWAN TS011-1.0.0 LoRaWAN Relay Specification document describes the relaying mechanism used to transport LoRaWAN frames bi-directionally between an end-device and gateway/network server via a battery-operated node. By enabling relay, the device can transfer LoRaWAN frames between an end device and network when there is insufficient coverage from the gateway.

This specification enables Network coverage extension through the battery-operated relay and maintains compatibility with the LoRaWAN Link-Layer standard in terms of protocol and security. The new relay nodes are battery-powered and can be installed anywhere and do not require electricity or internet connectivity. This makes them a very easy-to-deploy, low cost and low-power way to extend network coverage, without needing to add additional gateways. Relay endpoints allow LoRaWAN to provide coverage of all devices with only a nominal cost of installation.

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The launch of native support for satellite enables customers with remote monitoring, asset tracking and other use cases to “bring their own” compatible satellite hardware and manage all their connections and billing in one place. In addition, users can integrate advanced platform services supporting device management, cloud integration and secure private networking into IoT use cases requiring satellite communication.

Native satellite support is a new addition to Soracom’s “blended” IoT networking offering. Soracom has provided native support with integrated billing for cellular and Sigfox since 2018, and, in July 2021, added support for Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and satellite via Soracom Arc.

Arc lets individual developers, startups, and enterprises build IoT solutions using their connectivity of choice, with the unique ability to easily switch, add, or blend connectivity options as requirements change – all without rearchitecting applications.

Terrestrial cellular networks now reach 90% of the world's population, but cover only 15% of the earth's surface, according to Astrocast. IoT deployments in remote locations, such as those found in precision agriculture, industry, mining, energy, and maritime and other industries, require the ubiquitous network availability that only satellite coverage can provide.

“Soracom is committed to accelerating IoT deployments around the world and ensuring success at scale, no matter what combination of hardware, cloud platform, and wireless connectivity the use case requires,” said Kenta Yasukawa, cofounder and CTO at Soracom.

He added that with the addition of native satellite support, we are empowering our customers to build new experiences around connected devices while reducing total cost of ownership, accelerating speed to market, and ensuring complete control over every connection.”

This capability is now available on a Technical Preview basis, with support for Astrocast, with additional satellite services to follow.

"There is significant demand within many industries for IoT deployments across the 85% of the globe that currently has zero cellular coverage," said Fabien Jordan, cofounder and CEO at Astrocast.

"Cost-effective, low power, bidirectional satellite technology brings new opportunities for a broad range of innovative use cases. Combining the Soracom platform's capability and ease of use with Satellite IoT gives integrators and organisations a chance to explore and develop a new dimension to their IoT deployments."

Fabien Jordan

The post SatIoT makes possible global IoT connectivity appeared first on FutureIoT.

To solve this, Thales and BICS are removing the need for complex integrations with mobile network operators, by allowing the eSIM to connect directly to an operator’s remote SIM provisioning platform.

Having proven its feasibility in the consumer electronics space, the same concept is being introduced into the IoT space by the duo. The eSIM Connectivity Activation service allows for greatly simplified logistics and manufacturing due to the need for only a single SKU.

Installation is faster and less complex. Particularly, locations with uneven coverage will benefit greatly from the flexibility Connectivity Activation offers. Enterprises developing IoT-connected devices can now integrate eSIMs with far less investment, effort, and deployment time.

“This new IoT eSIM solution will be a major turning point in the industry,” says Thierry Uguen, head of product portfolio management IoT at Thales. He claimed that the IoT Connectivity Activation service has drastically optimised the costs and efforts needed for the mobile industry to manage the SIM profiles on IoT devices.

BICS will support this ecosystem by enabling the provisioning of eSIMs inside Thales Cinterion modules. These modules can then connect to mobile network operators anywhere in the world with the Thales IoT Connectivity Activation service.

With a unique global coverage for any IoT technology (2G/3G/4G/5G/LTE-M and NB-IoT) and its SIM for Things solution, BICS aims to make enterprises’ global IoT projects even more simple and reliable. Fostering easy, flexible global connectivity will help enterprises take that missing step to scale their international IoT projects towards success.

Said Luc Vidal-Madjar, head of M2M/IoT Business at BICS: “Removing the obstacles for eSIM management with IoT devices will lead to far broader adoption of eSIMs in the industry and will finally allow eSIMs to deliver on their long-awaited promise of greater flexibility for IoT connectivity.

“Unlocking eSIM use in this way will be a critical step in supporting bigger and bolder global IoT deployments.”

Luc Vidal-Madjar

“For consumers and enterprises, this will ultimately bring massive IoT closer to becoming a reality. This in turn will mean large numbers of new smart products for end-users and promising new business opportunities such as for industry 4.0, smart metering, smart cities or connected alarm systems,” he concluded.

The post Partnership to simplify eSIM integration for IoT appeared first on FutureIoT.

ABI Research says these headwinds are pushing security higher on the enterprise priority list as organisations seek cost-effective and agile cryptographic applications to protect increasingly distributed and ephemeral corporate assets.

In response, hardware security modules are changing rapidly to meet these new demands.

“The Hardware Security Module (HSM) market was already on track for a shake-up, as new business models and new competitors vied to take advantage of emerging opportunities around enterprise digital transformation and cloud migration,” states Michela Menting, cybersecurity applications research director at ABI Research.

She added that presently enterprises are tightening budgets amid worries about their business stemming from high inflation and a potential recession.

“For HSM vendors, the market opportunity is clearly within the cloud, as enterprises will opt out of owning expensive HSMs in favour of Operational Expenditure (OPEX) service-based models,” she continued.

Stuart Carlaw, chief research officer, concludes, “We should heed one of the most important business lessons learned during 2020—that technology will not be a casualty of uncertainty, but rather a tool to overcome it.

“Companies that embrace, invest in, and deploy technology wisely will undoubtedly emerge stronger and better prepared to handle the next spate of challenges on the horizon, no matter the weather.”

Stuart Carlaw

The post Global macroeconomic headwinds are reshaping security spending appeared first on FutureIoT.

By integrating their technologies is said to give organisations advanced tools to remotely manage the security of operational technology and industrial control systems from anywhere and on any device.

“Critical infrastructure across the world is under increasing threat and must be modernized to realize the benefits of digital transformation. Like many other industries, there is a myriad of reasons forcing industrial facilities to adopt new technology – from the cost and business efficiencies they bring to meeting the needs of a highly-skilled workforce that are often stretched too thin,” said Bill Moore, founder and CEO at XONA.

Nozomi Networks solutions support more than 74 million devices in thousands of installations across energy, manufacturing, mining, transportation, utilities, building automation, smart cities and critical infrastructure. Its solutions automate the complex work of inventorying, visualising and monitoring industrial control networks through the innovative use of artificial intelligence.

What the partnership means

With pre-integrated and tested solutions that reduce time to market and increase value, combining Nozomi Networks and XONA technology addresses the complex challenge of securing remote access in critical infrastructures.

Comprehensive network visibility is automated, therefore enabling network administrators to balance priorities in a more efficient manner while ensuring the utmost protection with granular security.

“A big part of helping organisations modernize their critical infrastructure is enabling user access from anywhere, on any device. It’s essential for any business in the twenty-first century, and industrial facilities are no different,” said Chet Namboodri, senior vice president of partner alliances at Nozomi Networks.

“Adding user access to critical infrastructure is not easy – it’s usually too costly and complex, or vulnerable to attack. But XONA has figured out how to make user access frictionless and secure. Integrating our technologies together provides immense value to our joint customers.”

Technology agnostic and configured in minutes, XONA’s proprietary protocol isolation and Zero Trust architecture immediately eliminate common attack vectors, while giving authorized users seamless and secure control of operational technology from any location or device.

The post Partnership aims to secure critical infrastructure appeared first on FutureIoT.

Based on a new architecture developed by CEA-Leti, the module’s L-band chip is a key hardware component that enables Astrocast customers to cost-efficiently communicate with their assets in the field via its network.

It was completed earlier this year in an expedited project between the research institute and Astrocast, and is embedded in Astrocast’s RF module, called Astronode S.

The chip’s architecture is split over the RF core and digital processing and control units. It is fully optimised to support Astrocast’s dedicated bidirectional ground-to-satellite protocol and provides an optimal trade-off between link budget and low-power and low-cost constraints.

The chip also embeds all low-earth orbit (LEO), satellite-specific features such as satellite detection and robustness to Doppler shift.

The miniaturised, surface-mount module communicates with terrestrial devices via Astrocast’s constellation of LEO satellites. Using the L-band spectrum, the network primarily targets maritime, oil & gas, agriculture, land transport and environmental applications in which ubiquitous coverage is required.

“Terrestrial IoT networks cover only about 15% of the planet, which leaves vast remote and rural areas where our global satellite network provides coverage that is crucial for our target markets,” said Laurent Vieira de Mello, Astrocast’s COO.

“Leveraging its expertise embedded in a preliminary version of the RF chip, CEA-Leti developed its chip and delivered the final prototype to meet our requirements and time-to-market goals.”

“They managed the chip technology transfer to our industrialisation, qualification and production partner,” he continued.

The project’s critical time-to-market window was managed through a flexible collaboration model covering both prototype and industrialization phases.

CEA-Leti’s industrial tester used for characterisation was key to accelerating from prototype to production, which enabled prototype characterisation in parallel on the tester and in the lab, Durr explained.

“This process provided a short-loop debug capability with all skills available at CEA-Leti, and enabled us to deliver fully validated inputs to Astrocast’s industrialization partner for an easier industrial test-program development,” said Michel Durr, business development manager at CEA-Leti.

The low-energy, compact, surface-mount Astronode S module for highly integrated, battery-powered IoT systems offers a total cost of ownership up to three times lower than traditional satellite IoT alternatives.

The post Chip to enable ultralow-power IoT connectivity appeared first on FutureIoT.

The developing global private cellular network market will likely expand to $6.32 billion by 2026 from $1.83 billion in 2021 at an impressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.1%. Of this total, the contribution of private 5G networks will be significant, reaching $5.05 billion over the forecast period from $600 million in 2021.

“Wi-Fi continues to be important to most enterprises, but private cellular networks cover use cases that Wi-Fi does not do well and, in many cases, can provide a better network for less,” said Troy Morley, ICT industry principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

“Private 4G networks improve on Wi-Fi, particularly around mobility, and private 5G networks improve on 4G, enabling higher throughput, higher connection densities, and lower latencies.”

