Amy Cravens, research manager for GRC and ESG Management and Reporting Technologies at IDC, noted, “Organisations are increasingly seeking to derive and measure business value from their sustainability initiatives and product-based carbon foot printing is an important tool in achieving that goal.”

“Green transformation is a central tenet of Matsumoto Precision’s core strategy,” said Toshitada Matsumoto, president and representative director of Matsumoto Precision Co. “We aim to realise our vision of running ‘The Sustainable Factory’, including self-sufficiency in electricity through solar power and purchase of electricity with non-fossil certificates.”

Precision machine parts processing company, Matsumoto Precision, has adopted SAP Sustainability Footprint Management to provide information on CO2 emissions per product to its business partners.

Implemented in partnership with Accenture, the solution aims to improve the environmental and economic value of Matsumoto Precision’s products. 

According to Matsumoto, the SAP Sustainability Footprint Management enables us to record, report, and act on CO2 emissions on a per-product basis, giving us and our partners better insight into the environmental impact of our businesses.”

With the adoption of SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, the company has now started providing information on CO2 emissions per product to its business partners.

“Environmental insight isn’t just important for businesses, but across every organisation in the value chain aiming to reduce CO2 emissions,” said Hirofumi Suzuki, president and managing director of SAP Japan. “Matsumoto Precision add value and differentiate what they sell by promptly providing information on CO2 emissions at product level.”

Although the company had been working to visualise CO2 emissions at the plant level it had not been able to do so on a product-by-product basis. SAP Sustainability Footprint Management calculates CO2 emissions for every product based on the individual manufacturing performance information already available in SAP S/4HANA.

“To achieve both environmental and economic values, a Digital transformation platform is indispensable.  This project was realised in a short time through the use of SAP S/4HANA which helped to standardize the operations from production to procurement to sales," continued Toshitada Matsumoto. "We look forward to working with the entire value chain in Japan, including small, medium and large enterprises, to enhance the competitiveness of Japan as a whole."

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ABI Research says manufacturers can expect significant announcements and releases of AI functionality for QMS software in 2024, with deployments commencing in 2025.

“Major impactful AI applications for QMS will include advanced analytics and risk management, Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA) automation, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) authoring and AI-powered statistical process control,” explains James Prestwood, industrial and manufacturing technologies industry analyst at ABI Research.

QMS software vendors such as ComplianceQuest, Intellect, and Dot Compliance are first movers by adding AI directly into their solutions. Larger vendors such as ETQ, PTC, Rockwell Automation, and Siemens are also developing AI applications to ensure that strategic manufacturing challenges have been addressed, alongside doing significant backroom testing.

The transformative effect of AI on QMS software will close the loop on quality management by driving continuous improvement in both the product and the production process. Prestwood concludes that due to an entrenched resistance to change in operations, quality workers will be slower to develop an affinity for AI functionality, aside from background data analytics processes.

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The report highlights challenges including greater scrutiny over sustainability commitments; the adoption of power hungry AI; the need for (and limitations of) direct liquid cooling; the evolution of data centre management software; and the emergence of data centre campuses that redefine the meaning of hyperscale.

Predictions for 2024

1. Operators — prepare for a sustainability reckoning

New reporting laws and toughening requirements will enforce stricter data centre carbon reporting in many countries. These will challenge organisations’ publicly announced sustainability goals and force operators to prove their targets are both realistic and evidence-based. For many, this will be painful and expensive.

2. Demand for AI will have a limited impact on most operators

The fervour around AI has the data centre industry bracing itself for a significant increase in demand, and a need for more power and cooling. While the overall impact on data centres may ultimately be profound, the most demanding services will be delivered only by a few.

For most operators, the impact will be indirect: the immediate challenge is how best to deliver a richer mix of densities and resiliency tiers from the same facility.

3. Data centre software gets smarter, leverages data — at last

Operators have been slow to take advantage of developments in software, connectivity and sensor technologies that can help optimize and automate the running of critical infrastructure.

This is beginning to change, with more operators embracing new tools and the intelligent use of data (including machine learning). However the market is still evolving, and there will be risks from complexity, poor implementation, and tool selection.

4. Direct liquid cooling will not solve efficiency challenges

Operators have great expectations of direct liquid cooling in terms of improving efficiency and sustainability. However, these benefits will be out of reach for many organisations.

A slow rollout of the technology, characterized by mixed environments, constrained optimization, and the continuing requirement for existing systems to run in parallel will limit its contribution to infrastructure efficiency — even if it is necessary.

5. Hyperscale campuses begin to redraw the data centre map

The build-out of new hyperscale colocation campuses, connected by wide-bandwidth fibre, will relieve pressure on traditional data centre hotspots — and, in the long term, lower colocation prices. As a solution to rocketing demand for compute and storage, the hyperscale campus will emerge slowly — with the availability of fibre and power being critical factors.

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While SD-WAN has traditionally been delivered through vendor-proprietary hardware, the option to host the solution as a virtual network function (VNF) on a universal CPE (uCPE)/virtual CPE (vCPE) allows Communication SPs to address the enterprise need for flexibility, agility, and operational simplicity at the enterprise edge.

The ability to automate operations is a critical requirement for enterprises and the more assistance that a managed SP (MSP) can offer, the more competitive it will be in the market.

The demand for integrated offerings in secure network service solutions is increasing, which covers three areas namely, software-defined networking (such as SD-WAN, SD-LAN, and flexible network core), virtual network services (such as vRouter, and vLoad balancer), and integrated security (such as firewall as a service [FWaaS], zero trust network access [ZTNA], and CASB).

IDC says vendors should pursue offering integrated solutions that cover all these key areas and provide it as a managed service.

"The Asia/Pacific region has witnessed a significant shift in software-defined networking, moving from SD-WAN to a more comprehensive range of secure virtual network services," said Nikhil Batra, Research Director, IDC Asia/Pacific Telecom Practice.

"This evolution is driven by the growing enterprise demand for flexible, reliable, and secure access to cloud-native applications and distributed workloads and address broader enterprise digital transformation initiatives."

