“Previously, our e-commerce business could only support about 1,500 daily orders. Using Zebra’s warehouse mobility solutions, we now complete more than 10,000 orders daily,” said Malik Bin Murad Ali, Director of IT, HR, Digital and Loss Prevention & Security, MYDIN. “We constantly look for ways to gain better operational productivity to improve our customer experience. This is why we are equipping our front-line staff with more advanced technology tools to drive better results.”

Mydin Mohamed Holdings Berhad (MYDIN) has successfully introduced Zebra’s warehouse mobility solution (WMS) at its distribution centre at Seremban to support its fast-growing e-commerce business.

MYDIN selected Zebra’s TC21 mobile computers enabling its front-line workers to improve task accuracy and on-the-job efficiency. The devices are equipped with enterprise-class durability and removable batteries for dependable around-the-clock operations, and the power to run all the applications needed at work.

They are powered by the user-friendly Android operating system which reduces onboarding time. The TC21 devices were part of MYDIN’s adoption of a cloud-native warehouse management system from AC2 Group.

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Korean Air is partnering with Accelya to integrate the vendor’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) and FLX-Merchandizing module, both running on Accelya and Amazon Web Services (AWS) technologies, to deliver personalization and the most relevant offers to customers.

Accelya's NDC offering, a core enabler of airline-retail agency connectivity, links airlines with over 50,000 travel agents including the world’s largest online travel agents (OTA's) and travel management companies (TMC's).

Accelya’s advanced NDC capabilities, leveraging the latest 21.3 standard, deliver on average over 30% NDC adoption for partner airlines, bringing improved customer servicing, more ancillary sales and the ability for customers and airlines to benefit from much richer offers.

The FLX-Merchandizing module fine-tunes customer offerings and experiences. Leveraging the latest technologies, it will enable Korean Air to create, personalize and adjust its offers to better serve travellers across both direct and indirect channels.

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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.

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Church & Dwight (C&W), the company behind the brand Arm & Hammer, plans to strengthen the consumer goods company’s cybersecurity program. The goal was to gain a deeper understanding of its manufacturing risk profile by identifying critical assets, vulnerabilities, and security gaps.

It has chosen Rockwell to help build resiliency and minimise risks in its operational technology (OT) manufacturing security practices. The two collaborated to develop a remediation roadmap, new security policies, and other measures to minimize risks.

With several global consumer brands under its umbrella, C&W recognised the critical impact and importance of a strong OT security posture and enlisted Rockwell.

“We selected Rockwell Automation because we were looking for a new partner to help us uplevel our OT and manufacturing security posture. We knew we needed the best of the best who understood our vision,” said David Ortiz, chief information security officer (CISO) at Church & Dwight. “Throughout our work with Rockwell Automation on our OT cybersecurity program, we’ve gained a thorough understanding of our cybersecurity landscape and the tools needed.”

Commenting on the collaboration, Mark Cristiano, global commercial director at Rockwell, says: “We have implemented new security controls and processes and have already seen a dramatic shift in the company's OT practices. We are proud to leverage our best-in-class partnerships to help Church & Dwight achieve its cybersecurity goals.”

As a longtime Rockwell Industrial Solutions customer, C&W expanded its partnership in 2020 to advance their Manufacturing Cybersecurity Program initiative. Since then, Church & Dwight has achieved its cybersecurity objectives in mitigating risks and understanding its OT landscape.

Once threat detection capabilities were in place, Church & Dwight implemented continuous monitoring through managed OT services from Rockwell.

These managed services integrate and support Church & Dwight’s current IT Security Operations Centre, bridging the gap between IT and OT networks, and mitigating cyber risks across the enterprise.

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IDC defines edge as the information and communications technology (ICT) related actions that are performed outside of the centralized data centre, where edge is the intermediary between the connected endpoints and the core IT environment.

Characteristically, edge is distributed, software-defined, and flexible. Edge is the movement of computing resources to the physical location where data is created, transacted or stored, thereby increasing the enablement of business processes, decisions, and intelligence outside of the core IT environment.

"Edge computing will play a pivotal role in the deployment of AI applications," said Dave McCarthy, research vice president, Cloud and Edge Services at IDC. He added that to meet scalability and performance requirements, organisations will need to adopt the distributed approach to architecture that edge computing provides. OEMs, ISVs, and service providers are taking advantage of this market opportunity by extending feature sets to enable AI in edge locations.

Across 19 enterprise industries, IDC segments edge ICT spending for more than 500 named enterprise use cases in six domains. In the service provider industry, investments for edge services delivery are built on infrastructure spending for multi-access edge computing (MEC), content delivery networks, and virtual network functions. Combined, these three use cases will account for nearly 22% of all edge spending this year.

For enterprise adopters, including the public sector, examples of edge-named use cases with large investments and rapid growth through 2027 include augmented maintenance (augmented reality), production asset management, AI-augmented supply and logistics, augmented diagnosis and treatment systems, supply chain resilience, in-home remote patient monitoring, and in-store contextualized marketing.

Examples of emerging edge use cases that are forecast to have the fastest spending growth over the 2022-2027 period include autonomous mining operations, site design and management (construction), pipeline inspection (utilities), augmented training (multiple industries), and expert shopping advisors & product recommendations (retail).

"Enterprise investments have continued to shift the past 24 months toward infrastructure expansion and greenfield deployments. Companies are acting on plans to build more robust local computing infrastructure capabilities. And through it all, customer-facing new services and products and enabling new business processes are top enterprise drivers," said Marcus Torchia, research vice president, Data & Analytics at IDC.

"Over the next two years, the share of planned investments moderately favours MEC offerings. Yet on balance, enterprises are looking to rationalize total service provider outlays. This sets up a dynamic market of capex and opex-based edge offerings competing for investment dollars through 2027."

Marcus Torchia

Across enterprise end-user industries, the sheer size of discrete and process manufacturing will account for the largest portion of investments in edge solutions this year, followed by the retail and professional services industries.

IDC expects all 19 enterprise industries profiled in the spending guide will see five-year compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) in the low-to-mid teens over the forecast period. The service provider segment will see the greatest CAGR of 19.1%.

The largest investment share will continue to be led by hardware, at close to 40% of total spending, to build out edge capabilities especially driven by service provider infrastructure. Hardware spending will be driven by investments in edge gateways, servers, and network equipment.

Over the forecast period, adoption of provisioned services by enterprises will surge, surpassing hardware share by 2026 for the first time. Within provisioned services, connectivity and IaaS will represent the greatest share and fastest growth categories, respectively. On-premise software will be a critical component of edge infrastructure but remain the smallest category in terms of overall spending.

IDC predicts that China will experience the fastest spending growth over the five-year forecast with CAGRs of 16.2% and 15.3%, respectively.

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Consumer goods company, Church & Dwight recognized the critical impact and importance of a strong OT security posture and enlisted Rockwell. The goal was to gain a deeper understanding of its manufacturing risk profile by identifying critical assets, vulnerabilities and security gaps.