Troy Morley

He added to achieve an acceptable return on 5G investments, communication service providers (CSPs) must better serve customers outside of the consumer market.

“This may be with network slicing, edge networks, and/or private 5G networks,” he continued.

Spectrum is essential for any wireless technology, and for private 5G networks, much of the available spectrum is licensed by CSPs, but not all.

Must dos to reap the benefits of private 5G networks

Start by working with local CSPs. Licensed spectrum provides the highest reliability and quality of service (QoS); it is essential for mission-critical operations. CSP-licensed spectrum is available globally. For most enterprises willing to invest in a private 5G network, licensed spectrum is the only real choice. Working with a CSP and their spectrum is often the best option.

Investigate industry-licensed spectrum if it is available. In certain areas of the world, governments are licensing spectrum directly to industry, which provides an alternative to CSP-licensed spectrum. Industry-licensed spectrum provides the reliability and QoS needed but may cost less.

Solve business problems that don’t involve safety by considering shared or unlicensed spectrum. While licensed spectrum is essential when private 5G networks are solving mission-critical use cases, there are organisations looking to solve problems that do not require the same reliability or QoS. This opens the possibility of using shared spectrum (like CBRS in the United States) or even unlicensed spectrum for private 5G networks, which may reduce the overall cost. (Wi-Fi operates in unlicensed spectrum.)

The post Frost sees private 5G networks as leading enterprises to a new level appeared first on FutureIoT.

Commissioned by Armis, The Forrester report, State of Enterprise IoT Security in North America, revealed that 74% of the respondents felt their security controls and practices were inadequate for managed, unmanaged assets across IT, cloud, IoT devices, medical devices (IoMT), operational technology (OT), industrial control systems (ICS), and 5G.

Keith Walsh, OT security and operations director at Armis, says the trouble with many installations within organisations is that each department tends to go solo on management and risk containment.

He cites the example of departments that may have managers over OT/ICS facilities, for instance: air conditioning, sanitation, telecommunications, and other functions. Server rooms and computers of all shapes and sizes may be managed by a separate IT department.

Outside a typical office, a process plant in the oil and gas, petrochemicals, and chemicals industries, or a power plant (nuclear, other renewable, or fossil), will yet have different field operations and maintenance managers managing various safety and other controllers. The expertise demanded by these fields tends to be disparate and so it would be difficult to converge all such manageable assets into a single department or system.

“For unmanaged devices, which may include OT and IoT, these may yet be another hurdle for organisations, since they may never have been defined as a security hazard, until recent times when 5G/LTE and broadband have permeated throughout every facet of an organisation.”

Keith Walsh

“So, it is safe to say, we can imagine the typical organisation may not have a complete security profile for all managed and unmanaged devices. Asset visibility is the first step in developing a security framework. You can’t secure what you can’t see,” he added.

As more devices in the homes connect to the internet, security and privacy concerns rise to new levels. The Palo Alto Networks’ The Connected Enterprise: IoT Security Report 2021 found that the problem has gotten worse with the rise of working from home. 81% of those who have IoT devices connected to their organisation’s network highlighted that the transition to remote working led to greater vulnerability from unsecured IoT devices.

“The bottom line is that while organisations are adopting best practices and implementing measures to limit network access, digital transformation is disrupting not only the way we work but the way we secure our ways of working,” explains Alex Nehmy, CTO of Industry 4.0 strategy for Asia Pacific & Japan at Palo Alto Networks.

He posits that safeguarding unmanaged and IoT devices continue to be an ongoing challenge. With most cyberattacks accessing corporate networks months before they are detected, ongoing monitoring and IoT device security should become a key focus area of a corporate IoT security strategy.

The real and present danger

The hacking events that we now remember including the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, meat packer JBS and the Triton malware attack against a Saudi petrochemical plant suggest that organisations will continue to be targeted as long as there are gains to be made.

Nehmy warns that most of today’s IoT security solutions provide limited visibility by using manually updated databases of known devices, require single-purpose sensors, lack consistent prevention and do not help with policy creation.

“They can only provide enforcement through integration, leaving cybersecurity teams to do the heavy lifting, blind to unknown devices, and hampering their efforts to scale operations, prioritise efforts or minimise risks,” he added.

Walsh further warns that the mature security processes that were born out of IT are now colliding with OT, as industry 4.0 becomes more pervasive. IoT devices also tend to be simplistic and lack sophisticated patching and firewalling capabilities.

“Looking ahead, Industry 5.0 is only going to increase the interaction between humans and machines to the point of necessitating real-world human safety protocols that go beyond current OT and IT security measures,” he continued.

The IT-OT convergence – who’s the boss?

Nehmy believes that the onus of IoT security rests on the shoulders of both operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) teams and they need to work collaboratively to ensure IoT security is adequate.

Having an IoT security system that provides a single pane of glass to give these teams a consistent level of visibility, monitoring and enforcement across both IT and OT environments, also helps bring these culturally diverse teams together, regardless of the systems they’re securing.

When organisations have limited visibility of IoT and OT devices, it hampers their ability to begin securing them.

“You can’t secure what you can’t see. One of the best practices for integrated IT and OT security involves conducting continuous monitoring and analysis."

Alex Nehmy

"The key focus should be on implementing a real-time monitoring solution that continuously analyses the behaviour of your entire network,” explained Nehmy.

Additionally, IT and OT teams should work together to ensure the IoT attack surface is managed by enforcing segmentation between IoT devices, OT devices and business-critical IT systems.

Strategy to secure IoT

Asked to name one strategy to secure IoT, Armis’ Walsh suggests understanding and identifying the attack surface.

“Once we do that, we can then properly patch, segment, and monitor transactions and interdependencies of those devices. Mitigating risk all starts with understanding and identifying the attack surface of our critical assets,” he added.

IDC cautions that IoT can very easily become the weak link or entry point for attacks in any organisation, which is why IoT solutions need to be secure by design. Extending a zero trust framework to IoT deployments can enhance security and reduce risk, but it is an enterprise-wide strategy that requires a complete understanding of all IoT systems on the network.

Nehmy concurs adding that implementing Zero Trust for IoT environments is the best approach for IT and OT personnel to devise an IoT security strategy that enforces policies for the least privileged access control.

Building a business case for IoT security

IoT and OT devices usually make up more than 30% of devices within corporate networks, 57% of which are also susceptible to cyberattacks, as they are built without security in mind and contain existing vulnerabilities.

“The attack surface of IoT devices permeates across all environments of the enterprise. While organisations may not yet spend more in managing the security of all connected assets, the increasing attack surface needs to be addressed holistically,” warns Walsh.

The attacks against Colonial Pipeline and JBS may have occurred in the US, but Deloitte believes that critical infrastructure operators in Asia Pacific are increasingly being targeted by cyber espionage and sophisticated attacks with the potential for severe disruption to essential services such as energy and water supply.

As IoT use grows in importance to the daily operations of critical infrastructure, adequately securing IoT and OT devices becomes a compelling business case, posits Palo Alto Network’s Nehmy.

He suggests that a comprehensive IoT business case should involve visibility of all IoT and OT devices, ongoing monitoring to detect security breaches, analysis of device risk and also the ability to protect and segment these devices. Ideally, this should be provided in a single security platform for the lowest total cost of ownership.

He opines that the monetary, reputational, and physical security repercussions of an IoT-based cyberattack, make it imperative for organisations to invest in advanced security solutions.

“Just as vaccinations keep us safe from COVID-19, investment in proactive prevention measures will place organisations in a better position to combat the IoT cybercrime pandemic,” he concludes.

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However, indirect communication via the cellular network (e.g., V2N2X, I2N2V) still constitutes the most significant yet untapped vehicle-to-everything (V2X) opportunity. Cellular connectivity will be available in 346 million vehicles by 2025, and smart city cellular connections will exceed 165 million.

Europe’s short lead getting shorter

In 2021, Europe was the region with the largest fleet of short-range V2X communication-enabled cars, but all from a single automaker, Volkswagen.

Maite Bezerra, smart mobility and automotive industry analyst at ABI Research, attributes this decline in Europe to a lack of commitment of more automakers. She predicts that by 2023, China alone will have overtaken Europe.

“The inauspicious scenario in Europe is leading industry players to place more emphasis on cellular network tests for the time being. However, there are still fundamental business model challenges to be overcome with this route.”

Maitê Alves Bezerra

“Although a truck and a private vehicle OEM may deploy ITS-G5 in 2023, the crucial market driver for mass adoption will be the V2X inclusion in the Euro NCAP scoring, as is currently happening in China. Lagging, the United States now has a solid regulatory framework for C-V2X, paving the way for deployments," she added.

Restarting the V2X momentum

There are suggestions in the industry that the V2X inclusion in the 2025 Euro NCAP rating scheme will be delayed to 2027 due to insufficient time to develop new test protocols. This includes establishing enough labs and validating new vehicle capabilities.

"If this the case, it would conveniently coincide with New Radio technologies' readiness (802.11bd/NR-V2X PC5), meaning that carmakers could 'skip' the implementation of existing/legacy radios – provided backward compatibility with current ITS-G5 infrastructure and vehicles is not required. However, it would delay the take-off of the technology even further," says Bezerra.

While the NCAP has not officially confirmed any changes, there is consensus that if the 2025 timeframe is maintained, it will focus on Day One use cases. There is also consensus that 2027 will be the inflexion point for mass adoption because a complete range of Day Two use cases will become part of the Euro NCAP scoring.

The spectrum wars

The recent dismissal of the appeal against the FCC's 5.9GHz spectrum proceedings means that C-V2X has a clear path in the US and should spur the FCC to grant the existing C-V2X waiver requests faster.

On the downside, the US may not have enough spectrum for some advanced cooperative perception/Day 2 use cases in the future.

In China, C-V2X is currently found in low-volume premium vehicle models, but there are at least 25 OEMs in different stages of V2X production in the country. COVID-19 lockdowns and discussions about the GNSS positioning standard slowed down deployments in 2022. However, shipments of vehicles with C-V2X will grow exponentially in 2023, surpassing the one million mark as carmakers prepare for China NCAP 2025.