Nikhil Batra

"To this end, comms SPs are offering a broader range of services, including SASE framework-driven solutions that combine networking and security capabilities. However, not all offerings are created equal, and various SPs are positioning themselves in different ways to stand out in a highly competitive market," concluded Batra.

Leading the pack

According to the IDC MarketScape: Asia/Pacific Communication SP Secure Virtual Network Services 2023 Vendor Assessment, NTT, Orange Business, Singtel and Tata Communications are identified (in alphabetical order) as “Leaders” among Communication SP Secure Virtual Network Service vendors, followed closely by "Major Players" in the market namely (in alphabetical order) AT&T, Telstra, Verizon and Vodafone.

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Frost & Sullivan says investments in lab automation and analytics will hasten the growth of the lab instrumentation market. It forecasts the global market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.4%, from US$66.37 billion in 2021 to US$90.41 billion in 2026.

“With the growing focus on decentralised diagnostics in both developed and developing economies, demand for portable instruments is expected to increase,” said Lucila Martin, healthcare research analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

“Higher demand for smaller instruments has increased pressure on original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to develop and supply parts to support the development of portable instruments,” she added

Martin added that the democratisation of NGS drove the growth of the global genomic sector, enabling genomics and proteomics to become promising business segments to propel the market.

"From a technological perspective, expanding analytical chemicals with laboratory automation and informatic instruments offers a lucrative growth prospect.”

Lucila Martin

Tips to capturing growth opportunities

• Invest in developing countries to build their capacity and capability, focusing on sales and after-sales support systems.
• Focus on artificial intelligence (AI) in lab optimization and predictive analytics for instrument lifecycle analytics as they present lucrative growth prospects for big data analytics companies.
• Develop highly customised chips and parts to support the development of portable equipment

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Deoleo’s vision is to lead the production of olive oil into a more sustainable future. Its strategy starts with building strong supplier partnerships to embed sustainable farming practices. Deoleo works closely with farmers using shared knowledge of olives to develop holistic solutions that promote their economic success while preserving and developing the land.

To increase its operational efficiency and improve transparency, the company is also digitally transforming its business processes, from quality control and oil management to its research and development laboratory environment.

“Our sustainability strategy and manufacturing objectives require an effective digital system to manage the enormous number of variables we face along the entire value chain,” says Rafael Pérez de Toro, chief quality officer at Deoleo.

“Digitalising our production using Opcenter has allowed us to be more agile and efficient, gain greater control of resource management, create transparent communication, reduce costs, and guarantee traceability. Digitalisation is also making our business more sustainable.”

“It is allowing us to reduce our environmental footprint and achieve our goal of zero waste by reducing the use of paper, ink and energy from paper-based processes,” he continued.

Partnership with Siemens

Working with Siemens partner Sothis, Deoleo implemented Opcenter Execution Process software to digitalize all warehouse management and quality control processes in a single tool and Opcenter RD&L (Research, Development and Laboratory) software as its platform to streamline, optimise and align all formulated product data management.

Opcenter RD&L helps Deoleo align product designs and processes with quality and regulatory requirements. Integrating and aligning R&D and manufacturing data and processes drastically speeds up the transfer of final product designs to mainstream manufacturing.

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Home network topology

A smart home is equipped with connected appliances and devices that can be monitored and controlled remotely. Typically, three types of connected devices function at home:

• Devices connected directly to the internet via a (wireless) router at home
• Devices connected to a smartphone, which is connected to the internet
• Devices connected to each other and to a gateway, which is connected to the internet

Together, these devices combine to form the home network topology shown in Figure 1.

A smart device is typically connected to its vendor’s cloud, with a smartphone application from each vendor controlling the device and building automation.

This causes one of the smart home automation pain points, as the devices from different vendors communicate through vendor-specific solutions, which leads to device interoperability and reliability problems with the growth of device networks within the home.

Wireless protocols at home

Protocol selection for a smart device is based on needs for bandwidth, range, and topology. Here, widely used wireless protocols are as listed:

• Wi-Fi/WLAN. Wireless LAN provides internet connection for all home devices with ultra-high-resolution video-level streaming bandwidth. Most devices with high bandwidth requirements and no power constraints select WLAN for the communication protocol.
• Bluetooth. There are two types of Bluetooth devices: Classic and Low Energy (LE). Classic is mostly used for transmitting audio, like streaming music to a speaker. LE is more apparent in sensors, like health and wearable devices connected to smartphones.
• Zigbee. This low-cost, low-powered mesh network is widely deployed for controlling and monitoring applications like lighting, plugs, security sensors, and locks. Zigbee devices communicate with each other, and a gateway device is needed to allow communication with the internet.
• Thread. Thread protocol is used for the same purpose as Zigbee, the main difference is that Thread devices are IPv6 addressable and can speak to the internet (and each other) via native IP. For this reason, Thread is selected for low-layer transport protocol in the new Matter standard.

About the Matter Smart Home standard

The Matter Smart Home Standard is an ongoing industry push to create a smart home technology standard that provides secure, reliable, and seamless communication across smart home devices, mobile apps, and cloud services. Thus far, it includes IP-level standardization on top of selected transport layers, which are Ethernet, WLAN, and Thread.

Secure and reliable communication with fuzz testing

Many device vendors are partaking in protocol-specific certification programs to increase interoperability. Certification testing is mostly functional which provides valid inputs, with outputs compared to a correct or expected value. It verifies normal functionality, but what if it’s exposed to unusual inputs?

Fuzz testing or fuzzing is an automated software testing method that injects invalid, malformed, or unexpected inputs into a system to reveal software defects and vulnerabilities. It complements functional testing. Fuzzing is proven to discover security, performance, and other quality issues within test targets.

Smart bulbs have made blinking and dropping from the mesh network due to fuzzing, which makes you imagine the effort of rebuilding the network for all the lights in your house. In a worst-case scenario, the fuzz data can bypass the network protection mechanisms and inject data into the network.

Here, a malicious attacker can pollute wireless networks and utilize vulnerabilities (such as information leakage found by fuzzing a wireless protocol) to get access from a smart device to the home network, and then provide backdoor access from the internet.