To strengthen the company’s cybersecurity program, Church & Dwight has chosen Rockwell Automation to help build resiliency and minimize risks in its operational technology (OT) manufacturing security practices.

“We selected Rockwell Automation because we were looking for a new partner to help us uplevel our OT and manufacturing security posture. We knew we needed the best of the best who understood our vision,” said David Ortiz, Church & Dwight CISO.

Rockwell’s global commercial director, Mark Cristiano, says: "Over the course of our partnership with Church & Dwight, we have implemented new security controls and processes and have already seen a dramatic shift in the company's OT practices. We are proud to leverage our best-in-class partnerships to help Church & Dwight achieve its cybersecurity goals.”

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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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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.

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Picking up the project, UnaBiz purportedly will together with ACMV expert, D-Team Engineering to:

1. Replace the Air Handling Unit (AHU) at the plant room located adjacent to the service corridor.
2. Replace the Variable Volume Air (VAV) Controller sets located within the office areas.
3. Deploy close to 800 wireless IAQ monitoring sensors and 50 LoRaWAN gateways to monitor the IAQ levels of all five Suntec City Office Towers to ensure consistent IAQ standards and monitor the performance of the new ACMV systems.

According to Steven Kong, senior manager of operations of APM Property Management, the main purpose of the rejuvenation plan is to help maintain comfort and a stable temperature in all five office towers. A data-driven ACMV system ensures good air quality for shoppers and tenants, while a high energy-efficiency system helps optimise energy consumption and reduce carbon emissions.

For this project, UnaBiz will install Milesight IAQ sensors and gateways, with Actility ThingPark Enterprise on-premises IoT platform on a LoRaWAN network. The deployment will be carried out in phases starting with Tower 4, Tower 2, Tower 3, Tower, 1 and Tower 5.

 In total, there are about 2.3 million square feet of office space. Tower One to Four is 45-storey representing the 4 fingers and Tower 5 is 18-storey representing the thumb.

The IAQ sensor is a comprehensive 9-in-1 solution that integrates nine types of sensors to measure various ambient conditions including CO2 concentration, temperature, humidity, light, TVOC, barometric pressure, PM2.5, PM10, formaldehyde and motion. This energy-efficient sensor is designed for real-time monitoring and collecting reliable IAQ data 24/7.

UnaBiz Singapore’s managing director, Jonathan Tan acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated to us the importance of IAQ monitoring as the majority of us spend our time indoors. By integrating indoor IAQ monitoring with the new ACMV system, Suntec City can prioritise tenant well-being, and optimise airflow and energy consumption through data-driven ventilation.

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Juniper Research forecasts a substantial growth of 182% in the number of smart parking spaces within cities; from 5.8 million in 2024.

Importance of dynamic pricing

The report urges city municipalities to seriously consider investing in and implementing smart parking initiatives within highly congested cities. The advantages surrounding dynamic pricing in smart parking can not only be used to strategically increase revenue but also ease ongoing congestion issues. This is achieved by lowering prices in less congested parking areas; making them more attractive to drivers.

“With more data than ever available and the low latency that 5G provides, parking solutions have become highly responsive,” says Cara Malone. “In cities where on-street parking is a major issue, dynamic signage can be deployed to utilise available parking more efficiently at quieter times; significantly reducing congestion.”

Optimise transit routes using data analytics

Juniper Research recommends smart parking vendors offer data analytics services to municipalities and governments as a priority. This data is critical to analysing parking and occupancy patterns, which can be used to optimise transit routes and development; helping shift citizens to public transport and providing significant value for cities.

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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.”

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In a survey conducted in August 2023, technology buyers in Asia/Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ) ranked AI and its derivatives as the number one most useful innovative technology to meet their sustainability/ESG objectives. Furthermore, 46% of APEJ enterprises find GenAI particularly useful in ESG data analysis.

AI is predicted to remain a critical technology in the operationalisation of ESG in 2024 and beyond:

• Responsible AI: By 2025, 25% of ESG review boards in APEJ will include ethical and responsible oversight of AI efforts in their purview.

• Sustainable Supply Chain Management: By 2026, AI-powered demand forecasting will reduce excess inventory levels by 20% minimizing waste and lowering carbon emissions from excess production.

In addition to the growing role of AI in meeting sustainability/ESG objectives, IDC also noticed that APEJ organisations are in a cusp of a great shift which will lead to more demand for sustainability and ESG-enabling technologies and related business services.

IDC’s sustainability surveys reveal accelerated adoption of sustainability/ESG in the region in the last 12 months, much faster than anywhere else in the world.

Important sustainability/ESG topics in 2024

• Decarbonization: By 2027, 50% of large organisations in APEJ will require a carbon neutrality strategy as a standard part of enterprise technology procurements and RFPs as compared with 40% today.

• Circularity: By 2024, 50% of APEJ organisations will require OEMs/ODMs to provide detailed circularity metrics about design, manufacturing, life cycle, repair, reuse, and disposal in dashboards to facilitate reporting.

• Social Sustainability: By 2028, 30% of APEJ companies will track social capital KPIs (e.g., human rights management) to reflect the increasing demand from external stakeholders to address social sustainability topics.

• Biodiversity and Nature Positivity. By 2027, 25% of APEJ companies will consider biodiversity a material ESG issue for their business and will have implemented concrete impact mitigation strategies and data management tools.

• ESG Services: By 2027, due to increased focus on climate risk, 80% of all sustainability-related services engagements will include a climate risk component, a 30% increase from the present.

• Sustainable data centres: By 2026, 35% of all data centre energy consumption in APEJ will be powered by renewables.

• Chief Sustainability Officer: By 2028, companies most advanced with sustainable business transformation (~10–20%) will have sustainability embedded across the organisation, and CSOs will have only a coordination role.

“Over 90% of enterprises in the region are navigating their sustainability journey, responding to global and local regulatory pressures and the need to stay competitive. Manufacturing, logistics, ICT, and financial services sectors, and public sector institutions, such as government, education and healthcare, increasingly rely on digital technology solutions and ESG-related consultancy services to get them started or help them advance in sustainability maturity. IDC foresees a rapid expansion of sustainability tech applications in the near term, expanding use-cases and scope of material topics,” says Melvie Espejo, a research director for sustainability strategies and technologies at IDC Asia/Pacific.

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“Advances in GenAI and shifting customer preferences are pushing service and support leaders to reimagine what’s possible for their organisation in 2024,” said Kim Hedlin, a senior principal of research, in the Gartner Customer Service & Support practice. “Leaders are focused on how they can leverage technology to accomplish their top priorities, including improving customer experience and optimizing their operations.”

Pilot employee-facing GenAI underway

About 79% of service and support leaders surveyed were knowledgeable about their enterprise’s plans for GenAI adoption. Of these leaders, 83% said their enterprises either have plans to invest in GenAI or have done so already.