V2X has significant potential to increase traffic safety, optimize traffic flow, and reduce traffic congestion and emissions.

Bezerra posits that the long wait for mass adoption should not discourage interest in the technology. Instead, it should motivate players to leverage the sizeable installed base of vehicles and infrastructure with embedded cellular connectivity.

“This will deliver immediate value through basic V2X services that do not rely on low latency and can greatly increase driver awareness scopes, such as road, traffic, traffic-light, and weather hazard alerts and information," Bezerra concluded.

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The Frost & Sullivan report, Growth Opportunities Driven by New Form Factors, revealed that the adoption of new form factors for devices will surge rapidly with advancements in connectivity technology.

It also noted that the advent of 5G and expanding artificial intelligence (AI) use cases will further inflate the global demand. This will lead to improved innovation across wearables, flexible devices, and implants.

“As the demand for new pliable form factors increases, companies cannot rely on traditionally shaped devices to capture market share,” said Akshay Menon, senior research analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

He added that this encourages big electronic companies to work with newer materials to manufacture durable and flexible electronics.

Partner with application companies and social platforms to ensure their offerings are compatible with the device hardware, establishing an immersive customer experience.

Invest in research to develop durable materials, as current stretchable materials are thermoplastic, meaning heat softens them and makes them unable to withstand thermal exposure.

“With consumers’ growing preference for small-sized electronic devices, miniaturization will lead to developmental objectives for manufacturers. Further, new form factor development will lead to increased human-machine interaction, making data security a strategic priority for organisations."

Akshay Menon

Associate with organisations in the technology-enabled space as a new form of technology is dependent on internet connectivity and AI.

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We have heard about 5G for a few years now. Newer smartphones are all 5G-enabled. Service providers want you to get that new phone and experience 5G. If you have a 5G phone, you may have even noticed that downloads are faster (much faster if you happen to be in certain areas). However, 5G is probably not changing your life (yet). Better than 4G? Yes, but perhaps not a transformative experience.

While most consumers think that 5G is all about them, the truth is 5G is ideal for addressing the networking needs of business and enterprise. Many of the new features of 5G may not even be noticed by consumers but will be game-changing for some companies. Some of these new capabilities will be offered by communications service providers (CSPs) to enterprises utilizing public 5G networks, but there is now an even more transformative option: private 5G networks.

Companies have long employed private wired and wireless networks (primarily Wi-Fi), as well as other network types, for their data needs, but why would an organization employ a private 5G network for data? A private 5G network is isolated and restricts the devices that connect to the network.

Wireless networks (of any type) add a level of flexibility not available with wired networks. Moving a connected device with a wired network may involve moving the network as well. This process is often expensive and, in certain situations, not possible. Wi-Fi works great in many situations, but it cannot scale to the same levels that cellular achieves.

Cellular network technology provides several advantages, including being designed for mobility (moving devices) and connection reliability, supporting greater coverage due to increased power levels, and allowing for much higher device density. Private 5G networks are not likely to replace Wi-Fi and wired networks entirely; instead, they will cover use cases that the other technologies do not cover or do not cover well.

Industries to benefit early from wireless networks

In the telecom industry, technologies are often debated and discussed in great detail. However, the reasons an enterprise decides to install a private 5G network is NOT about technology but about addressing business requirements that current networking options (Wi-Fi or wired networks) are not handling.

Public and private 5G networks enable use cases that other wireless technologies do not, and those use cases pay dividends that can be measured financially and with improvements in efficiency and safety. Small improvements in efficiency can add up to millions of dollars in savings. Keeping employees safe is more important than just the financial impact. These dividend-paying use cases may sometimes be solved with public 5G. However, there are other situations in which private 5G networks become the best solution. For instance:

Coverage issues may limit the public option. This is often the case in certain industries where public cellular coverage at a location is limited or non-existent, e.g., underground mines or offshore oil rigs.

While a facility may have adequate coverage outside, inside may be more challenging. Factories or warehouses are good examples, with both the building shell and contents as potential sources of interference.

Control of data can be a deciding factor. Some businesses require that their data never leave their control (for competitive or security reasons).

Most of the current activity in private 5G networks is with large enterprises in certain industries, such as mining, energy, manufacturing, and more. As 5G evolves over the next decade or so, private 5G networks will evolve to support smaller companies in almost all industries.

The consumer market has long been the bread-and-butter for CSPs. The telecommunications industry is capital-intensive and requires heavy investment to compete. CSPs have invested significantly in 5G. The stark truth is those CSPs depending just on the consumer market for a return on investment will fail.

5G is designed with the enterprise market in mind and provides new capabilities that no other networking technology can provide. To achieve an acceptable return on their 5G investments, CSPs must better serve customers outside of the consumer market. This may be with the public 5G networks. Or it may be by providing enterprises with private 5G networks. (Or perhaps some combination.)

Not all private 5G networks will involve CSPs, but perhaps the most lucrative will. CSPs must take advantage of this opportunity, and the most successful CSPs globally are actively involved in growing this market.

All private 5G networks will involve network infrastructure suppliers. As more of the world rolls out 5G, there will come a time with slower growth for network infrastructure suppliers and public 5G networks. With private 5G networks growing strongly, suppliers may not even notice the slowdown.

Private 5G networks have the potential to transform enterprise data communication needs AND enable CSPs to continue providing consumers and industry ever-evolving communications services. First published on Frost & Sullivan

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ABI Research forecasts that the IoT gateway market will grow to nearly US$48 billion in annual revenues by 2026.

The gateway opportunities

Gateway shipments continue to evolve through communication technology. Thus, ABI Research’s updated forecasts reflect gateway replacement from network sunsets and growth in 5G gateways.

“By 2023, 3G gateways will become a minimal share of the market with the 3G gateway install base replaced by Cat-1 gateways. 5G gateway shipments will accelerate in 2026,” says Abdullah Haider, IoT network and services analyst at ABI Research. “By 2026, cellular gateway shipments will top 127 million units worldwide, at a CAGR exceeding 23% from 2021 to 2026.”

The WAN competition

However, growth is not unimpeded; WAN-connected endpoint devices are playing a more significant role in IoT solutions, lessening the need for gateways.

“In critical IoT application segments like patient monitoring, more cellular WAN-connected COPD and PERS devices are replacing the gateway connected short-range wireless devices."

Abdullah Haider

"But gateways are still expected to retain their utility, especially in industrial condition-based monitoring application segments. Short-range wireless (SRW) devices are more practical for indoor deployments,” Haider explained.

Finally, the last few years have seen interesting new market developments impacting gateway growth.  In the fleet management and home monitoring segments, COVID has helped solidify the role of gateways.

Gateways supported maintenance monitoring applications in fleet management to extend the lifetime of existing transportation vehicles.  In in-home monitoring applications, cellular gateways provided connectivity for remote care as healthcare workers could not visit as often as needed. 

In contrast, gateway-architected smart home solutions experienced more competition.  Specifically, more voice control front-end devices and smart TVs are including gateway functionality to complement their core services.

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These include enabling robots and vehicle automation on a grand scale, using operational data with analytics to make maintenance predictive, and further enhancing maintenance and planning by combining this data with artificial intelligence to create a digital twin of the operating environment.

What the new Nokia field router enables

The availability of the new Nokia 5G ruggedized field router will allow asset-intensive enterprises in Japan to connect vehicles and equipment and use operational data to gain new levels of agility and productivity. Ports, manufacturers, energy, transportation, warehousing, and logistics companies will benefit from greater operational flexibility to meet rapidly changing market needs.

 Machines, systems, vehicles, and sensors can be connected to the local private wireless networks via the Nokia Industrial 5G field router. The field router features tunnelling capabilities that enable interoperability between industrial communications protocols such as PROFINET, EtherCAT, Modbus or OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA).

Offering IP67 protection for harsh indoor and outdoor environments and an anti-vibration design it ensures, for example, autonomous haulage trucks stay connected while traversing rough terrains around a mine and straddle trucks keep goods moving at ports.

This constant connectivity is vital, not only for productivity but also for safety, ensuring equipment can be halted in an instant.

The new 5G field router adds to Nokia’s expanding portfolio of industrial private wireless solutions access points that allow enterprises in Japan to leverage dedicated coverage and capacity using the recently released 5G n79 band or other available 4.9G/LTE spectrum bands for local networks.

Donny Janssens, head of APJ enterprise private wireless campus at Nokia, commented that reliable, safe and pervasive connectivity of equipment and machines is vital for the digitalization of industry, allowing enterprises to connect operations end-to-end.

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The in-depth study assessed, compared, and ranked the platform vendors across thirty different action items for their device management services in ten categories: communication protocol breadth, group policies, diagnostics and business rules, remote configurability, device agents, ease of device onboarding, secure onboarding/off-boarding capabilities, interoperability, partnership/collaboration, and ability to offer commercial flexibility.

Ranking criteria were split between innovation and implementation, with the global spread and adoption of LwM2M (Lightweight Machine-to-Machine) expected to continue as the next-gen LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) connectivity technologies, like NB-IoT and LTE-M, rollout accelerates.

“Beyond scalable deployments, these disruptive platform vendors add value by bundling their device management services with data storage, connectivity management, and application enablement,” said Abdullah Haider, IoT network and services research analyst at ABI Research.

He added that the leaders are also delivering device management services with greater granularity and superior visibility by offering a unified platform, providing metrics and alerts for the physical device and the network connectivity.

“Beyond sophisticated device management toolsets, leaders provide a breadth of compatible hardware and boast in-depth strategic partnerships for sales and product support channels,” he noted.

However, ongoing commoditization threatens the leaders’ competitive advantage in device management as followers seek to catch up to leaders.

“LwM2M is likely to continue creating a standardized suite of services with which vendors are increasingly compliant, especially at the application layer,” Haider explained.

Nevertheless, leaders may still retain advantages due to ongoing frictions in compatibility, “Module and gateway OEMs have not universally accepted the LwM2M standard into their devices. So, delivering effective device management services still requires suppliers of these services to provide a catalogue of hardware which supports their solution for out-of-the-box operations, at least in the foreseeable future,” explained Haider.

Also, solely adopting LwM2M does not address every challenge facing a device management customer.

“Other challenges include providing a unified dashboard for different hardware types or personnel in different departments. As a result, leading vendor services include developing custom objects beyond the baseline LwM2M application standard, which often offers additional value through remote configuration at a more granular level,” Haider concluded.