Robustness in unexpected conditions

A malformed wireless frame can be the result of a cybersecurity attack, but it can also appear from a device that interprets protocol specifications differently, has a coding error, or has a hardware malfunction.

A model-based, protocol-aware fuzz testing tool will test, for example, the minimum and maximum values for each field in the protocol with a message that has all the checksums, lengths, and encryption is done according to protocol specifications.

It is advised to add vendor-specific data to a protocol to provide extra functionality. Some protocols provide mechanisms for this, but vendor-specific data can piggyback on a valid protocol message and be added into protocol-reserved blocks or at the end of a valid structure.

This is usually not a problem as other devices are not aware of the additional data or are not handling it. If both vendors are doing the piggybacking, they might handle additional data that isn’t valid for them. Even without extensions, different protocol versions and adaptation errors add risk to having nonsense data appear on the network.

Another example is a hardware malfunction. A sensor reports temperature, humidity, and air pressure, and each value is a 16-bit number, so one message should have all three values. Let’s say an air pressure-sensing component suddenly stops answering.

A sensor code can report to the network 0x0000, 0xFFFF, or leave the value out of the message. Is the code handling the sensor value prepared for all these possibilities? There might be a divide-by-zero crash since air pressure should never be zero.

One typical mistake is to handle unsigned values with signed types when unsigned maximum values lead to unexpected situations. Repeated or missing data can also lead to unhandled situations in code. Again, a protocol-aware fuzzer can test all these conditions before there is a broken sensor in the network.

In the table below, the maximum value can cause two types of problems:

1. The value is read to a signed variable and gets a negative
2. The value is used in calculations leading to integer overflow (value=VALUE_MAX+1) or underflow (value=VALUE_MIN-1).

The industry pumping out devices that communicate seamlessly with each other, which is good for consumers. However, this leads to large networks with a mixed set of devices from different vendors. From a device perspective, you cannot trust device quality in the same network.

It’s important to ensure that devices work in all unexpected conditions in a network with a mix of different devices. With that, to implement a secure and reliable smart home device, it is advisable to have protocol fuzz testing on your task list.

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Lee Kum Kee (Hong Kong) Foods Limited has earmarked HK$46 million to build its new oyster sauce smart production line, which is scheduled to start operation in the first quarter of 2024.

The new fully automated production line will produce 20,000 bottles of oyster sauce per hour, doubling the production capacity of the company's oyster sauce manufacturing plant at Tai Po InnoPark. Artificial intelligence (AI) will be deployed in the new line to monitor the production process and to gather real-time data to enhance product traceability and overall operational efficiency.

The  company last week received HK$15 million under the RFS to partially fund the project.

“We are glad to receive funding support for our new Oyster Sauce Smart Production Line project under the RFS. We are committed to implementing digital upgrade and smart factory transformation, in order to enhance our production efficiency and satisfy consumer needs,” said Kathy Lam, CEO, Lee Kum Kee International Holdings.

Launched in July 2020 under the auspices of the city’s Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC), the RFS provides subsidy to manufacturers in Hong Kong who are upgrading their factories into smart production lines. The scheme offers a matching financial support amounting to one-third of the approved project cost, capped at a maximum ceiling of HK$15 million per project. Projects under the scheme are expected to be completed within 24 months.

Upgrading production processes

Lee Kum Kee (Hong Kong) Foods is the latest local food manufacturer to avail of the RFS initiative.

In January of this year,  the ITC approved a HK$14.9 million RFS project to help Leun Tai Hong Kong Fresh Liquid Eggs Limited to establish its smart production line  for its fresh liquid egg products. The new smart facility will be similarly located at the Tai Po InnoPark.

The smart production line project is expected to increase the daily production of fresh liquid eggs by two to three times, while lowering the production cost by 20% to 30%.

Established in 1957, Luen Tai Hong is  a key local supplier of fresh liquid eggs (with a market share of nearly 30%) for many restaurants and food manufacturers in Hong Kong. It established the first pasteurised liquid eggs factory in the city in 2013.

Leun Tai Hong last month has enlisted the help of the Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) to customise the design of its new smart production line.

“At present, 30 tons of fresh egg liquid are produced every day, mainly relying on manual supervision and productivity is limited. With intelligent production, the production capacity can increase by 2 to 3 times, with 60 to 70 tons of fresh egg liquid to be produced per day,” said Young Kam-yim, managing director of Luen Tai Hong.

He added:  “At the same time, manpower, production time and human error will be reduced, achieving overall cost saving of up to 30%. Staff can also be deployed to handle high-tech work, reducing costs and raising efficiency. Intelligent production will also diversify our business. In addition to expanding from B2B to B2C retail business, high production capacity will also help the brand enter the huge and potential Greater Bay Area (GBA) market with a population of more than 86 million, making Hong Kong’s food manufacturing industry shine on the global stage.”

By applying HKPCs one-stop integrated technical support, Leun Tai Hong will be able to optimise its production process through the adoption of  sensors, Internet of Things and machine vision. Furthermore, the production process will be monitored with real-time data to ensure product safety and traceability, while increasing productivity and stability.

“The food industry is one of the top four sectors boosting the largest value growth among local manufacturing. We determined to lead the food industry gradually move towards advanced manufacturing so as to strengthen the ‘Made in Hong Kong’ brand and let it shine in the international market,” said Edmond Lai, chief digital officer, HKPC.

He added: “With the advanced manufacturing technologies of i4.0, HKPC helps the manufacturing industry to streamline the traditional production process. Through data-based real-time monitoring of product quality, operators can also flexibly deploy according to the data of each position, and establish predictive maintenance to avoid losses incurred by unexpected downtime, making enterprise management more handy.”

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"We aim to develop and provide self-efficient energy solutions to decrease carbon emission, help resolve climate change challenges and create an ecological, energy-saving and eco-friendly world." said Kevin Yang, president, Ecolohas.

Founded in 1998, the company is a social enterprise focusing on distinctive green energy solutions in Taiwan. It has strong technical teams focusing on energy communications and power distribution. Ecolohas invests many research resources in R&D integration, coordination, and management to build energy network, distributed energy and smart microgrid architecture, which effectively fulfil the needs of the general public.