While much of the hype around GenAI in customer service has focused on customer-facing chatbots, many service and support leaders plan to invest in employee-facing GenAI assistants who will support reps in the next 12-18 months. Of leaders whose organisation is planning to make GenAI investments, 94% report they are at least “exploring” employee-facing virtual assistants.

“Many leaders see employee-facing GenAI as an experimental step on the way to deploying customer-facing virtual assistants,” said J.J. Moncus, principal of research, in the Gartner Customer Service & Support practice. “Respondents indicated it’s an important way to learn the risks of GenAI while still having a human in the loop, before moving on to riskier customer-facing deployments.”

The future of self-service

To meet younger generations of customers’ growing preference for self-service, many service and support leaders will experiment with new self-service capabilities in 2024.

However, these service and support leaders face implementation challenges. Among the service and support leaders who cited self-service adoption as a priority in the survey, 51% also named it a significant challenge for 2024.

Interviews with service and support leaders revealed multiple reasons why self-service implementation is challenging, ranging from organisational resistance to data disorganisation. However, early experiments with GenAI have helped leaders to envision new possibilities within self-service.

“The GenAI hype is providing momentum for leaders’ self-service investments,” said Hedlin. “Leaders have seen glimmers of a future in which conversational interfaces powered by GenAI could handle more complex interactions than a traditional chatbot. That vision is helping shape leaders’ self-service strategy in 2024.”

Understand customer journeys holistically

The study revealed that 56% of service and support leaders surveyed say they plan to invest in the customer journey analytics (CJA) market in the next 12-18 months. CJA enables leaders to analyse customers’ interactions with their organisation over time and across channels.

Of those who say they’ll be investing in CJA, 45% indicate that they’ll be investing in this market for the first time.

Moncus says customer service and support leaders are using CJA to gain a more holistic understanding of what customers need.

“Customers’ and executive leaders’ expectations for service interactions will only continue to rise. Service and support leaders need to identify and understand significant customer touchpoints to deliver a better experience.”

J J Moncus

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Nearly 60% of executives say that they have moved beyond ideation and brainstorming to building out use cases, with 55% reporting they expect to have multiple proof-of-concept or minimum-viable product builds by the end of 2023.

“Over the next six to twelve months, leading companies will move from cultivating isolated pilots to scaling for results,” said Eric Berger, a partner in Bain & Company’s Healthcare & Life Sciences practice.

He added that as leadership teams move beyond experimentation into pilots and launches, they are thinking carefully about when and how to communicate their AI journeys to investors.

“Those that can signal a structured, scalable enterprise-wide program, rather than a smattering of standalone initiatives, will reap the rewards in the next phase of AI.”

Eric Berger

Data science and machine learning are not new to pharma executives who have been investing in productivity enhancements for years, primarily in the drug discovery space. Bain research shows that 54% of pharma companies have automated biomedical literature review solutions, and 46% are using AI as part of their process to find potential disease targets.

Old purpose; New drive

GenAI is broadening the aperture of use cases with new opportunities across the value chain. Biomedical literature review and preclinical research remain among the most popular use case areas, although we’re also seeing high investment in IT and competitive intelligence.

Within these top areas, more than 60% of executives say they have at least a proof of concept in development, and around 10% have already rolled out tools. These early adopters have moved swiftly, often reaching a working pilot within about eight weeks. Already, many are seeing tangible value.

Strategies beyond top of mind

GenAI is top of mind for most pharma companies, with 75% citing it as a C-suite and board priority. And investors are watching closely to differentiate the pioneers from the followers. If pharma companies want to generate value from GenAI as fast as the technology allows, they need to ensure the organisation is ready.

Approach to scaling GenAI

Bain suggests taking a three-tiered approach to prime their operating model for GenAI at scale.

Determine your strategic posture. Leading organisations will establish decision-making and funding models that prioritize high-return use cases, ensuring that those use cases fit within their investment themes around bold bets for the future of the business.

Lead through change. GenAI at scale requires strong internal leadership and cross-functional alignment. The best companies will establish an organisational centre of gravity with several executives who act as generative AI champions.

Build the foundations. In addition to the right technology, data, and models, generative AI at scale requires reorienting the organisation to support big visions. This includes recruiting aggressively for data scientists to work on AI initiatives, building strategic partnerships with external vendors for support, and thoughtfully engaging on ethics and regulation by going a step further with a companywide risk management approach.

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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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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.

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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

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Smart parking utilises a combination of sensors and real-time data to provide road users with information on closest available parking spaces and prices, through either signage, apps or dashboards. This helps reduce congestion and emissions produced by vehicles searching for suitable parking spaces.

Dynamic pricing vital in reducing city congestion

The report urges city municipalities to seriously consider investing in and implementing smart parking initiatives within highly congested cities. The advantages surrounding dynamic pricing in smart parking can not only be used to strategically increase revenue, but also have the ability to ease ongoing congestion issues. This is achieved by lowering prices in less congested parking areas; making them more attractive to drivers.

Research author Cara Malone commented: “With more data than ever available and the low latency that 5G provides, parking solutions have become highly responsive. In cities where on-street parking is a major issue, dynamic signage can be deployed to utilise available parking more efficiently at quieter times; significantly reducing congestion.”

Data analytics to optimise transit routes 

Juniper Research recommends smart parking vendors offer data analytics services to municipalities and governments as a priority. This data is critical to analysing parking and occupancy patterns, which can be used to optimise transit routes and development; helping shift citizens to public transport and providing significant value for cities.

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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.”

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“Supply chain organisations may have been expected to take a step back in pursuing DEI objectives in light of increased scrutiny and economic pressures,” said Dana Stiffler, distinguished VP analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain Practice.

“Our data instead showed strong gains, with a steep increase in representation of underrepresented races and ethnicities at every level of the supply chain. The key driver of these gains is an increase in accountability via formalised management goals.” Dana Stiffler

Figure 1: Growth in general and formal accountability for DEI, 2021-2023

The survey data revealed major DEI gains, including that the percentage of full-time employees of underrepresented race/ethnicity in the supply chain organisations evaluated increased from 32% to 48%. Compared to 2022’s survey sample, the average representation of talent of underrepresented races and ethnicities is 1.5 times what it was in the 2022 sample.

The data showed a strong alignment between DEI and broader business objectives. Among those who have either formal or general DEI objectives, respondents provided the following reasons for having such goals:

• Attract new talent (68%)
• Engage and retain new employees (64%)
• Improve business performance (58%)
• Attract customers (48%)
• Reflect and support local communities (44%)
• Attract investors (40%)

Stiffler noted that the recruitment focus of DEI initiatives is crucial, with a higher percentage of supply chain employees actively seeking a new job at the highest rate since 2021. “The focus on engagement and retention is also well-placed with supply chain employees less likely than other professions to be highly engaged or have a high intent to stay. Their discretionary effort in mid-2023 was at its lowest point in the past two years,” she added.