Also evaluated and ranked by ABI Research were:

Mainstream: AVSystem, Verizon, IoTerop, Deutsche Telekom, and Pelion

Followers: EdgeIQ and 1nce

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This was done through the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s (MTI) Committee on Future Economy report, charting the transformation of the manufacturing industry into Industry 4.0.

In basic terms, Industry 4.0 refers to the use of digital technologies to support automation in the manufacturing sector, delivering value to every stage of the production process. It is impacting almost every aspect of how companies do business, especially when it comes to repairing and maintaining their machines.

Historically, businesses depend on taking a preventative approach to machine maintenance. However, downtime is too costly in an industry where the product (energy) is expected to be provided reliably and consistently.

One of the ways the energy sector can benefit from digital transformation and modernisation is by utilising intelligent, connected technologies that work behind the scenes, gathering and analysing data 24 hours a day.

Why adopt IoT

Here are three main reasons to adopt the Internet of Things (IoT) – Firstly, remotely collecting data allows energy businesses to operate remote services more effectively to, for example, improve efficiency or safety. Secondly, connecting devices helps shorten feedback loops.

For example, the data can deliver real-time insights into how customers use products or services. These insights provide a window of opportunity for fine-tuning them during the engineering and design stages.

Finally, when companies are proactive in machine maintenance, they can spot potential risks before they become high-cost problems. Businesses appear to be seeing the value in that, with estimates predicting the total number of connected devices to reach some 64 billion by the middle of this decade.

According to a recent IDC report, spending on IoT technologies in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) would reach beyond US$400 billion by the year 2026. IoT use cases that see the highest spending in 2022 include manufacturing operations and production asset management.

At the same time, Singapore’s steadfast investment in such technologies looks to grow the value of industries utilising such tech. Of the SGD3.8 billion committed to the ICT sector here, 70% will go into application building and upgrading.

With the value of projects adopting emerging technologies such as machine learning, sensors and IoT looking set to more than double from well under a billion Singaporean dollars on-year to $2 billion this year, unlocking the potential of Industry 4.0 will require Singaporean businesses to harness solutions that enable them to gain full value from these emerging technologies.

Replacing old-school preventative maintenance

Today, instead of more traditional ways, a company can use IoT-based, data-driven insights for preventative maintenance.

For example, a solar energy company tasked with installing solar panels for the Housing Development Board (HDB) under the SolarNova programme, which provides solar energy to over 8000 housing blocks in Singapore. Systems downtime due to hardware failure would not only negatively impact consumers, but also regulatory fines and reputational damage to the government.

With remote access capabilities provided through IoT-based data collection and artificial intelligence (AI) analysis, a business can observe when machines need attention based on real-time insights into vibrations, light density, temperature, and more.

What’s more, since IoT-based systems are constantly collecting data, processes get smarter over time. As a company assesses the machines’ data flow and executes repairs based on the data, the system will learn through (AI) to make even more accurate predictions.

Secure connected devices against cyber attackers

With the rise of supply chain attacks against manufacturing organisations, organisations must also consider the security risks and manage them through proper IoT device security measures and protocols.

Ways to enhance IoT security include ensuring equipment manufacturers follow good security practices. Organisations also need to layer security controls for a defence-in-depth approach to protect critical technology such as through patching, vulnerability testing, penetration testing, and network isolation to ensure that these connected devices are secured.

Onward together

Modernisation, automation, and data management are transforming today’s energy sector. With a steady flow of data from machines, one can achieve business outcomes based on strategic insights, which empowers organisations to save on labour costs and avoid expenses associated with premature machinery replacement.

For organisations in Asia seeking to utilise ground-breaking technologies, seeking out data modernisation teams with deep technical and business process expertise should be a priority. This would help them learn to design and build data architectures fit for accelerating innovation and realising value faster, not just in productivity but in sustainability as well.

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Lower latency and support for Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) afforded by a 5G network can further enable wireless process automation for robotics use cases and increase bandwidth support for data-heavy applications, such as video analytics.

ABI Research predicts that in 2030, manufacturing and industrial firms globally will have more than 49 million 5G connections inside their facilities. This will generate US$2.4 billion in global connections revenue for suppliers.

Michael Larner, industrial and manufacturing research director at ABI Research, says progressive advancements to network performance (from Wi-Fi to Long Term Evolution (LTE), and from LTE to 5G) can underpin improvements to customers’ operations.

“But to maximise the benefits to their operations, customers will need to invest in ancillary technologies, such as edge networking, data management, and data analytics, to accelerate data collection and create a digital thread,” he added.

Hurdles ahead

However, a lack of 5G industrial devices has stalled manufacturers’ interest in 5G private wireless. In turn, the lack of enthusiasm has discouraged hardware suppliers from creating the necessary devices.

As a result of the state of flux, equipment vendors, such as Nokia, have launched converged devices supporting Wi-Fi, LTE, and 5G connectivity.

Suppliers need to showcase the attributes of a 5G network and prove how a 5G network can upgrade operations.

“The lack of 5G devices is a genuine drag on adoption, but suppliers (telcos such as Nokia, Ericsson, NTT), Information Technology (IT) providers (HPE, DXC, Dell Technologies), Operational Technology (OT) specialists (Bosch, Siemens, Honeywell) and System Integrators (SIs) such as Accenture and Deloitte) should be working with prospective customers to educate them today about 5G’s potential,” Larner cautioned.

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Roaming IoT devices are capable of connectivity to a variety of different radio technologies, including cellular networks like 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G, LPWA networks such as NB-IoT and LTE-M, RFID and Wi-Fi 6.

With this as a baseline, Juniper Research forecasts that data generated by roaming IoT connections will increase from 86 petabytes in 2022 to 1,100 petabytes by 2027. This is enough data to stream 165 million hours of 4K video from platforms such as Netflix.

Driving this 1,140% growth is the termination of 3G networks necessitating the adoption of low-power cellular networks.

The research found that low-power wide-area networks provide a low-cost alternative to established operator-led cellular networks, such as 4G and 5G, driving the growth of IoT roaming connections through low-power, high-penetration coverage.

Roaming IoT connections use wireless services outside of their registered operator’s network; accessing connectivity from other cellular providers.

IoT roaming growth opportunities

The report found that roaming IoT connections from the US will generate 277 petabytes of data by 2027 and will account for 26% of the global total. With AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon terminating 3G networks during 2022, Juniper Research anticipated that roaming IoT connections will be redistributed to low-power wide-area 4G or 5G networks depending on the use case. 

Research author Scarlett Woodford remarked that US operators must adopt the Billing & Charging Evolution protocol to accurately identify IoT traffic based on network technologies.

“Failure to do so will risk revenue leakage if lucrative 5G roaming IoT traffic is misidentified as lower-value connectivity.”

Scarlett Woodford

Barriers to high-value IoT roaming

Juniper Research estimates that only 2% of total IoT roaming connections will rely on 5G networks by 2027. It attributes this low usage to the low-power consumption and infrequent data transmission exhibited by most devices.

It found that only use cases dependent on low-latency and high-speed data downloads, such as autonomous vehicles and connected factories, will justify enterprise investment in 5G connectivity.

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According to a Digitimes research report, the country’s ICT industry has shifted from focusing on hardware to hardware/software integration models. The industry is combining big data analysis and AI applications in public IoT to facilitate the development of smart city management.

Tools such as IoT, AI, cloud computing, and communications technologies are efficiently integrated with urban infrastructure to produce economic benefits and improve quality of life.

“Taiwan's expertise in semiconductor and hardware is important to smart cities' development as more data is being used to improve AI systems, resulting in rising demand for stronger infrastructure and hardware with next-generation AI semiconductors,” said Dr. Ayesha Khanna, co-founder and CEO of Addo, an AI consulting firm based in California.

Khanna will be one of the speakers at the upcoming smart city webinar in Taipei later this month to be hosted by Digitimes Asia.

Khanna believes that whether it is AI, robots, 3D printing, Internet of things or 5G, smart city's development should not start purely with technologies but the idea of assisting people to solve their problems or become the aspirational goal for citizens.

It is estimated that the business opportunities of smart cities will reach US$2.6 trillion in 2025, mainly in the Asia Pacific region. This includes sectors such as smart poles, building, parking, monitor, government, transportation, fire protection, water conservancy and WITMED.

“When people want to have better energy and waste management in their city, designers can create an AI solution for monitoring energy usage that can turn streetlights on and off with a built-in smart lighting system. They can also build a centralised trash collection mechanism with sensors and have robots powered by AI to collect waste all around the neighbourhoods to reduce traffic and road congestions,” Khanna said.

Collecting and integrating public and private data

Khanna pointed out that it also important to collect and integrate publicly available data and data from the ecosystem's private firms to form a system.

For example, by combining data of taxi companies and traffic light operation, it reduces people's waiting time for taxies, while traffic congestion can also be significantly lowered with the system's assistance in rerouting or changing the traffic lights.

Technologies for smart healthcare

Nowadays, because of the pandemic, the number of hospital visits via online meeting software or telemedicine services increased dramatically as people find it more convenient and efficient.

The technologies used by medical care system are also making improvements with some designers beginning to adopt biometric sensors onto the terminals for the machines to collect more patients' data, giving doctors more information to make intelligent diagnosis, such as handheld ultrasound products that can be connected via smartphones for patients to check on themselves via AI or by medical staff nearby and then send results to their doctors.

“Technologies for remote medical care are a key area that many IT companies have devoted their R&D effort to. Ambulances built with remote medical care system can connect doctors with ambulances care assistants for them to do check-ups while transporting patents to the hospital. The doctors can also make an examination over patients' injuries via a head-mounted display (HMD) to save time,” said Khanna.

Vital role of 5G in smart city

However, Khanna said all these innovations still rely on 5G, which allows devices to communicate with each other with its fast transmission speed, and has brought a revolution to the manufacturing industry and factories.

In Singapore, a lot of investments are being made for deploying 5G infrastructure throughout the city. This is also the case for many countries including the US.

As smart systems are adopting more sensors to enhance their data collection ability, 5G's commercialisation has become the key to unlock the potential of IoT.

With telecom carriers worldwide keenly expanding their 5G infrastructure, Dr. Khanna is optimistic about the birth of more new smart systems and the rapid development of smart cities worldwide.