Ecolohas combines solar power, home energy storage, and concentrated energy storage technologies to build microgrid system to substitute utility power. Ecolohas also introduced the hybrid energy storage system- Wolf ZX to Japan's market.

Ecolohas has developed a variety of energy storage systems for different applications and collaborated with governments, industries, academics and R&D institutes. Furthermore, the enterprise has devoted in multiple post disaster reconstruction projects such as the reconstruction of 2009 Typhoon Morakot post solar power community, involved in rescue missions of 2015 Nepal earthquake and relevant 2016 Typhoon Meranti post-disaster reconstruction projects.

With main products such as smart energy storage system, smart microgrid system, and distributed microgrid energy storage system "Battery Ship", the company customise design planning for various energy system.

The smart energy storage systems are designed for home, business and power grid. It is durable, waterproof and dustproof, and could be applied to various scenarios. With the remote monitoring function, consumers could monitor the renewable energy power generation, power consumption and load power storage data anytime and anywhere. In addition, the smart microgrid system consists of three main elements: renewable energy power generation system, independent small-scale energy storage system, and centralized large-scale energy storage system. Moreover, the system integrates battery and energy management systems providing better quality and improvement on efficiency.

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Called IVY, the scalable and cloud-connected software platform,  will allow automakers to provide a consistent and secure way to read vehicle sensor data, normalise it, and create actionable insights from that data both locally in the vehicle and in the cloud.

“AWS and BlackBerry are making it possible for any automaker to continuously reinvent the customer experience and transform vehicles from fixed pieces of technology into systems that can grow and adapt with a user’s needs and preferences,” said Andy Jassy, CEO, AWS. “Through this joint effort with BlackBerry, we will provide automakers with the insights, capabilities, agility, and speed they need to thrive in an increasingly connected world. As automakers seek to race ahead in their digital transformations, BlackBerry IVY empowers them to build their brands and set the standard for connected vehicle services across the automotive industry.”

BlackBerry IVY addresses a critical data access, collection, and management problem in the automotive industry.

Modern cars and trucks are built with thousands of parts from many different suppliers, with each vehicle model comprising a unique set of proprietary hardware and software components. These components, which include an increasing variety of vehicle sensors, produce data in unique and specialised formats.

The highly specific skills required to interact with this data, as well as the challenges of accessing it from within contained vehicle subsystems, limit developers’ abilities to innovate quickly and bring new solutions to market. BlackBerry IVY is aimed at solving for these challenges by applying machine learning to that data to generate predictive insights and inferences, making it possible for automakers to offer in-vehicle experiences that are highly personalised and able to act based on those insights.

In a joint statement both companies said BlackBerry IVY will support multiple vehicle operating systems and multi-cloud deployments to ensure compatibility across vehicle models and brands. The platform will build upon BlackBerry QNX’s capabilities for surfacing and normalising data from automobiles and AWS’s broad portfolio of services, including capabilities for IoT and machine learning.

BlackBerry IVY will run inside a vehicle’s embedded systems, but will be managed and configured remotely from the cloud. As a result, automakers will gain greater visibility into vehicle data, control over who can access it, and edge computing capabilities to optimise how quickly and efficiently the data is processed. With BlackBerry IVY’s integrated capabilities, automakers will be able to deliver new features, functionality, and performance to customers over the lifetime of their cloud-connected vehicles, as well as unlock new revenue streams and business models built on vehicle data.

Mining vehicle data

Both company gave a glimpse of how the platform works to continuously provide useful feedback to automakers by tapping into in-vehicle data gathered by the various sensors.

Using vehicle data, BlackBerry Ivy can recognise driver behaviour and hazardous conditions such as icy roads or heavy traffic and then recommend that a driver enables relevant vehicle safety features such as traction control, lane-keeping assist, or adaptive cruise control. IVY could then provide automakers with feedback on how and when those safety features are used, allowing them to make targeted investments to improve vehicle performance.

Additionally, drivers of electric vehicles could choose to share their car’s battery information with third-party charging networks to proactively reserve a charging connector and tailor charging time according to the driver’s current location and travel plans.

Furthermore, BlackBerry IVY could also provide insights to parents of teenage drivers who may choose to receive customised notifications based on insights from vehicle sensors when the number of passengers in the vehicle changes, when the driver appears to be texting, distracted, or not observing speed limits, or when the vehicle occupancy level rises above the parents’ desired safety threshold. Similarly, parents of infants could receive a reminder to engage the child safety lock when the vehicle detects a child in the rear seat.

Reduce time-to-market new online services

AWS and BlackBerry anticipate  that with their joint efforts to develop the platform, automakers will be able to compress the timeline to build, deploy, and monetise new in-vehicle applications and connected services across multiple vehicle brands and models.

Instead of investing in one-off solutions that conform to the unique engineering of different vehicle models (as they do today), automakers using BlackBerry IVY will be able to leverage different types of data as common building blocks for new services that could work across a range of models.

Automakers will be able to use the platform’s application programming interfaces (APIs) to share data and outputs with their software development teams, giving them the ability to innovate, while also protecting customer privacy and security by controlling whom can access vehicle and app data and at what level of detail.

“Data and connectivity are opening new avenues for innovation in the automotive industry, and BlackBerry and AWS share a common vision to provide automakers and developers with better insights so that they can deliver new services to consumers,” said John Chen, executive chairman and CEO, BlackBerry.

Indeed, BlackBerry IVY will make it easier for automakers to collaborate with a wider pool of developers to accelerate creation of new offerings that deliver improved vehicle performance, reduced costs for maintenance and repairs, and added convenience.

For instance, by analysing real-time performance data, automakers could recognise the first signs of potentially faulty parts, deploy code to identify affected vehicles, notify impacted drivers, and perform targeted recalls. Automakers will be able to remotely deploy and update the software from the platform’s Cloud Console (a web interface for managing BlackBerry IVY) to continuously improve the functionality of the system.