“Say-Do Gap” closing; attrition remains high

Beyond formal objectives, a second reason pushing representation higher in 2023 was a greater emphasis on actual DEI initiatives within supply chain organisations. In 2022, while 75% of supply chain organisations reported that they focused on some dimension of diversity, only 40% reported working on specific DEI projects or initiatives. Gartner refers to this gap between intention and tangible action as the “say-do gap.”

“While nearly the same proportion of organisations focused on one or more aspects of DEI in 2023, we saw a much higher percentage of supply chain respondents working on specific DEI projects and initiatives with measurable outcomes, jumping from 40% to 73%,” said Stiffler. “In 2023, the ‘say-do gap’ was reduced to nearly half of what it was in 2021; the connection between tangible action and improved DEI outcomes seems increasingly clear.”

The top four DEI initiatives invested in were learning and development (L&D), benefits, employee engagement and recruitment. In terms of effectiveness, employee engagement and L&D led the list, which is a departure from previous surveys, where inclusive leadership and recruitment were most effective.

While top-line findings in the survey showed progress on diversity efforts, 43% of respondents reported that the attrition rates of underrepresented talent were somewhat or significantly higher compared to their majority workforce. The data suggests talent pipelines need to be assessed and strengthened further to maintain recent gains.

Chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) seeking to reduce attrition must evaluate several potential root causes, including the desire among these employees to seek career changes, the most highly cited reason underrepresented talent left their roles in 2023.

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Source: Exploring the industrial metaverse, Deloitte 2023

Others are also investing in digital twins, 3D modelling, and 3D scanning, all serving as building blocks for the immersive 3D environments of the industrial metaverse.

The industrial metaverse (IMV) is set to greatly enhance manufacturing engineering, training, safety, and production. ABI Research forecasts spending on industrial metaverse solutions and services to grow at 22.8% to reach US$6.3 billion by 2030 as immersive and collaborative capabilities come to the forefront of industry 4.0 software development efforts.

IMV solutions use immersive technologies and digital twin initiatives, integrating data virtualization, Artificial Intelligence (AI) simulation, business operations systems, and external data sources to enable connectivity between digital twins and other systems.

“Top IMV use cases for 2024 will be in training, collaboration, and production planning, with a strong emphasis on solutions that drive positive business outcomes in a short timeframe,” explains Ryan Martin, senior research director for Industrial & Manufacturing at ABI Research. “Large deployments that are costly or take a long time to demonstrate value will be avoided in favour of smaller projects that drive incremental results that scale.”

Examples include Norwegian clean battery producer FREYR equipping its gigafactories in Norway and in the U.S., Siemens Industrial Operations X, AWS IoT TwinMaker, and NVIDIA Omniverse are creating immersive metaverse experiences.

Danone is using Matterport Pro3 cameras to capture 3D imagery of its facilities so authorized users can virtually visit and explore the production site using a computer or mobile device. Burckhardt Compression uses PTC’s spatial computing services for remote assistance and automated report-generation scenarios involving a supertanker in the middle of the ocean. Other notable providers include AVEVA, Dassault Systèmes, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Nokia.

Martin opines that the dream to enable full factory metaverse experiences is far from realized, but the work has begun. He concludes that initial implementations will start with a portion of a factory or production line, likely on an as-needed basis. The broader environment is well-suited to partnerships that ease points of integration and enable marketplaces in the long run.

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Forrester identifies seven levers of trust: accountability, competency, consistency, dependability, empathy, integrity, and transparency. Understanding these levers and how buyers rely on them helps companies win and retain customers, receive the accolades of their peers, and enjoy a strong buyer preference.

Report highlights

While consistency is a top trust lever for business buyers in Asia-Pacific, buyers in the region favour secondary trust levers like integrity and accountability more than others.

Regulated industries often value all trust levers evenly. Trust lever utility score differences for industries like financial services, insurance, and healthcare are consistently smaller than other industries, indicating a more evenly distributed spread with less extreme favourites.

Risk-tolerant buyers globally deem competence (53%), consistency (33%), and dependability (28%) critical while giving the lowest ranking to empathy (-55%). As business group size and complexity grow, so does the importance of competence. The more complex a buying scenario, the less empathy matters.

According to Forrester, trust drives several positive business outcomes. For example, nearly two-thirds of global business purchase influencers who trust a company will pay a premium to work with that company. In contrast, 83% would recommend the company to others externally.

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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.

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It has grown to become the leading on-demand platform in Indonesia, with additional operations in Vietnam and Singapore. The Gojek platform now comprises over 2.7 million driver partners across the region. Gojek is part of the GoTo Group, the largest digital ecosystem in Indonesia, consisting of Gojek, Tokopedia, GoTo Financial, and GoTo Logistics.

Rewards and challenges

Herman Cahyadi, the head of People and Culture at Gojek Indonesia, shares the ins and outs of his role, especially in the era of post-pandemic digital transformation.

His role encompasses a wide range of responsibilities related to managing and developing the organisation's workforce, fostering a positive and productive work environment, and aligning the company's people-related initiatives with its overall business goals. It also includes strategic leadership, employee development and training, employee engagement and culture, compensation and benefits, change management, internal communication, and workforce analytics.

From the multiple responsibilities on his plate, talent acquisition and retention remain to be a big challenge for him. He also observes a talent shortage, especially in the field of technology.

"This scarcity made it challenging to find qualified candidates due to the increasing demand, leading to a rush to hire for specific roles."

Herman Cahyadi

There were also pandemic-related challenges such as a rapid shift to remote working for many companies. "Organisations had to quickly adapt to remote hiring and onboarding processes, which posed challenges in maintaining company culture and ensuring employee engagement," he added.

Aside from that, the pandemic also prompted a widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work models. Companies had to navigate challenges related to managing remote teams and maintaining a cohesive work environment.

The Oxford Group researchers noted that the pandemic dramatically changed the way people work, citing a PwC survey revealing that 55% of employees prefer a hybrid work model post-pandemic. Hybrid work setup also offers a lot of benefits such as improvement of work-life balance, greater flexibility, increased productivity, and reduced costs. The study noted that businesses embracing this model shall reap its benefits.

Despite the challenges, Cahyadi finds a lot of rewarding things in his job such as learning and growth, ownership and autonomy and the ability to innovate.

"Leaders have the opportunity to expand their skill set, learn from challenges, and develop leadership qualities that can be valuable throughout their careers. This level of responsibility can be deeply fulfilling, allowing leaders to shape the company's direction based on their vision. We have the chance to foster a culture of creativity and exploration, driving the development of new products, services, and approaches," Cahyadi says.

Courage to Transform

The recent pandemic became one of the biggest drivers for transformation at Gojek. Cahyadi explains how he learned three important things during the pandemic. The first one is leadership through uncertainty. He shares that "leaders discovered that their ability to provide stability, direction, and a sense of purpose was crucial during times of uncertainty. Authentic and transparent leadership helped build trust and confidence."