“The future of smart city will not be operated by one large central AI, but multiple small ones. Issues within smart cities' key sectors such as healthcare, energy and education will continue to be overseen by government departments or public sector companies with them using AIs to optimise and create innovations for their services,” said Khanna.

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The four Asia Pacific cities are joined on top of the list by Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London and Paris in Europe and New York and Washington DC in the United States.

The index was produced by Economist Impact and supported by NEC.

According to Ritu Bhandari, manager for policy and insights at Economist Impact, smart cities will be safer, cleaner and more inclusive urban landscapes, where citizens enjoy better public health and services, more efficient transport and major economic improvements to be shared as public goods.

“The index highlights how outlier cities are leveraging technology to improve quality of life for millions of citizens around the world. While we see strong leadership from cities in Western Europe, the table is led by major cities from a wide geographical spread. The most significant improvements were delivered against tightly defined goals – a critical success factor for urban digital transformation,” said Bhandari.

A peek at the top performers

Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Beijing, London and Seoul performed the best, with successful open data projects and major strides in smart technology-powered sustainability projects like utility management.

Cities with very defined goals realised the greatest benefits: European cities ran highly impactful traffic management systems, while Beijing made progress using applied digital technologies - tackling air pollution, optimising its utilities and promoting its sharing economy. The Atlantic nation cities led in open data innovation with a boom in travel and mobility apps.

Sustainability was the biggest impact area highlighted by the White Paper, with leading smart cities realising major gains in air quality through smart utility management. Sustainability brought the highest overall scores, with Copenhagen, Seoul and Toronto scoring highest for their use of digital technology to support urban sustainability.

Copenhagen and Singapore were the most connected cities, followed by Zurich, Beijing and Sydney. Singapore’s strategy for developing digital connectivity is built on the premise that AI, 5G and cyber security will drive the country’s growth and innovation post-covid. Smart cities are anticipated to drive economic growth: 5G alone will enable an estimated US$660 billion global mobility and transportation market by 2035.

Internet services impact smart city goals

According to the index, unaffordable, unreliable or inaccessible internet services impact other city level goal, with half-a-million households reportedly lack a reliable internet connection in New York City, for instance, disadvantaging low-income children for remote learning.

By contrast, Washington DC has offered low-cost or free services and devices to families unable to afford a broadband subscription and Paris has the most affordable mobile data of all the cities analysed.

Digital technologies enable progress in public health

Since the pandemic, digital technologies have enabled real progress in public health. In Asia, apps were central to managing COVID-19, while telemedicine and real-time remote monitoring of chronic patients has marked digitisation everywhere. In New York, for instance, a diabetes-prevention initiative for adults has reduced the risk of type 2 diabetes in high-risk individuals by 58%.

Singapore, São Paulo and New Delhi ranked the highest for their delivery of digital municipal services. New Delhi ranks high in part because of the success of Aadhar, India’s ground-breaking national digital identity scheme. In Korea, Metaverse Seoul, announced in November 2021 by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, will provide citizens with access to government services via the metaverse.

The index also noted that involving citizens in the design of smart city schemes underpins meaningful inclusion, a critical success factor for smart city projects, along with delivery against tightly defined goals.

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Satellite networks have global broadband coverage allowing for IoT to be provided in remote locations terrestrial cannot reasonably access either because of cost or terrain, including at sea, in the air, or other unconnected locations.

Intelsat operates one of the most trusted satellite telecom network, touting what it claims as the world’s first hybrid, multi-orbit, software-defined 5G network designed for simple, seamless, and secure coverage when and where enterprise customers most need it.

“We work in building infrastructure, but doesn't get the recognition because we simply wholesale to people who provide consumer services. With a constellation of 52 geostationary satellites, we cover 99% of the world's population – 13  of those satellites cover Asia. In aviation, IntelSat  connects with our backlog of aircraft, linking 3,000 commercial aircrafts worldwide - that's Live TV and broadband connectivity,” said Terry Bleakley, regional vice president - Asia,  IntelSat.

He added: “We also connect with the biggest supplier of capacity to military bases. A big portion of our work is connecting ISPs, mobile telephone companies, telcos and data centres. For land mobility, we connect vehicles on the move, buses and trains. For the maritime industry, we largely focus on ships. 98% of all cruise ships use intersecting capacity, with our own network. The Flitz maritime network connects 9,000 merchant ships of all types. We connect two billion people, so they can watch channels that we distribute globally. In Asia Pacific, we reach about 240 million through distributing television content.”

At the recently-concluded Asia Tech X Singapore, FutureIoT sat down with Bleakley to discuss the complementary role of satellites with terrestrial providers in the hyperconnected world.

How do you see IntelSat taking the role in hastening connectivity that will enable smart cities? How do you work with governments and partners to develop this hyper connectivity around the world?

Terry Bleakley, IntelSat: You can connect using 5G technology, or 4G, or you can ’fibre’ a city. Our expertise lies with ISPs and telcos, and connecting areas where it's difficult to link terrestrial infrastructure. That's the edge of the network, outside cities but deep in rural areas. Eight of the world’s largest mobile network operators use IntelSat to provide cellular backhaul. It connects mobile base stations in areas where they can't reach with fibre. Two of Japan's largest telco networks rely on IntelSat.

Government initiatives help to reduce the digital divide. But as cities get connected, there's a gap in education, access to information in the cities or in rural communities. The problem for the rural communities is with the low spending power and the ability to use technology. It's expensive to get to those rural areas, so government subsidies matter.

Can you share a specific community that has benefited from building this capacity development?

Terry Bleakley: Indonesia comes under the Bakti project, and we work with a local partner, Lintasarta in Indonesia who is a division of telecom service. With our capacity, we connect them to the networks in local schools, hospitals and government departments throughout Indonesia.

The other project is a government funded project with the Department of Information, Communications and Technology (DICT) in the Philippines. We do the same thing by bringing connectivity to schools, hospitals and communities in remote areas. The topographies of these countries are alike, and both have large populations that are spread out across many islands within the archipelago.

We have worked with the telecommunications authority of the Marshall Islands which is also an archipelago. Some distant islands have no mobile phone connectivity, then we upgraded their existing 2G network to 4G - that’s a big jump. For the first time, they have ‘voice,’ and now it's upgraded to 4G. So, it's not just building a mobile infrastructure but using half the capacity to connect to schools, hospitals - people and places that matter.

What are the current challenges now in satellite deployment today? What are the kinds of challenges that IntelSat is facing right now, as a business?

Terry Bleakley: People say that satellites are going through a revolution. There's a lot of interest because there's new constellations coming up. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are getting into the space race with rockets - and rockets need satellites. This helps propagate other verticals of their business by getting involved in building their own constellations. They see just like Greg Wyler, the founder of O3b, who says that more than 2.8 billion people in the world are still unconnected. They see an opportunity for using a constellation to reach the unconnected. The biggest problem though, is that in remote countries, they only earn US$2/ week, but spend US$2 a month on mobile phones. It's a challenging financial model when you don't have the same spending power as developed cities. This puts a lot of interest into the business, and has brought a lot of private equity into the industry. It calls for more innovation, and if you look at telecommunications and Pay TV spending annually, it's between $1.6 trillion and $1.7 trillion.

It’s a startling figure but how do you qualify these numbers? What is the business potential and impact on the telecommunications market?

Terry Bleakley: According to the Northern Sky Research report, the satellite has about US$13 to US$14 billion of that pie so 1% of it in telecommunications. This explains why it sits outside of the core standards of the terrestrial network. It works in a proprietary fashion where satellite manufacturers only talk to the same satellite manufacturers and integrate it into the main telco infrastructure. Intelsat has been a proponent of open standards and we sit on the 3GPP group. This group consists of seven international organisations who develop the standards for mobile networks for 3G, 4G and 5G.

On data centres -  IP goes over the ethernet, now this becomes the default standard for everyone. We were the first satellite company to become MAF 3.0 - attributed. It allows them to connect all the way across and then the other part of it is virtualizing the network.

So, what is being done to move to the next level of development? What would you see the shape of things to come in the next five or 10 years? What is going to be next for Intelsat?

Terry Bleakley: We were very much hardware oriented before and now we're moving to a virtualized orchestrated network. Working with Kratos in network virtualisation with a standard they call open space. Within that, we're also building software defined satellites. Now we can move power and follow aircraft as it is travelling. It creates incredible flexibility. So, combining a software defined satellite, keeping with open standards, having virtualisation of the network, means that we can cross platforms for the first time, integrating all that into a total network. It's a massive change. We will move from 1% to 2% of that pie and our wholesale addressable market goes from 14 billion to 28 billion. It will be a big step towards that journey.

So where is IntelSat in that journey?

Terry Bleakley:  We have been instrumental in making sure the satellite was part of that 5G standard. With Cloud Connect, we connect with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. We're working with the SD WAN product, which is the first stage of virtualization and content aggregation. Our core expertise is in geostationary satellites and have filings for MEO constellations. The whole idea is to look after the space component by interfacing with LEO, MEO and Geostationary satellites. So, the quality of service will have priorities based on the most resilient, least cost effective, the fastest, that can create the best capacity and deliver a solution.

So, what is in it for the carriers you work with - how would they benefit with the new direction?

Terry Bleakley:  Well, the direction is set for the software defined satellites. This virtualised network won't be here till 2025. We will become the 5G network for telcos for areas where they're not strong. Not all telco networks are the same. Some are not strong on aircraft or on boats. Some are not strong in rural areas. So, we become the roaming network for the hard to get places. For example, when a Singtel or Starhub customer gets on a plane, they stay on the network. It may look like they’re on the same network, but they are just effectively roaming on the aircraft. The passenger does not pay anything except for roaming charges on that aircraft without effectively logging on or off. He/ she is not really paying for it in the bill because the cost is hidden. It will be the carrier's part to ask a high-end passenger, who is on a 20 gigabit /month plan if it could offer the customer one gigabit free on a plane. So that's really up to the carrier to decide how to charge their customers. So, with a 5G core, we connect them on a plane and make that experience seamless. That is how IntelSat uses its  unparalleled expertise and global scale to connect people, businesses, and communities, no matter how difficult the challenge.