“This software platform promises to bring an era of invention to the in-vehicle experience and help create new applications, services, and opportunities without compromising safety, security, or customer privacy.  We are pleased to expand our relationship with AWS to execute this vision and deliver BlackBerry IVY,” Chen added.

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At the heart of Hytera's smart manufacturing system is the flexible production line, which utilises a manufacturing execution system to streamline the entire production process through real-time information. The production line is so flexible that it can be reorganized to manufacture many different products, ensuring a fast response to changing markets and customer demands.

This provides a flexible and agile manufacturing and supply chain system. Intelligent manufacturing and management systems, automated dispensing, assembly and functional testing are designed to guarantee production precision and high levels of efficiency. This is augmented by an automated packaging system and the ability to remotely monitor products.

Journey toward smart manufacturing does not end

The company started to automate much of its production processes in 2013  to meet demanding manufacturing criteria – including customisation and reliability of delivery cycles, for its professional mobile communications devices, such as two-way radios.

Hytera now has more than ten smart production lines. At the start of 2020,  its smart manufacturing processes officially reached Industry 4.0 stage. In the next five years, one of Hytera’s main goals is to upgrade all its manufacturing processes to keep pace with smart manufacturing standards.

The Hytera smart factory in Shenzhen incorporates intelligent warehousing and logistics systems. An important part of the global supply chain is the Hytera manufacturing centre in Zaragoza, Spain, which focuses on providing customised solutions designed to meet the specific needs of its European and American customers.

The development of smart manufacturing system is one of the main outcomes of Hytera’s strategy of continuous investment in research and development. The company invests 15% of its annual revenue in R&D and has 2,342 patents filed globally. Around 40% of its staff headcount are R&D engineers, of whom 80% hold a master’s or doctor’s degree.

Converting part of manufacturing  line for face mask production

The flexibility of Hytera’s smart manufacturing processes has also enabled the company to switch some production lines to the manufacture of disposable face masks to help combat the global shortage caused by the COVID-19 epidemic.

Production of face masks began in early February and has been rapidly ramped up to achieve mass production levels. Hytera's disposable face masks are already available in the market around the world.

Hytera’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak has gone farther.

The company immediately set up a national emergency support team and got in contact with health committees, prevention and control departments, medical institutions, and non-profit organisations throughout China to help coordinate all aspects of support, including equipment donations, communications support, and field services.

The company has also donated more than 3,000 communication devices nationwide, helping fulfil its corporate social responsibilities.

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Land mobile radio networks have provided these qualities for some time and will continue to do so. Now public safety agencies are looking for a combination of voice communication, video and software solutions to manage their daily work.

New and emerging technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have transformed many industries and markets and are now being more broadly adopted by the public safety sector.

So what say you that there is growing awareness and interest around IoT and public safety?

At this moment in time, IoT and safety-at-the-edge are two things that are hard to imagine being in the same sentence.

Andrew Sinclair, Corporate Vice President, Software Enterprise, Motorola Solutions, says technologies that help to deliver the right information to the right person at the right time are vital to public safety.

“When paired with other data sources and powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, IoT data can provide valuable insights to help law enforcement personnel make better and more informed decisions. This enables faster response both in the field and in command centres, enabling organisations to take greater control while working faster, smarter and more safely,” said Sinclair.

Integrating IoT to secure smart cities

Sinclair noted that developed economies in the Asia-Pacific including Singapore and Malaysia are investing in technologies to capture, filter and analyse the data that flows throughout their cities. While the initial use cases for these data sets have typically been for urban planning and design, the next opportunity is to take the data that flows through a smart city and use it to create a safer city.

He suggested using IoT to capture data sources that surround an intelligent lamp post and use those to protect communities and support first responders in their daily work. Sensors to detect weather conditions, the availability of parking spots and CCTV footage are all examples of data sources that can be valuable to public safety organisations.

At the 5th Annual 2019 Smart City Asia/Pacific Awards, IDC recognised several government organisations in the region including the Suzhou Wujiang Public Security Bureau and the Checkpoint Authority of Singapore for their Smart City projects in the area of public safety. However, it was the Integrated Emergency Data Platform – An AIoT Application in All-Hazards Early Warning and Decision Supporting System by New Taipei City Government (Taiwan) that won the Top Smart City Project for Public Safety – Disaster Response/Emergency Management category.

Money matters

Budgets will remain the perennial concern for most governments looking smart city efforts.

Sinclair argues that there is no fixed economic analysis to determine what the appropriate investment levels should be. “Cities should start by analysing the data resources they already hold today and considering how those can bring incremental gains to safety and productivity. Our experience shows that starting here enables more capabilities and data sources to be added over time,” he opined.

5G is coming

Asked how he sees 5G impacting the delivery of public safety solutions that use IoT, Sinclair said 5G will provide an opportunity to build upon the existing tools that public safety agencies use today.

The immediate impacts of 5G are around bandwidth and connectivity. Greater bandwidth enables greater distribution of large scale data including video feeds. Greater coverage and connectivity also support this and enables more to be managed and distributed from more places. That data could include body-worn camera footage, sensor information from a smart building, citizen-generated data and more.

Lower latency can also enable the greater uptake of advanced technologies in the future. This includes VR and AR applications which can support critical roles in public safety, for example presenting multiple visual data sources to a fire incident commander.

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Plus, the European Commission's directive to industries to reduce energy consumption is creating a fertile market for smart, intuitive, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)-enabled pumps with asset monitoring features.

The total pumps market in Europe generated estimated revenue of $1,334.7 million from the chemical industry in 2018. Centrifugal pumps used in the chemical processing plants represented 75.6% of the total pump market, and the remaining 24.4% of the market was held by positive displacement (PD) pumps in 2018. The compound annual growth rate for the total market is an expected 2.0% through 2025.

“Pump manufacturers offering value-added services such as end-to-end monitoring of pump performance throughout their lifecycle to increase energy efficiencies will remain competitive,” said Kiravani Emani, Industry Analyst, Industrial team at Frost & Sullivan.