Also, for Cahyadi, the pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital tools and technologies. He was able to learn the value of embracing digital transformation to ensure business continuity, enhance customer experiences, and streamline operations.

Aside from that, the pandemic accelerated the adoption of remote work on a global scale. "It demonstrated that remote and distributed work arrangements can be effective, and many organisations realised that they could maintain productivity and collaboration even when employees are not physically present in the office," he adds.

As a result, Gojek was able to implement changes to transform company culture such as regular one-on-one meetings, transparent communication and encouraging diversity and inclusion.

"In embracing diversity and inclusivity in your teams, ensure that managers promote an inclusive environment where everyone's voices are heard and respected," Cahyadi notes.

"A lot of people are coming from different countries, different cultures and different attitudes that we never saw before. When you sit down here, you may be from Singapore, from India, etc., but we are here to build something out of the collaboration between all of us," adds the Gojek head.

Pew Research Centre noted that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in the workplace contribute to a positive work environment. The United Nations cited DEI as a key driver for resilience and plays a crucial role in driving the high performance of the workforce.

He encourages others to have the courage to transform which for him "is about making a conscious choice to embrace change despite the initial discomfort it may bring. It's acknowledging that while staying within the comfort zone might provide temporary ease, it's the journey beyond that brings lasting fulfilment, growth, and the possibility of reaching one's full potential."

Wisdom for Leaders

"The most important thing about being a leader," he shares, "is that you can adapt to all the changes and know how to put yourself in the middle of any hot situation."

He encourages leaders to lead by example. "As a leader, your behaviour sets the tone for the entire organisation. Demonstrate the qualities you wish to see in managers – approachability, transparency, empathy, and open communication," he adds.

Julia Martins, an Asana leader, reinforces the importance of leading by example. She says that it is the difference between, "you can do this" and "we can do this together". The former shows support and encouragement but the latter builds camaraderie, connection, and trust.

Cahyadi also encourages leaders to set clear expectations, foster trust, and psychological safety, manage expectations, and learn from mistakes. He says that leaders should embrace an iterative approach "that allows for adjustments based on feedback and evolving circumstances. This flexibility enables the organisation to adapt to unforeseen challenges and capitalise on emerging opportunities."

Self-transformation

Cahyadi, who finds his passion in HR, shares that he is not initially from the field. "I never touched human resources, even if you look at my educational background. I am from the business marketing management industry."

He shares that since high school, he has been exposed to the ins and outs of organisations through the student body and his church. That is where he learned to connect with people and to increase work quality and productivity.

Through his experiences in life, he now advocates that "at the heart of Human Resources Strategic Management lies the convergence of two critical elements: people and strategy."

He believes that the role of Human Resources (HR) has evolved from administrative tasks to a strategic cornerstone.

"As someone deeply passionate about Human Resources Strategic Management, I have come to recognise the profound impact this field has on shaping organisational success. This passion has driven me to explore the intricate interplay between people, strategy, and innovation, and has led me to appreciate how strategic HR management can drive an organisation to new heights," he shares.

* Editor's notes: This article is part of the Cxociety Coffee Table Book project (The Project) which chronicles the journey and experiences of senior business, operations, finance and technology leaders in Asia in recent years. The Project illustrates the tenacity, ingenuity and resiliency of the human spirit in the face of seemingly endless challenges.

With nearly 50 stories chronicled in The Project, it is a must-read compendium of learnings and experiences from seasoned professionals in the region.

Click on the link here to order your copy.

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Senior director analyst in the Gartner HR practice, Emily Rose McRae dives into the latest insights on crucial future of work trends for 2024 — from transformative four-day workweeks to strategies for climate change protection, breaking the paper ceiling, and navigating the impact of generative AI.

She looks into diversity, equality and inclusion and why conflict management skills are needed now more than ever.

One of the interesting topics she covers here is the issue of breaking the “paper ceiling” barrier for employees who are good at what they do but may not have an educational degree or certification in that area to meet standard qualifier conditions.

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"’Do more with less’ will be the mandate in 2024 for both enterprises and service providers,” said Hrishi Raj Agarwalla, vice president at Everest Group. “Enterprise leaders in our 2024 Key Issues Study are focused on lowering costs and increasing profitability and will be placing high expectations on service providers with little room for rate increases.”

The top priorities for enterprises for the year ahead are revenue growth and a continued emphasis on cost optimisation.

Talent acquisition, which dominated enterprise concerns just two years ago, is no longer among the Top 5 expected challenges, falling to No. 8 from previous No.1 and No. 3 positions in expectations for 2022 and 2023, respectively.

“Enterprise spending in 2024 will be directed toward modernising technology, data analytics and process optimisation. We’ll certainly see a ramp-up in GenAI investment as organisations continue to explore use cases and try to keep pace with the rapid changes AI is bringing.”

“Overall, our research indicates that 2024 will be a ‘nose to the grindstone’ year of improving operational efficiency,” he concluded.

Findings from 2024 Key Issues Study

New technologies drive optimism

Although “bullish” may be too strong an adjective to use about enterprise expectations for 2024, the majority of enterprise executives are optimistic about the evolution and adoption of new technologies (76%) and positive changes in customer interest and purchasing behaviour (52%).

However, 75% of executives believed global macroeconomic conditions would have a negative influence on their business in 2024. Similarly, 68% of executives believe the geopolitical environment will pose challenges in the year ahead.

The global IT-BP services industry will continue to grow and shift

A vast majority of enterprises (82%) expect their global services budgets either to remain flat (39%) or increase in 2024 (43%). The headcount growth is also expected to be lower than in 2023. Further, enterprises expect to increase the leverage of Global Business Services and offshore locations.

New investment priorities

The key levers executives plan to use to achieve their business goals in the coming year include operational levers such as:

• Technology modernisation
• Data analytics and insights
• Process optimisation and operational efficiency

Productivity and resilience will drive technology investments

Executives ranked cybersecurity as the highest priority technology investment for the next six to 12 months, followed by cloud solutions, advanced automation, big data analytics and generative AI (GenAI). Enterprises are still early in their GenAI adoption cycles. Due to a lack of in-house capabilities, many enterprises are turning to service providers for help in integrating GenAI into their operations. Most executives (67%) expect GenAI to improve or transform workflows in functional areas.

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At the top of Marr’s list of IoT trends is security. He posits that these billions of connected IoT devices represent a cybersecurity risk, putting security and privacy at the top of the totem pole of trends.

Another trend he sees is AI-augmented IoT. “IoT devices are not just connected they're becoming smarter. Imagine smart gadgets that communicate efficiently with each other preventing digital chaos,” predicts Marr.

He predicts that the smartwatch will become our new personal assistant thanks to generative AI in wearables – possibly spelling the end of AI assistants like Siri and Alexa.