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Seaports globally have increased their automation initiatives to mitigate port congestion. Equipment like gantries, automated port gates, stacking cranes, and horizontal transport solutions, such as AGVs that are transport containers and loads to and from ships, have been the most productivity-enhancing solutions in seaports.

"Automation enhances the reliability, consistency, predictability (via data analytics), and security of port operations. From an environmental perspective, automation can lead to lower energy consumption, resulting in a reduced carbon footprint. Automated ports are also far safer than conventional ports. The number of human-related disruptions falls as performance becomes more predictable with automation and data capture solutions," said Adhish Luitel, senior analyst, supply chain management and logistics at ABI Research.

Ports future-proofing infrastructure

To complement the deployment of automated equipment, port authorities have also been investing in future-proofing infrastructure and introducing 5G/LTE private networks covering entire port premises.

Recently, seaports have become a primary focus for the telco sector as cellular private networks are imperative for streamlined operations of automated solutions, data capture via Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and communications between devices or personnel.

Telco providers like Vodafone and Huawei have been partnering with authorities to deploy private networks in various seaports worldwide. Similarly, vendors like AEye, VDL Automated Vehicles, and Konecranes have been deploying solutions, such as AGVs, automated cranes, and sensors, to integrate with the private network infrastructure.

"Streamlined automation in ports also highlights the need for huge volumes of timely data that is required to control and monitor all the moving assets. To enable automated solutions to function to their fullest and work with each other, ports need to provide a level of data reliability in a cost-effective manner. For this, wireless connectivity is the best option," said Luitel.

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Launched in May 2020, OpenRoaming is a multi-vendor initiative to provide a better bridge between mobile and Wi-Fi networks It is a roaming federation service enabling an automatic and secure Wi-Fi experience globally.

With OpenRoaming, telecommunications service providers will be able to ensure their users get onto Wi-Fi seamlessly and securely the second they walk into a participating location. Users will be able to employ their mobile carrier identity for authentication, granting them seamless access to participating wireless networks around the world to ensure they are always connected.

The OpenRoaming standard frees users from the need to constantly re-register or re-enter log-in credentials and provides performance guarantees and quality of experience (QoE) capabilities as users roam between different public/private Wi-Fi realms. Most importantly, it removes hurdles to get users onboarded and increases opportunities for engagement

“In just 18 months, WBA OpenRoaming has already surpassed 1 million hotspots worldwide. That’s a major milestone — one that highlights how quickly the marketplace has recognised the benefits for network operators, infrastructure vendors, device OEMs and end users. It also reflects demand driven by the emergence of private 5G networks requiring simple roaming between cellular and Wi-Fi,” said Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of WBA.

OpenRoaming transforms the Wi-Fi experience for consumers and businesses and opens up opportunities for broadband and the Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity across business verticals, including retail, hospitality, education, smart cities, automotive and aviation, among many others.

Rodrigues added: “But this milestone is just the beginning. We expect to see even more types of locations adopt WBA OpenRoaming, including hotels, cafés, trains, planes and connected cars. In fact, in our most recent cross-industry survey, 40% of businesses said they have implemented Passpoint/OpenRoaming or plan to do so before the end of this year. Wherever you work, live and play, OpenRoaming will be there.”

To date, WBA revealed that OpenRoaming  hotspots have been deployed in wide variety of venues, including airports, universities, stadiums/arenas, office buildings and municipalities. Examples include San Jose State University, Fira Barcelona Gran Via, Canary Wharf, London Stadium, Live Nation BottleRock Festival,  Brazil’s São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport and various European municipalities and tourist destinations enabled by Boingo, Cisco, CommScope, Extreme Networks  and other members of the federation.

A recent proof of concept deployment by WBA member, Airties, to automatically onboard Wi-Fi client devices to a residential Wi-Fi 6 network also paves the way for the rollout of OpenRoaming across in-home Wi-Fi networks.

Wi-Fi makes cellular better

According to WBA,  OpenRoaming is creating an open connectivity framework for all organizations in the wireless ecosystem to power new opportunities in the 5G era.

Many industry insiders have said that 5G will make Wi-Fi  redundant. In truth, however, both cellular (licensed spectrum) and Wi-Fi networks complement each other, as Wi-Fi can pick up some of the load from cellular networks. The challenge is to simplify the user experience by managing the hand-off between them in a way that works seamlessly for consumers while still benefiting the carriers.

The new local wireless standard, Wi-Fi 6, is an ideal counterpart to the emerging 5G network. Wi-Fi 6 brings higher data rates, lower latency, increased capacity, and even better battery life to mobile devices.

The combination of Wi-Fi 6 and 5G will unlock potential in the network for exciting new services and products: virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, machine learning, 4K video, and even more sophisticated IoT devices. Ensuring a seamless experience across 5G and Wi-Fi, indoors and outdoors, will be more important than ever.

OpenRoaming has been adopted by most major Wi-Fi equipment vendors and device OEMs. Federation members include Adentro, Airties, Boingo, Broadcom, Cisco, Cityroam, Cloud4WI, Commscope, eduroam, Enea, Extreme Networks, GlobalReach, Intel, Kyrio Samsung, Single Digits, and many others among the growing ecosystem.

Meanwhile, WBA also launched yesterday Release 3 of OpenRoaming, which will cut back on hundreds of hours of legal and administrative time when establishing roaming settlement agreements. This will make the business and commercial aspects of roaming easier than ever before.

Release 3 includes a significant improvement on the legal and commercial framework providing the ability to implement a new templated approach, making commercial arrangements between federation members simpler and easy to scale. Dynamic settlement capabilities make it possible for rate variations to be varied at peak times.

“By introducing Release 3 to remove barriers to adoption, OpenRoaming is cementing its place as a foundational piece of wireless technology,” said Matt MacPherson, Wireless CTO, Cisco.

In addition, Release 3 has been enhanced to include automated tools, reporting and API’s to significantly reduce the overhead for management and administration of an OpenRoaming network, while providing an online portal for federation members to self-serve. Enhanced Identity Proofing has also been enabled so that identity providers are able to meet regulatory and legislative requirements as well as corporate and business needs.

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The centre will  enable communications service providers (CSPs), enterprises and infrastructure companies to gain in-depth knowledge about the real-life workings of local 5G – to jointly develop solutions, demonstrate use cases, and conduct research innovation to test various applications using actual equipment and simulate the real usage environment to help them discover how the technology will perform in a real-world scenario.

Nokia has acquired a local 5G radio license from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, which allows it to demonstrate Local 5G in the Tokyo, Roppongi office. The ATC will help Nokia provide technical training for faster customer deployment.

"We look forward to showcasing our latest 5G innovations and how they open new opportunities for our customers. Nokia’s Lab-as-a-Service will allow communications service providers to quickly launch innovative services and products by being able to validate them for real-world reliability and performance,” said John Lancaster-Lennox, representative corporate officer, President at Nokia Japan.

He added: “It enables us to train our professionals in a simulated real-world environment and to quickly resolve any deployment issue.”

Established in 2017, the ATC has helped CSPs test and conduct 5G demonstrations. The upgraded centre will now leverage Nokia’s end-to-end 5G products to enable Local 5G demonstrations, integration testing and interconnection testing with third-party application partners in the vertical segment.

Nokia’s industrial-grade private wireless solutions have been helping companies in their industry 4.0 transformation. Its AirScale Radio and private wireless solutions including Nokia Digital Automation Cloud and industrial-grade private wireless core Compact Mobility Unit are used to enable local 5G coverage around the ATC.

Furthermore, its Fastmile 5G Gateway Japanese model will provide 5G Wi-Fi coverage for the Wi-Fi devices and Nokia's IP networks will also be used to provide high-speed connections between the Radio, Core and Edge nodes within the ATC.

Nokia plans to further expand the local 5G network to the workplace floor of the Roppongi office and create an environment where all employees can use the local 5G network at the office.

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In a deal estimated to value at around €25 million, UnaBiz acquired Sigfox SA, the primary technology company, and Sigfox France SAS, its network operator subsidiary in France.

UnaBiz, which was Sigfox operator for Singapore and Taiwan, bested nine companies that came forward with bids during the receivership proceedings. Over the next few weeks, the administrators, Sigfox management and the employee representatives will work alongside UnaBiz to ensure a smooth transition of ownership to Sigfox’s existing commercial activities.

“I want to thank the entire Sigfox community for supporting us, and the French government for authorising our investment. While the transition of ownership marks a new beginning for Sigfox, UnaBiz will definitely guarantee the French sovereignty of Sigfox,” said Henri Bong, co-founder and co-CEO, UnaBiz.

Business continuity a top priority

The new management has pledged to put business continuity on top of its agenda. Sigfox is leading provider of IoT communication services and the pioneer of the 0G network in 75 countries worldwide and is in a unique position to champion massive IoT adoption.

Upon handover, UnaBiz will safeguard 110 existing employees on a total of 174 and make financial and operational assessments to protect the firm’s assets, books, and most importantly, mission-critical network and backend systems, to address customers concerns.

“On top of securing the sales pipeline for Sigfox in the next 12 months as global markets emerge from the pandemic, UnaBiz and Sigfox will strive towards the convergence of LPWAN. The new Sigfox will reinvent itself and collaborate with other IoT communication technologies to seize new market opportunities,” said Bong.

To establish a more durable and collaborative global ecosystem, new strategies and governance will be put in place to facilitate engagements with Sigfox’ existing partners, customers, and Sigfox operators to align stakeholders’ interests and support the company’s long-term development in its new chapter.

Arnaud Tayac, director of Sigfox, said: “The continuity of Sigfox’s services is therefore not only ensured, but will be accompanied by new ambitions. UnaBiz already being at the heart of the Sigfox ecosystem through its activities as a Sigfox operator in Singapore and Taiwan and as an IoT solutions provider, the transition should be quick and simple.”

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The aircraft flew its inaugural flight between Taoyuan and Hong Kong with passengers enjoying the high-speed Wi-Fi to seamlessly browse the internet, stream video and audio, and play games among other things.

“The fact that this is our second new airline customer announcement with SITA in recent months is testament to our successful partnership, despite the challenges that Covid-19 has presented to the aviation industry over the past two years,” said Niels Steenstrup, Inmarsat Aviation’s senior vice president of inflight connectivity business.