"Furthermore, the shift towards digital chemical plants will create opportunities for pumps embedded with connectivity and intelligence capabilities, as they can aid predictive maintenance, reduce asset failure and, consequently, prevent the shutdown of plants."

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One such offering is NetComm’s newly launched NTC-100 which the manufacturer claims allows businesses to be less dependent on proprietary unlicensed networks in the area to manage and control these devices remotely.

Els Baert, NetComm Director of Marketing and Communications, said, "This is the first low power, low bandwidth device introduced to our industrial IoT portfolio and the only device of its kind to integrate a dual technology LTE module using Cat-M1 and NB-IoT technologies to economically track and monitor low-cost applications that were traditionally too costly to connect.

"This will accelerate the uptake of Industrial IoT by providing diverse industry sectors with the chance to connect and cost-effectively manage large fleets of small, low-value assets everywhere where there is an LTE network available."

Businesses across all industry sectors can now connect devices with the new standards developed by 3GPP: Cat M1 and NB-IoT. Widely available LTE networks support these applications by adding low bandwidth capabilities to extend range and battery life.

The new NetComm NTC-100 is the first commercially available modem to support Cat M1 and NB-IoT connections to any device that needs network connectivity, giving businesses a new way to remotely manage, control and gather data from their devices.

Whether it's to find an economically viable means of monitoring environmental conditions, such as ocean levels, improve smart metering, monitor the farm or introduce smart city applications such as road signage, parking meters and bin collection, a growing number of devices can now leverage LTE networks worldwide.

Built to endure vibration and extreme temperatures in harsh industrial, commercial and automotive environments, the robust NTC-100 features rugged IP40 rated industrial housing to ensure reliability and longevity in harsh remote and isolated climates ensuring always-on connectivity. The advanced remote management allows for a wide range of automation and monitoring features to avoid unnecessary truck rolls.

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Proliferation of the IoT is creating a need for low latency, smart decision-making close to the embedded system

While the current global market for IoT Edge Analytics is relatively small, it is expected to grow at a rapid 5-year CAGR of over 35% through 2022 according to a new report by VDC Research (click here for more information). New business models that encourage cloud consumption over licensing at the edge, in addition to immaturity in this new market have combined to keep current market revenues down. Still, engineers expect to more than double the portion of projects using edge analytics over the next three years.

The sheer volume of raw data generated by IoT systems has made it clear that significant portions of data must be filtered or pre-processed to reduce the volume of data sent to the cloud for cost and latency purposes.

“The current wave of innovation at the edge is due to improvements in IoT and embedded hardware as well as advances in engineers’ understanding of and ability to deploy advanced machine learning (ML) self-training algorithms,” said Roy Murdock, IoT & Embedded Technology Analyst at VDC Research.

“There will always be a need for low latency, smart decision-making as close to the embedded system as possible.”

As the dust settles around hardware at the edge in the gateways market, software vendors are stepping up to add value and differentiation through analytics at the edge.

VDC’s research shows that the energy & utilities market makes up the largest IoT edge analytics vertical, amounting to nearly 40% of global edge analytics revenues in 2017.

“The early and widespread adoption of gateways and other edge hardware in remote environments, such as offshore oil rigs, mines, and power generation plants, has allowed this vertical to maintain its leading spot,” explained Murdock. “In many cases connectivity is expensive and intermittent in these deployments, making them perfect candidates for edge offline syncing and filtering.”

Application container technology is a key component in many IoT edge analytics solutions, according to VDC. The heterogeneous nature of both hardware and software on edge deployments calls for a solution that can scale across these different environments.

Leading vendors are turning to containers to help them solve this issue and create extensible, hardware and OS-agnostic analytics engines and runtimes. VDC recommends that vendors prepare their strategies to bring advanced analytics closer to the edge by developing new micro-container options and building up their custom data science and consulting teams.

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ABI Research’s Industrial Cloud report revealed that the virtualization of business-critical infrastructure is transforming the production and distribution of goods and services throughout the supply chain as industrial organizations shift focus from private to public and ultimately hybrid cloud deployments that connect and integrate on-premise resources with cloud resources.

The researcher forecasts hybrid industrial cloud adoption will more than double over the next five years at a respectable 21.1% CAGR.

Initial IoT deployments in industrial markets reflect the sector’s Machine to Machine (M2M) heritage: private cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). IaaS served as a solid starting point for many organizations that wanted the benefit of cloud scale.

However with minimal interruption to normal Information Technology (IT) operations; the industrial cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model extended the functional capabilities of on-premise IaaS solutions by shifting commodity tasks (capacity planning, software maintenance, patching) to Cloud Service Providers (CSPs); Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) took it a step farther but in the form of managed services.

“Manufacturing and industrial organizations were not born from the same digital core as the people they employ or the products they produce,” said Ryan Martin, Principal Analyst at ABI Research.

“But they also harness some of the greatest potential thanks to massive amounts of untapped plant and process log data. And this is exactly what companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM are after. Harvested with the right analytical tools and guidance, these data streams can deliver value greater than the sum of their parts.”

The factory floor’s historical predisposition toward on-premise solutions has been supplanted by a campus-led approach underscored by a more recent push to connect HMI, SCADA, and control networks to higher-level enterprise systems, as well as the cloud. However, getting to the point where all these moving pieces come together in a real-world, production environment can be messy. Many Operational Technology (OT) devices come up short in key areas such as interoperability and security due to the prevalence of proprietary protocols in the legacy M2M market that the IoT grew out of.

Martin added that most OT systems depend on infrastructure with lifetimes measured in decades, while IT systems can be upgraded frequently at little or no cost.

"As a result, industrial and manufacturing markets typically employ a staged technology integration strategy that favors suppliers whose hardware, software, and services can be acquired incrementally, with minimal disruption to existing operations. Companies like GE refer to this as ‘minimum viable change’," he concluded.

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Singapore-based W-Locate will be using Tata Communications to help it meet its international ambitions. The IoT startup provides real-time location-based information to enterprises across Singapore, Hong Kong, Jakarta and Malaysia. Its international ambitions extends to South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and other Asian countries and expects Tata Communications’ IoT and private cloud computing capabilities to make that happen.