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“The Asia/Pacific healthcare sector is at a seminal moment, defined by a patient-centric care model combined with an ‘AI Everywhere’ approach says Manoj Vallikkat, senior research manager for Healthcare Insights at IDC Asia/Pacific.

“With the advent of GenAI and the need for consumerisation of care, the next five years are set to be the defining period for the healthcare sector, and we are currently at the starting point of this exciting journey.”

Manoj Vallikkat

AI-driven predictions for the healthcare sector

GenAI PX: By the end of 2027, driven by the demand to scale hyper-personalised patient experiences, improve collaboration, and foster equity, 60% of Asia/Pacific healthcare organisations will double GenAI investments.

AI Diagnostics: Driven by the need for improved diagnostic accuracy, speed, and workflow efficiency, care providers in Asia/Pacific will see a 60% increase in AI solution adoption by 2026.

AI Care Anywhere: By 2027, 50% of the healthcare industry in Asia/Pacific will leverage GenAI to address data and workflow fragmentation across care settings to improve diagnosis and patient safety to scale care anywhere.

Other healthcare predictions

Special attention has been given towards optimising technology investments, with a particular emphasis on enhancing operational efficiency and elevating patient outcomes.

Industry Clouds: Driven by the perceived value of purpose-built functionalities for healthcare, 40% of healthcare organisations in Asia/Pacific will adopt industry clouds by 2025.

Payvider Financing: By 2026, 45% of Asia/Pacific private health insurance companies and 75% of U.S. health systems will be "payviders" to improve risk management and address the rising cost of care.

H@H: By 2026, a doubling of hospital-at-home patients will propel a 55% growth in investments in tech-enabled integrated care initiatives to address patient safety, workforce, and care access concerns in Asia/Pacific. 

Techquity: By 2028, 60% of the healthcare industry in Asia/Pacific will prioritise tech partnerships that champion “techquity,” reducing the digital divide and recognising social determinants of health as vital influencers.

Integrated Platforms: Personalised health data platforms will support 50% of covered patients in advanced economies by 2028 while building more accurate patient journey simulations for providers and life science companies in Asia/Pacific.

Future of Hospitals: By 2029, hospital investments in sustainability and modernisation will increase by 50%, driven by the need to reduce costs, improve quality of care, and enhance organisational resiliency in Asia/Pacific.

“Equitable healthcare has always been a big headache for the healthcare sector, but the evolution of technology, such as AI, will provide viable means to reduce the gaps in digital healthcare,” says Louise Francis, head of public sector research with IDC Asia/Pacific.

She opined that the emergence of the concept of ‘techquity’ highlights how technology will provide the bridge to enabling equitable access to healthcare services over the next five years.

“Healthcare providers in the region tend to prioritise investments in data management, AI, and automation, targeting decentralised care and patient outcome, supported by enhanced clinician efficiency. In the healthcare sector, the unique risks associated with AI are significant, which necessitates a greater focus on explainability and data security,” Manoj concluded.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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This AI revolution holds significant implications for manufacturers, retailers, and other supply chain participants, promising a more synchronized, responsive, and cost-effective supply chain across the region.

The IDC Future Enterprise Resiliency & Spending Survey 2023 revealed that most supply chain organizations in the Asia/Pacific region (80%) expect the economy in 2024 to either remain stagnant or shrink compared to 2023.

To stay competitive and keep growing, these companies are focusing on productivity and efficiency. Over the next 5 years, investments in AI will need to focus on creating substantial efficiency gains and cost reductions to counteract the potential economic stagnation.

Supply chain organizations are, therefore, poised to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, with a heavy emphasis on AI-driven technologies that can streamline and optimize operations, enhance decision-making, and foster more proactive and predictive supply chain strategies.

Enterprises throughout the Asia/Pacific region are starting to acknowledge the importance of utilizing AI to enhance their supply chain processes. This shift is crucial because AI can help companies extract valuable insights from data, enabling predictive analytics and intelligent automation, leading to improved demand forecasting, resource allocation, and customer satisfaction in an increasingly volatile market.

How AI will impact supply chains in Asia/Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ)

Logistics visibility and performance optimization: By 2027, 40% of APEJ logistics teams will deploy advanced visibility, using AI/ML analytics for insights that optimize performance and achieve 3% savings in logistics spending.

Parts planning productivity: By 2026, 40% of the A2000 will look to autonomous service parts planning to ensure mean time to repair can be improved, ensuring customer or operator assets are productive.

Last-mile profitability improvements: By 2028, increased planning and execution integration, nearshoring, improved inventory allocation, AI-based e-commerce, and fulfilment optimization will improve last-mile profitability by 5%.

The transformative power of AI in Asia/Pacific supply chains is reshaping workforce dynamics and amplifying cybersecurity needs, while also promising enhanced forecasting and strategic decision-making. Enhanced visibility and optimized performance in logistics are just the beginning. New performance standards will be set using predictive shipping and algorithmic supply chains, increasing productivity and improving inventory availability and customer service.

It's worth noting that while AI is an essential component of future supply chain technology, a comprehensive approach to technology is required to realize the advantages of a digital business fully. Other significant predictions for the future of supply chain technology include:

Robotics automation surge: By 2025, 50% of APEJ companies will implement broad robotics automation to improve order fulfilment speed and accuracy, resulting in an increased pick speed of 10% and reduced pick errors by 2% to 3%.

Ecosystem operations digitalization: By 2025, 60% of A2000 organizations will have a digital commerce platform in place for ecosystem operations, driving a 10% higher data capitalization rate and improving customer retention by 10%.

Operational role augmentation: By 2027, 60% of Asia/Pacific-based organizations will augment operational roles with automation technology, elevating employee engagement and unlocking a 50% increase in worker efficiency.

Embracing the circular economy: By 2028, 50% of Asia/Pacific-based manufacturers will operationalize circular economy principles to improve the availability of strategic/direct materials and improve supply reliability by 15%.

Relocation of Final Assembly: By the end of 2026, 30% of A2000 companies will have relocated final assembly capabilities closer to demand, resulting in a 10% reduction in overall logistics costs.

Increasing Supply Chain Orchestration: By 2028, 35% of A2000 companies will be using supply chain orchestration tools that integrate key suppliers/customers, including digital twin capabilities, improving supply chain responsiveness by 15%.

"The integration of AI within supply chains signifies a crucial evolution, anticipating an accelerated adoption of advanced technology. This shift is poised to bring substantial improvements, ranging from heightened productivity to more engaged workforces. The immediate focus is on use cases that enhance short-term productivity and efficiency, with a long-term vision encompassing broader ecosystem integration and an increased emphasis on sustainability," says Rani Ratna, senior research manager at IDC Asia/Pacific.

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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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“Cybersecurity is just one component of cyber resilience, but, unfortunately, many enterprises fail to understand the subtle difference,” said Kumar Avijit, practice director of Information Technology Services at Everest Group. He opined that while most C-suite executives concentrate on preventive controls and response, equal importance needs to be allocated to the recovery, revamp, and reinforcement stages of cyber resilience.