China Airlines has ordered a total of 25 Airbus A321neos as part of a narrow-body fleet replacement programme that aims to transform its onboard experience, support its regional network expansion and meet long-term growth in passenger volumes.

All of the aircraft will be equipped with Inmarsat’s GX Aviation and SITA’s Internet ONAIR, alongside other new cabin features such as fully-flat seats in Premium Business Class, the latest inflight entertainment system, and 4K high-solution displays.

Inmarsat‘s latest Passenger Confidence Tracker, the largest global survey of its kind since the pandemic began, found that 41% of the 10,000+ respondents believe having Wi-Fi on flights is even more important now than before Covid-19, allowing them to stay connected with friends and family, and supporting a touch-free environment.

According to Katrina Korzenowski, Asia Pacific vice president at SITA FOR AIRCRAFT, providing a digital and touchless onboard experience will be the key to increasing passenger confidence as air travel recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Our Internet ONAIR technology, coupled with Inmarsat’s GX Aviation connectivity, offers China Airlines the perfect blueprint for a world-class inflight broadband offering onboard its Airbus A321neo aircraft and we’re proud to be working together to achieve this. It also means that SITA is now providing a full suite of services, from cockpit to cabin, to China Airlines.”

GX Aviation is powered by Global Xpress (GX) broadband network, which provides infight connectivity on par with mobile Wi-Fi on the ground.

The GX network currently consists of five Ka-band satellites and will be further enhanced with the addition of seven more satellites as part of Inmarsat's fully-funded technology roadmap. This includes two Inmarsat-6s, both of which are scheduled to enter service next year.

They will be followed by three additional satellites in geostationary orbit - adding speed, capacity and resilience - and two in highly elliptical orbit, enabling the world’s only commercial mobile broadband service for aircraft flying in higher elevations and across the Arctic.

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Located at the north coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia, Brunei has a hot and rainy climate that brings frequent and intense flooding episodes, affecting critical infrastructures.  Indeed, the banks of a nearby canal at the Brunei International Airport can suddenly overflow after 20 minutes of steady rains, preventing operations in part of the airport.

Before the new LoRaWAN-based sensors were deployed, river level monitoring in the country had been primarily based on telemetry technology. And in cases where this technology was not available,  the government  mobilised significant manpower for manual monitoring.

A real-time flood detection system  is required  to prepare the population and limit the damage. The monitoring system of the water networks is also required to address water leaks and water quality. It also ensures reservoir levels can meet demand, and the state of water pumps is kept at the optimum.

Flash flood detection.

For its new smart water management system, the Sultanate’s Ministry of Development tapped IoT provider Anian to develop for The Department of Drainage and Sewerage a solution that included sensors, IoT communications gateways for connectivity, as well as data management and application dashboards. To date, some 11 communication gateways have been installed with the aim to install 200 units.

Anian collaborated Actility and IoThink Solutions, which provided the bricks of the solution and all the necessary technical support. Specifically, the solution is deployed using Actility’s ThingPark platform with the application provided by IoThink Solutions.

According to Actility, the main challenge Anian faced was the difficulty of finding an integrated end-to-end solution that includes all the necessary elements, including hardware that must adapt to complex environments and potentially destructive weather conditions.

Anian tested various entry-level sensors with a promise of IP67 resistance that proved insufficient. Even the gateways required protection against storms. Ultimately, Anian deployed ultrasonic sensors  to monitor the water level in flood-prone rivers, a solution combined with rainfall volume monitoring as well as rain gauges/tipping buckets to measure the velocity of water currents.

The solution is hosted in the Brunei government’s data centre with network operations and IoT applications being ran as managed services. To date, some 11 communication gateways have been installed with the aim to install 200 units.

The Sultanate plans to use its nationwide IoT LoRaWAN network to advance other digital initiatives such as smart city, smart building and smart energy management.

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IoT’s vitals were healthy at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2022. Companies reported average deployment sizes growing significantly, slowly changing enterprise mindsets, and lower costs of failure on Proof of Concepts (PoCs), contributing to more creativity and experimentation from customers.

Still, IoT remains a Wild West, characterised by lots of companies with lots of ideas, but poor lonesome cowboys rather than a federated state pulling together. Telecoms and hyperscalers at MWC were happy to take on the role of bringing all these players together to facilitate the implementation for customers and to help build vertically focused business cases, which has been a significant aid to the industry, but the industry remains disparate and challenging for all involved. Companies have more faith in the state of the ecosystem, however.

Mixed signals from proprietary networks

Proprietary IoT networks are still undergoing transformation. Reactions on the news of Sigfox’s receivership in late January were underwhelmed; there was little confidence at MWC in Sigfox’s ability to attract a strong future developer ecosystem, little confidence in the future value of its IP, and little confidence that any of the nine small bids to take over the company’s IP and assets would allow it to continue in any recognisable form. It remains to be seen how service levels for its 20 million devices will be affected, as well as how far current Sigfox operators and developers are willing to go to ensure service continuity.

Sigfox’s troubles will accelerate a trend that has been present in the developer community since 2020 at least, namely the shift of connections towards Long-Range Wide Access Network (LoRaWAN) and cellular LPWAN networks. LoRaWAN’s prolific growth in the past couple of years continues to win confidence for its place in the IoT ecosystem, as it boasts a strong developer ecosystem—much stronger than just a couple of years ago.

Still, LoRaWAN has not found its static coverage, and continues to evolve. Two trends in this regard are worth noting and will bear following through 2022 and beyond: the growth in LoRaWAN private networks, which account for 80% of LoRaWAN infrastructure provider Kerlink’s deployments, and the growth of Helium’s people-owned public network.

While there is clearly a role for the LoRaWAN technology, what that role will be is not yet set in stone and there are pitfalls along the way: the growth of 5G private networks may be one reason for concern, the lack of native geolocation capabilities a second (Kerlink does not see so much value from it and is taking a step back in its own network-based geolocation), and Bouygues Telecom-owned Objenious’ announcement during MWC week of the closure of its LoRaWAN network beyond 2024 in favour of Narrow Band (NB)-IoT/LTE-M (with NB-IoT services starting at the end of 2021) a third. Connectivity technologies are still in flux.

Skyrocketing number of satellite initiatives

MWC welcomed several satellite companies as well: Intelsat from the Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO)- satellite space, and Fossa Systems and Sateliot from the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) space. The LEO satellite market is becoming extremely crowded with satellite start-ups, with the majority of these aiming to offer data or infrastructure services for the IoT. Each offers different network topologies and configurations to target similar use-cases; an appropriate analogy for the market is that when the number of companies operating in the space increases as they have done, the stars become harder to see.

One important trend to follow will be the emergence of the NB-IoT protocol used for satellite communication.

Sateliot is doing interesting things in this market, taking advantage of the soon-to-come 3GPP Release 17 which standardises the extension of NB-IoT and LTE-M for use in Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN), or in jargon, 5G NTN NB-IoT/LTE-M. This will allow existing devices to work between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks with no hardware change, increasing the attractiveness of public cellular networks as a go-to IoT connectivity standard. The company mentioned its intentions to launch its first satellite by the end of 2022, with two more in early 2023, which will enable them to begin commercial operations; eventually, the company intends a constellation of 256 LEO satellites, enabling latency of one minute.

It certainly won’t all be smooth sailing, however. Satellite commercial deployments have a nasty habit of getting delayed, there are considerable limitations to what Release 17 facilitates for 5G NTN, and most importantly of all, the economics of LEO satellite networks often need close interrogation. While there is no doubt that satellite communications will change the face of wireless connectivity in the medium term, it remains to be seen whether 2022-2023 are the years for it: expect casualties along the road. That is not to say it’s all empty talk. Major telecoms are paying close attention to opportunities for them in space as well.

IoT location technologies jostle for position

Companies specialising in geolocation for IoT were another clique that turned out in force at MWC. Some of those present and working in the space were technology “household” names, such as Polte and chipset vendor Qualcomm; others, like Nestwave, are receiving growing recognition, while still others were would-be disruptors, such as Loctio or Deeyook.

Currently, the battlefield Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is design wins with chipset and module vendors: Nestwave capitalised on its first big design win with Sequans at the end of 2021 with its announcement of a second integration with Trasna NB-IoT chipsets during MWC, while Deeyook was eager to display its integration with Infineon Wi-Fi System on a Chip (SoCs), which it had announced in January 2022.

Nordic Semiconductor and Sequans were also eager to advertise their integrations with IoT geolocation start-ups given the opportunity these afford for adding valuable services and, fundamentally, providing another compelling reason for purchasing their chips and modules.

Three topics are worth following for IoT location technologies: the shifting power balance between telecoms and chip/module vendors for offering geolocation services; the ability to offer hybrid and integrated geolocation solutions; and the complicated question of ownership of the relationship between the geolocation vendor and the end customer.

Growing interest in the long tail of IoT

The long tail of IoT is often overlooked as “future markets”rather than a diverse land of opportunity. MWC seemed to offer an alternative vision. Several companies acknowledged that markets such as asset tracking and metering have a big future, but also a big past: hardware and software ecosystems are more developed in many sub-categories of these markets, and barriers to entry are high as a result.

The response to this was renewed interest on the long tail: smart waste management, commercial building automation, city infrastructure, and other applications were on the radar for several companies looking to understand the value chain, and, most importantly, looking to understand the business case and Return on Investment (ROI) calculations that would trigger their decisions to enter the market.

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Moving forward, the two companies will strengthen cooperation for product development optimised for bio-cold chains and global expansion, such as technology cooperation to develop bio-medicine monitoring IoT devices and to ensure a stable supply of IoT modules by combining industry-leading security and IoT technology.

“In 2022, we plan to develop and supply competitive products in cooperation with various overseas partner companies to enter the global market while stably supplying new products to the domestic bio/medicine cold chain market,” said Moon Jin-soo, CEO of M2cloud.

M2Cloud delivers scalable logistics and monitoring solutions for use by hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturers and wholesalers in their supply chains. It owns the first IoT Security System in South Korea – certified by Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) – that satisfies all standards of IoT security testing such as stability, integrity, security and unauthorized manipulation defence.

Last year, the company established an integrated logistics system for COVID-19 with real-time visibility into the entire supply chain, ensuring integrity, proof of compliance to ensure product quality, IoT technology optimized for temperature sensitivity, and cloud technology for ESG practices.