W-Locate’s XimLoc and FIND (fleet intelligent dynamics) services integrate machine-to-machine (M2M) telematics, big data and cloud computing with location intelligence. With XimLoc, any SIM card-based device can be located without relying on GPS alone. FIND caters for industries that are always on the move such as ready-mixed concrete supply, telematics and logistics.

When deployed over Tata Communications’ proprietary MOVE platform it will allow W-Locate services to be deployed across different countries without the need for the start-up to negotiate connectivity agreements with local mobile network operators (MNOs). The second part of the equation is ensuring data security and this is where W-Locate intends to use Tata Communications’ IZO private cloud to store all XimLoc and FIND data. The expectation is that the IZO private cloud will give the startup the scalability it may need as its business grows.

Stevie Ooi, Founder and CEO, W-Locate said the reliance on Tata Communications’ connectivity solution and cloud infrastructure will help reduce our capex by 35% while giving it the agility it needs to stay ahead of the market.

One W-Locate customer that will benefit from this new arrangement is LafargeHolcim Malaysia – a building materials manufacturer with operations in 80 countries. W-Locate will leverage Tata Communications’ IoT and cloud capabilities to collect and manage LafargeHolcim Malaysia’s data securely and seamlessly across borders.

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Hong Kong carrier, 3 Hong Kong claims to be one of the first operators in Asia to provide commercial NB-IoT roaming capability that will serve enterprises with more stable and secured end-to-end NB-IOT connectivity.

A subset of the LTE standard, NB-IoT or Narrowband IoT is a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) radio technology standard developed by 3GPP to enable a wide range of cellular devices and services. It is mainly targeted at indoor or high connection density applications requiring low cost and long battery life capabilities.

Aimed largely at enterprises looking to tap the opportunities presented by the Internet of Things (IoT), the 3 Hong Kong offering will interconnect with Taiwan’s Fast EasTone’s NB-IoT network by way of NB-IoT roaming. This bilateral NB-IoT roaming facility is the first such agreement between Asian carriers. 3 Hong Kong says it intends to pursue similar agreement with other members of the Conexus Mobile Alliance.

The NB-IoT roaming capability is expected to meet demand created by rising export sales activity among corporate customers. Devices with NB-IoT chips embedded – such as sensors and trackers – can be connected in countries where NB-IoT roaming-enabled networks are available. This enables enterprises to explore business opportunities overseas.

Activation of 3 Hong Kong’s NB-IoT roaming capability promotes development of NB-IoT technology. When compared with 3G and 4G networks, NB-IoT has been shown to offer wider coverage, lower consumption of energy, safer transmission and higher assurance of quality of service. In addition, large-scale connectivity capacity facilitates greater cost efficiency.

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Image from iStockPhoto/AndreyPopov

There is a topic that I wanted to share with you that we at Gartner have delivered research on during 2017. We have been developing research on the topic for some time now and I thought as the year draws to a close it might be a good time to share our findings.

IoT security doesn’t really exist in the classical sense as a formally defined market.

I know this may cause some consternation on the part of most “IoT security” companies. But it is important that we view the development of securing IoT devices and supporting systems properly if we are going to our proper place in planning for IoT security and providing a means to adjust to a post digital-business world. It is my belief after researching IoT security for several years that the concept of IoT security itself is part of a larger historical pattern we have seen many times.

We start off at a significant technology inflection point (such as the evolution of sophisticated smartphones and their use or the broad introduction of cloud services) using the descriptor (cloud, mobile) as an adjective to “security”: cloud security, mobile security. A market then begins to evolve in an effort to address specific requirements germane to the adjective. During the early period of that market, there are unique functions developed for unique use cases.

Over time, those functions possibly involve new companies (product and service) along with possibly older, established companies expanding existing products and services to incorporate those functions. Older companies acquire the newer companies if they want to evolve inorganically. The market pursues standards to those functions and (often grudgingly) adopt them.

We’ve seen this evolution many times. What makes us think that IoT security functions are any different? Now there ARE some unique aspects to IoT– their relative cost, the sheer innovation across all verticals that is breathtaking, their ubiquity– it is both an exciting and a terrifying time if you’re in cybersecurity and are trying to address IoT security concerns.

I also believe that IoT has specific functions that aren’t found in traditional cybersecurity, even to the point where I’ve wanted to call cybersecurity something else to underscore the changes cybersecurity will experience as a result of IoT’s introduction– digital security. More importantly, business transformation with IoT has been significant, even profound.

I DO believe there are distinctive IoT markets of products and services. Where I’m having a challenge with IoT security is that every time I seek unique, never-before-seen patterns in IoT security across the vertical industries, I have trouble. I do find there are some interesting areas of cybersecurity that are changing and experiencing market changes.

For example, “embedded” security functions at the hardware/firmware level have given rise to vendors that attempt to address to specific concerns for identity, data encryption or secure applications processing. The variety of networks used by IoT at present has given rise to vendors that provide functions capable of operating across multiple wireless networks and offer the ability to segment IoT networks from “traditional” IT networks. Different types of cloud-based services, consulting and system integration are creating features that deal with significant volumes of data and the overall scale of function across those networks.

However, the development of new companies and the development of features in traditional IT (and operational technology, or OT) security companies is occurring almost simultaneously. Even IoT security acquisitions of new companies by older companies are happening earlier in technology evolution of security. Do not misunderstand my comments– there ARE IoT security companies.

But there are also cybersecurity companies engaged in becoming digital security companies at a rate that is attempting to match the pace of IoT deployment and use. Make no mistake– this ISN’T like IT security of the past. IoT is accelerating a convergence that was already occurring between IT and OT security. That convergence had introduced the “cyber-physical” requirements to IT security, and the past 5-7 years have been devoted to incorporating cyber-physical concepts into our IT and OT security to accommodate.

Think of it as a bottom-up evolution driven by engineers for requirements in a world driven by physical changes meeting a top-down evolution driven by information technology specialists to handle the uses of information in the cyber world. The needs of IoT security have put both of those evolutionary movements on steroids. Ironically, the final outcome won’t be thought of so much as IoT security, rather IoT changes will be absorbed into the final outcome of IT/OT convergence.