“For any business, having a comprehensive cyber resilience strategy is critical in safeguarding long-term viability and success,” he added.

The “5 Rs of cyber resilience”

Ready – High: C-suite is extensively focusing on pre-emptive measures to secure itself from cyberattacks and are investing in cutting-edge technologies.

Respond – High: There is rapid adoption of extended detection and response (XDR) tools in the market, and service providers too are now focusing on automated incident response to cut down on the standard metric of Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR).

Recover – Medium: There is very little focus on the recovery aspect from the C-suite, underpinned by the challenges of data fragmentation, infected backups, and meeting Recovery Time Objective (RTO) that are visible across the C-suite.

Reinforce – Low: The C-suite is not focused on learning from cyberattacks on peer organisations and building defences accordingly. In most cases, the C-suite lacks a comprehensive vision of security and instead remains reactive.

Revamp – Low: The C-suite is not acting agile enough to focus on the next-generation technology and thinking a step beyond on how to secure itself from the new attack vectors that the new shine tech brings.

Selected highlights

• Projections suggest the cybersecurity services market, currently valued at $US 70-73 billion, will surpass the $100 billion mark in 2025, exhibiting a CAGR of 16-18% between 2021 and 2025.
• Identity and access management (IAM), cloud security, and application security form the largest segments of the cybersecurity market, collectively representing 56% of the overall market.
• Cybersecurity consulting services are experiencing rapid growth, with a current market share of 25%. This is closely followed by design and implementation at 29% and managed security services leading at 46%.
• North America remains the largest market (40%) followed by Europe (33%) and Asia (21%).
• 63% of enterprises have mentioned lack of skills/talent as among their top three biggest challenges when it comes to cybersecurity.

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ABI Research predicts the global installed base of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in warehouses will surpass 500,000 by 2030.

“There are now many options to automate a warehouse. Both stationary and mobile automation solutions have continued to expand to new form factors and are becoming more effective as Artificial Intelligence (AI) processing grows,” explains Ryan Wiggin, supply chain management & logistics industry analyst at ABI Research.

He estimates that new warehouse buildings dropped by as much as 35% in 2023 compared to 2022 because of economic headwinds and demand shifts, with the reduction expected to continue into the first half of 2024.

However, he believes that as construction picks up later this year, incorporating automation into new builds will be top of mind for organisations.

“While automation is of key interest, companies should continue to invest heavily in augmenting their manual workers with digital devices and wearables to boost worker experience while introducing automation for basic movement tasks. The most efficient warehouses are those that focus on both areas,” concludes Wiggin.

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“CSCOs see GenAI as supportive of their broader digital transformation objectives,” said Noha Tohamy, distinguished VP analyst in Gartner’s supply chain practice.

"Many supply chain leaders were already leveraging supply chain technologies and advanced analytics, and it’s clear from this data that the majority also see the value in GenAI to enhance productivity, improve business agility and reduce costs."

Noha Tohamy

“The challenge for many of these organisations over the next 12 months will be in scaling their pilot projects to broader adoption,” she continued.

Gartner surveyed 127 supply chain leaders in November 2023 on their plans to utilize GenAI within their function for 2024. Nearly two-thirds of respondents plan to, or are already in the process of, implementing the technology, with just 2% of respondents having no plans to do so over the next year (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Supply chain leaders’ GenAI utilization plans

Tohamy noted, however, that the survey responses show that the supply chain lags behind other enterprise functions, like marketing and sales, in adoption. This could present an opportunity for supply chain organisations to be “fast followers” by capitalizing on early learnings and technology investments from other functional partners.

The survey data showed that the most impactful supply chain use cases for GenAI include areas such as code augmentation, providing more insights into supply chain key performance indicators and staff assistance chatbots.

The survey also showed that supply chain leaders are backing up their implementation plans with significant budget allocations. Supply chain leaders will allocate 5.8% of their budgets to the technology, as well as incremental employee spend to deploy GenAI. Sixty-five per cent of respondents said they will hire dedicated staff and experts to help deploy the technology in 2024.

Tohamy said that the projected budget data shows that supply chain leaders are serious about making progress on GenAI solutions this year and that they also recognize the need for additional resources to successfully move beyond small-scale pilots.

“CSCOs may also be factoring in impacts on employee roles required of their staff as they shift to higher value-add activities, while lower-level tasks are increasingly automated,” concluded Tohamy.

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Manufacturers face significant challenges in navigating a dynamic and fiercely competitive market. Issues such as supply chain disruptions, escalating inflation, growing cyber threats, workforce shortages, and mandatory sustainability compliances are compelling organisations to reassess and reshape their business strategies.

In the IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Manufacturing 2024 Predictions — Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) Implications, IDC predicts that by 2027, 60% of Asia/Pacific-based organisations will augment operational roles with automation technology, elevating employee engagement and unlocking a 50% increase in worker efficiency.

IDC’s predictions highlight that AI will drive greater automation that reduces human intervention, creating an autonomous environment, and improving decision-making that drives higher operational efficiencies. The introduction of GenAI has spurred manufacturers to reconsider their approach and reimagine the next level of use cases.

2024 predictions

• Use of AI/ML for high-mix, low-volume production: By 2025, to promote personalized products as added-value, 40% of Asia-based 2000 (A2000) manufacturers will fully utilize AI/ML for high-mix, low-volume production.

• Generative AI integration into operational systems: By 2025, 40% of Asia/Pacific-based companies will be integrating operational systems with GenAI to better ingest data, identify issues, and provide real-time context to operators improving efficiency by 5%.

• Use of AI/ML in robotics and automation: By 2028, the integration of AI/ML into robotic and automation routines within industrial operations will increase by 30%, driving higher efficiencies and a 10% reduction in downtime.

In the near term (2024-2026), the focus will be on the integration of AI to augment operational roles and improve product personalization, and on the integration of GenAI into operational workflow. Meanwhile, the long-term (2027-2029) focus will be on the adoption of AI-powered robotics and automation for higher efficiencies and better productivity performance.

"Manufacturers in the Asia/Pacific region are adopting a digital business model with a primary focus on increasing revenue streams, enhancing operational efficiency, managing risks, and fortifying operational resilience," says Dr Wai Yee Lee, research manager for IDC Manufacturing Insights Asia/Pacific.

She notes that technologies such as automation, robotics, cloud computing, edge computing, artificial intelligence, GenAI, and digital twin are pivotal enablers for organisations to cultivate operational excellence, business agility, and resilience.

“These technologies play a crucial role in achieving both short- and long-term goals, thereby opening up new avenues of opportunity for businesses,” she opined.

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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. 

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Generative AI emerges as a game-changer for organisational advancement, weaving a seamless tapestry across three key fronts: intelligent document processing (IDP), generative automation, and knowledge sharing.