M2 Cloud has also established and operated a cold chain system throughout the process of receiving, storing, and delivering COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca (refrigeration), Janssen (freezing), and Pfizer (ultra-low temperature), which are all biological agents.

New IoT-based LTE monitoring system

M2Cloud and Thales revealed their strategic partnership two weeks ago as they unveiled the first product of their collaboration – an IoT-based LTE monitoring system optimised for biopharmaceutical monitoring.

Unlike Bluetooth devices for near-field communication, the newly developed IoT cold chain system which is equipped with a low-power LTE communication chip, does not require additional gateway adoption or complex setups such as internet connectivity.

It can remotely check temperature and location information in real time by just turning the power on, making it suitable for real-time monitoring of refrigerators, refrigerated warehouses, etc., as well as tracking the delivery boxes being transported in real time.

In particular, because it ensures real-time visibility and data integrity, and can check temperature history without data loss in the event of a power outage or network failure, it  enhances the safety of pharmaceutical products with technologies optimised for biopharmaceutical management, such as vaccines that confirm the validity of products with a temperature history.

“For a quarter of a century, customers across all industries have trusted Thales’ industry-leading IoT solutions to seamlessly connect and secure IoT devices and to help them transform real-time data into efficient decision making. We are proud to work with M2cloud to help keep their cold chain monitoring and management solutions connected, and to contribute solutions that support the healthcare industry in Korea,” said Sandy Gillio, country director and chief executive,  Thales Korea.

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According to a latest study by Ernst & Young (EY), with nearly half or 49% of those polled saying they are using 5G primarily for process optimisation as a key application, while only 28% favour advanced 5G use cases around virtual or augmented reality.

“While the hype around how 5G low latency could power the metaverse or commercialize augmented reality continues to intensify, this study indicates that the technology has moved out of its infancy and is now actively being applied to drive real-world benefits,” said Tom Loozen, EY Global Telecommunications Leader.
He noted that 5G is following the same innovation cycle of other transformative technologies.

“Sophisticated use cases will become important in time. More pressing, however, is the need for 5G providers to tune their solutions to the practical demands of industry leaders today,” Loozen added.

This is the major takeaway of the newly released EY Reimagining Industry Futures Study. Entitled “Enterprise 5G: is the Industry 4.0 growth opportunity being overlooked?”, the study is on its third edition.

Indeed, 85%  of respondents said the impact of COVID-19  is driving their interest in 5G, up from 52% in last year’s study; 80% cited supply chain disruption for its 5G pursuit, while 71% cited the focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

However, the study pointed out there is some way to go in realizing these ambitions: 37% are concerned that 5G and internet of things (IoT) vendors’ current use cases do not meet their business resilience and continuity needs, and 47% do not think their sustainability goals are met by today’s use cases.

5G adoption roadblocks in Southeast Asia.
Similarly in Southeast Asia, 5G adoption has also met with roadblocks, according to Joongshik Wang, EY Asean Technology, Media & Entertainment and Telecommunications (TMT) Leader.

“Use cases for 5G in the private sector will need to be more clearly defined before technology operators are confident enough to take 5G applications to market. For now, governments are the main drivers of investments in 5G infrastructure public sector projects. Closer to home in Singapore, the 5G@Sentosa project provides a testbed for promising public sector use cases that could be rolled out on Singapore’s mainland,” Wang said.

Meanwhile, the study showed the growing appeal of private networks as telcos battle credibility gap, with enterprises becoming increasingly receptive to 5G solutions delivered through disruptive business models:

“Private networks are of high quality, secure and seamless. However, private network operators will need to provide a strong cost-benefit case to justify the high investment costs. The commercialisation of 5G private networks will also require governments to play an active role in outlining the key considerations and providing a clear regulatory framework on licensing for private networks,” Wang said.

The study also found that telcos face a significant credibility gap with regards their perception as digital transformation experts, with only 19% of enterprises considering them as such (unchanged from last year’s study findings). Conversely, 30% trust network equipment vendors as favoured digital transformation experts – up from 19% last year.

“Disruptive customer signals suggest that telcos’ traditional relationships with enterprise customers are under pressure and more agile go-to-market strategies are essential in a 5G-IoT world. Telcos should take steps now to help ensure that they can meet enterprise demand for private network deployments,” said Loozen, EY Global Telecommunications Leader.

Europe leads 5G investment, but global confidence stalls

5G leads all other emerging technologies tracked in the study in terms of future spending intentions, with 56% of enterprise respondents planning to invest within three years. Current and future spending intentions for 5G over this period are highest in Europe (up 5% to 76%), in contrast to last year when Europe lagged other regions.

However, the findings caution that investment should not be taken for granted, with intentions falling by 8% year-on-year to 70% in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

This caution is indicative not only of a more defensive approach toward 5G, but of stalling confidence generally, with only 24% of enterprise respondents stating that they are very confident they can successfully implement 5G (down by 1% year-on-year). This is compounded by enterprises’ poor understanding of 5G’s relationship to other emerging technologies, now cited as the biggest internal challenge to 5G perception – up from fifth position in last year’s ranking.

“There are still fundamental anxieties around how 5G works alongside other emerging technologies. 5G providers should take this on board and adapt their customer discussions accordingly. By educating enterprises on how 5G can be harnessed by other emerging technologies, service providers can boost enterprise confidence in their 5G deployments,” said Adrian Baschnonga, EY Global Telecommunications lead analyst.

The post EY: Nearly 50% of firms use 5G to optimise business process appeared first on FutureIoT.

"To develop Smart Paddock’s GPS livestock ear tag, we researched and evaluated all the wireless communications protocols available on the market,” said Darren Wolchyn, CEO and founder of Smart Paddock. “To meet our customer needs of a low cost ear tag that could be deployed in the thousands over large farm properties, LoRaWAN came out on top of all other technologies for its long distance capabilities."

Smart Paddock has been deploying GPS tracking for cattle since 2017 with the use of Bluebell smart ear tags designed to survive the harshest environmental and operational conditions. Livestock farmers can track their livestock in real-time through their mobile phone or computer, get text alerts for stray/stolen or downed animals, review pasture usage maps, monitor the activity level of key animals and see how far the animals are walking each day to access food or water.

Bluebell is being positioned as an ideal network solution as the tag can support and encourage farmers to add other operational Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to their farms to monitor water level, set up electric fences that utilise an existing LoRaWAN network, among others.

To integrate LoRaWAN into their solution, the company has recently collaborated with Semtech Corporation.

“Smart Paddock’s utilisation of LoRaWAN is a proven example of where IoT technology is actively shaping the future of farming to be smarter and more efficient,” said Marc Pégulu, vice president of IoT product marketing and strategy for Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Products Group. “The unparalleled benefits of LoRa devices that both minimise expenses and reduce environmental impact of any IoT solution is promising for the field of smart agriculture.”

Touted to be the smallest and lightest in the industry,  Smart Paddock has deployed over 1,200  tracking devices over the last three years across farm properties in Australia and New Zealand and more than 10,000 deployments are planned in the next year.

The post Smart Paddock integrates LoRaWan to its smart ear tags appeared first on FutureIoT.

“They are specifically designed for use in electricity and water networks, and will be deployed to detect thermal fingerprints in high voltage transmission lines, substations, buildings and solar power stations,” said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, managing director and CEO of DEWA.

Al Tayer revealed this last Tuesday a month after the Dubai utility firm launched its first low-orbit satellite called DEWA-SAT 1 to complement the company’s terrestrial IoT communication network

DEWA-SAT 1 is part of  the company’s Space-D programme to improve operations, maintenance, and planning of electricity and water networks by using nanosatellites to support industry 4.0 applications around IoT, AI, blockchain and remote-sensing technologies.

In collaboration with NanoAvionics, DEWA launched the 3U nanosatellite on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex in Florida, USA. The satellite now maintains a stable orbit at 525 kilometres, travelling some 7.5 kilometres per second and takes about 90 minutes to go around the Earth.

Smart water leak detection device brings AED2.74-M cost savings

Meanwhile, DEWA has been reaping the benefits of its smart initiatives.

For one,  its smart ball  leak detection device, which was inserted into the company’s  water network, has saved the company 68.45 million gallons and AED 2.74 million since its implementation in April 2021.

As part of its ongoing efforts to reduce water losses, DEWA has recently deployed a smart ball leak detection to discover invisible water leakages in water transmission pipelines that are otherwise hard to see or reach.

“We adopt latest technologies in generating, transmitting, and distributing electricity and water, applying the best global practices in all its projects to raise production and operational efficiency,” said Al Tayer. "It achieved concrete savings in developing the water network to promote its effectiveness and reliability, raise the water flow to meet the comprehensive development needs and the growing demand.”

The smart ball system consists of a small diameter sphere that travels freely, driven by the water flow. Sounds generated by a leak, gas pocket or anomalies have unique characteristics.  The system captures the sounds of these from inside the pipeline with the software then able to detect the location of the leak

"In Dubai we have a comprehensive vision to ensure the sustainability of resources as part of the integrated strategy of managing water resources, with particular focus on enhancing water resources, conserving consumption and using the latest technologies as well as innovative solutions,” said Al Tayer.

The post Dubai utility firm eyes another IoT nanosatellite launch appeared first on FutureIoT.

Already, Singtel has conducted successful trials on Paragon. It also has invited partners in 5G-related fields – from chipset manufacturers, IoT devices, apps and software developers, content producers, systems integrators and solution providers - to join in scaling the platform regionally and globally with other telecommunication players.

“Many enterprises are undergoing rapid digitalisation while exploring and developing tailored 5G solutions for deployment in their industries. We understand the challenges and complexities that they face in managing the various networks, edge cloud applications and services with the required cyber security, resiliency and demanding service assurances required, cost-effectively. Paragon was conceived, developed and delivered to help enterprises meet these needs through a single platform,” said Bill Chang, chief executive officer, Group Enterprise at Singtel.

One platform to accelerate enterprise digital transformation

Compared to the current 4G and public cloud-enabled edge computing solutions, Paragon provides a huge improvement in latency with much higher bandwidth throughput from Singtel’s 5G network. This means better performance and faster decision-making at the edge where the data resides, critical for use cases like autonomous systems like robotics, drones and vehicles, immersive, video-rich experiences and powerful real-time edge AI use cases.