The title of this blog was meant to be provocative, and to make us all think about the context of the changes we’re seeing. There ARE IoT security companies, don’t misunderstand me. But this IoT evolution looks more like a revolution in terms of its pace and pervasiveness. Attempts to secure IoT must be addressed in the proper context, and hopefully this provides one contextual view to consider as you leave 2017. Happy Holidays, everyone, and may 2018 be even MORE exciting– in a good way.

About the author
Earl Perkins is a Research Vice President in the Security and Risk Management team at Gartner. Mr. Perkins' focus areas include: - Integrated risk management, including operational risk management - Cybersecurity strategy - Digital security strategy, planning and practice for the organization

First published on Gartner Blog Network.

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A new study from Juniper Research predicts that by end of 2026 over 50 million autonomous or self-driving vehicles will be hitting the road with 15% traversing the roads of Asia. It’s a small figure for sure compared to the forecasted 1.5 billion vehicles on the world’s roads in the same period.

The new research, Autonomous Vehicles & ADAS: Market Trends 2018-2026, found that a confluence of societal shifts, smart city mobility schemes and technology infrastructure will kickstart autonomous vehicle sales.

These include softening demand for vehicle ownership driven by the emergence of concepts such as Mobility-as-a-Service, driving safety benefits and establishment of underlying V2X (vehicle-to-anything) communications.

Singapore leads Juniper’s country readiness index

Juniper evaluated 20 countries according to their readiness for autonomous vehicles; analysing nations’ enthusiasm for autonomous vehicles and the likelihood of autonomous vehicles operating in the country. It considered regulatory policies, trials in operation, digital and city infrastructure in place and the participation of local technology firms and organisations.

Figure 1: Globaa autonomous vehicle readiness index

Source: Juniper Networks 2018

Research author Michael Larner added: “The US has all the key ingredients for autonomous vehicles to operate at scale. Federal and local authorities supporting AV trials, Silicon Valley and universities spawn firms that can deliver the technology, many local competitors are introducing driverless technologies plus the car remains vital for commuting and leisure travel.”

2019: the Milestone Year

The research found that OEMs will incrementally add driverless technologies to newer vehicle models. It predicted that 2019 will be a milestone year with the launch of vehicles where the driver’s full attention is no longer required. It claimed that the US and China will be the key regions to watch as new policies and guidelines for autonomous vehicles flourish; and combined, will account for nearly 65% of global autonomous vehicles sold in 2019.

Roadblocks ahead

Despite the optimism, obstacles continue to impede greater adoption of smart vehicles, including legal framework and liability, as well as reliability. Another challenge will be modelling driver behaviour using self-learning techniques to ensure the AV behaves properly in every possible traffic situation.

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Recapping what we know

Like most other industries, concern about disruption is high on the agenda of carriers around the world. In a global survey of CIOs and CROs working at operators in the world, including familiar brands in Asia like HKBN, Yahoo Japan, Vodafone India, Telenor Group, Deutsche Telekom and Telstra, EY reported that participants cited the smartphone revolution and growth in mobile applications as opening the market to disruptive participants able to monetize new customer behavior.

Figure 1: Operators cite top 3 significant challenges for the industry

Source: EY 2017

According to the latest Ovum’s ICT Enterprise Insights program the telecoms sector is one of the most mature industries in the drive for digital transformation. However it also cited the industry as having a very low level of digital maturity with an index score of 43.9%, albeit still scoring better than other industry sectors including financial services.

More disruption ahead

“We think the telecoms sector will be the most disrupted with technology delivering mid-teen percentage impact,” said Sundeep Gantori, director, Equity Analyst, UBS AG.

In an exclusive video interview with TelecomAsia, Gantori cited, as an example, the decline in SMS revenues because people are using alternative social networking platforms. He also highlighted the emergence of eSIM, a service provider agnostic SIM that is embedded in devices like mobile phones and wearables, and will allow for easier operator switching by subscribers.

Gartner concurred that eSIM have the potential to supplant traditional lock-in strategies by operators.

In the EY report, Digital transform for 2020 and beyond: a global telecom study, the consultant notes that diversification of revenue streams will be a mainstay strategy for the industry. EY cautioned that business expansion into adjacent market segments like enterprise cloud, TV and IoT will result in margin management challenges for operators because margins are slimmer and disruptive competitors are already entrenched in sectors like cloud and advertising.

Figure 2: Digital TMT ecosystem value forecast

Source: Informa, Ovum, GSMA, EY

EY concluded that rising IT spend will be part of the industry’s digital transformation strategy, and critical to supporting digital growth, with quality of experience and reduced costs at the heart of operators’ strategic agenda. Ovum forecasts global telco IT investments to reach US$85 billion by 2020, with 74% paid out to external providers rather than internal.

Ignored risks

EY listed 10 critical risk issues facing operators in the coming years. The failure to realize new roles in evolving industry ecosystems tops the list. Other risks include a lack of regulatory certainty on new market structures, ignoring new imperatives around privacy and security, failure to improve organizational agility, lack of data integrity to drive growth and efficiency, insufficient performance measurement to drive execution, failure to understand what customers value, inability to extract value from network assets, poorly defined inorganic growth agenda, and failure to adopt new routes to innovation.

Strategic directions next 3 years

Participants in the EY global telco study cited digital business models (71%), customer experience (61%), and cost control and business efficiencies (53%) as strategic priorities. Recognition by operators of the adjacent growth segments opportunities will necessitate acceptance of the need for new business models.

Figure 3: Top 3 operator strategic priorities from 2018-2020

Source: EY 2017

More important, operators recognize the symbiotic relationship of the top 3 priorities: digital business models, customer experience, and efficiency and agility gains.

EY concluded that it is “only by harnessing these related objectives as part of a common purpose do operators see themselves unlocking the full benefits of their transformation agenda. Nevertheless, the low relative focus on acquiring and retaining talent suggests that skills management may be lacking within this set of interconnected priorities.”

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