• Smarter Document Handling: By 2026, businesses that link GenAI to smart document handling will discover 20% more ways to use it, boosting productivity, scalability, and delivering better customer experiences.

• Generative Automation: Business teams using code generation copilots will achieve 70% success rate in streamlining jobs with task/workflow automation, replacing low-code and IT-supported development by 2024.

• Efficient Knowledge Sharing: In 2025, GenAI tools will enable senior leaders to double the productive use of unstructured data by discovering untapped insights and knowledge, driving 20% growth in sustainable business benefits.

Expanding its influence

As GenAI takes centre stage, its adaptive capabilities are set to streamline processes, automate tasks, and redefine the skillsets required for various roles. While this evolution brings forth unprecedented opportunities for upskilling and reskilling, it also underscores the imperative for organisations to adapt to this paradigm shift, ensuring the alignment of talent with the dynamic demands of the future workplace.

This prediction not only foretells a redefined professional landscape but also emphasizes the pivotal role of GenAI in driving organisational agility and competitiveness. In this dynamic environment, the significance of skill development cannot be overstated, as it becomes the essence of staying competitive and relevant.

GenAI is not just a technological advancement but a catalyst for change in the skill landscape. The imperative for skill development is no longer a choice but a necessity in a landscape where GenAI is reshaping how we work.

• Job evolution: By 2027, 40% of current job roles will be redefined or eliminated across A2000 organisations accelerated by GenAI adoption.

• Tailored skills boost: Enterprises will leverage personalized technology skills development to drive $1 trillion in productivity gains by 2027, enabled by GenAI and automation everywhere.

• Tech skill support: By 2027, 80% of A1000 organisations will mitigate technical skills shortages using digital adoption platforms.

• AR/VR engineering and training: By 2028, half of large businesses will use prompt engineering to prototype AR/VR simulations, reducing development time from weeks to hours and creating precision training.

Simultaneously, digital twins and sustainable office design are capturing attention, reflecting a growing focus on environmental consciousness in the region. Organisations are recalibrating priorities to balance technological innovation with a commitment to sustainability, showcasing a harmonious approach where cutting-edge technology aligns with ecological stewardship in APEJ's business narrative.

• Digital twin maturity: By 2028, digital twin technologies will enhance virtual and physical office user experiences, driving a 30%+ improvement in retention of workers in A1000 companies.

• Green offices: By 2028, half of the biggest companies are set to invest in what we call "Climate Heavens" for their offices. This means using things like assets and renewable energy to cover 30% of their ongoing operating costs, making workplaces more eco-friendly.

"As the benefits and applicable use cases of GenAI unfold, organisations are exploring the outcomes that GenAI can potentially bring to business operations and innovation. The focus on skill development becomes a necessity and a strategic imperative, as GenAI enables personalized development. Simultaneously, the reimagination of workplaces, with digital twins and sustainability stand out as key foci for companies," says Dr Lily Phan, research director for Future of Work at IDC Asia/Pacific.

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ABI Research says the market is facing a period of significant evolution due to the growing presence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions acting as an enabling technology, which will fuel growth in the quality control machine vision market to reach US$7.2 billion by 2028, up from US$2.3 billion in 2023.

“AI is accelerating and improving the efficiency of the MV market. It increases inspection speeds and enables the movement of quality upstream, and AI systems are more adaptable than traditional software,” explains James Prestwood, industrial and manufacturing industry analyst at ABI Research.

“Although many AI solutions can easily integrate with existing MV hardware and software, making it a low-hanging fruit for manufacturers to leverage, its lack of explainability can be challenging. Without this functionality, AI could struggle to make traction in high-regulation markets.” James Prestwood

“While some AI vendors are making great strides to support their software with explainability functionality, such as Neurala, it is not a standard feature on all solutions yet,” said Prestwood. 

The MV ecosystem comprises a wide range of vendors, with many specializing in providing best-of-breed components, such as Neurala, Intel, Google, Landing AI, Instrumental for AI, and Sony, Teledyne, and Nikon for cameras. Other vendors focus on providing robust end-to-end MV solutions, including Aqrose Technology, Cognex, Basler, Keyence, SICK, Omron, and Elementary Robotics.

“For most manufacturers, budget and build complexity will be the defining factor for choosing off-the-shelf solutions and build-your-own with best-of-breed component deployments. Smaller manufacturers will likely find the greatest use for off-the-shelf solutions due to their lower cost and simpler requirements,” Prestwood concludes.

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The move is part of the beverage firm’s digital transformation strategy. Coca-Cola says by introducing Industrial 4.0 capabilities into its plant, it will be able to build supply chain resilience into its system and increase plant capacity in anticipation of future growth opportunities.

XSQUARE’s Springer AGVs have been integrated into the plant’s shop floor and automated warehouse to transport finished goods within the premises. The forklifts have been incorporated with Coca-Cola’s existing sub-systems and operate in hybrid working environments using XSQUARE’s Xymphony software, which allows for seamless data interoperability and increases operational efficiency.

Gerardo Artavia, plant general manager at Coca-Cola Singapore, says the introduction of the AGVs is part of the company’s efforts to continuously improve processes, create higher value-added jobs for its workforce, and contribute to Singapore’s vibrant ecosystem for advanced manufacturing.

Jens Bohnwagner, CEO of XSQUARE, says as consumer expectations in the region rapidly evolve, warehouses must step up their capabilities. “Our technology is not just about automation; it's about enhancing human efforts and ensuring efficiency in every aspect.”

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Below are Seagate’s predictions for data storage in the AI era

As generative AI becomes more democratized, data storage will drive AI success.

Businesses will be saving more operational data to teach AI, machine learning, and deep learning models moving forward; more companies will train models on both external and internal data so they can benefit from their proprietary information.

Hyperscale tech giants are expected to accelerate investment into cloud capacity to support AI program maturation. AI will also drive increased IT spending and data storage demand in the enterprise, as businesses seek a competitive edge through improvements to productivity and efficiency.

Data centre refreshes will benefit from leaps forward in hard drive areal density.

With nearly 90% of data in cloud data centres residing on hard drives, there is an opportunity to replace fleets of lower-capacity hard drives with higher-capacity drives, as and when refresh cycles come.

This includes the use of heat-resisted magnetic recording (HAMR) in high-density drives, which will mean significant power and space savings and massive TCO efficiencies—including CPU, RAM, and floor space. Not to mention help reduce carbon footprint with more durable and energy-efficient storage.

Flash and hard drive technology will continue to coexist in the data centre in 2024.

The exponential data growth will drive demand for mass-capacity hard drives, whose synergy with flash storage will continue to support modern workloads. Hard drives will remain the most cost-effective option for most capacity-centric storage tasks.

Seagate claims hard drive storage will offer mass data storage at less than one-fifth the cost of comparable all-flash solutions on a per bit basis, and that the value gap will not come close to closing next year—or over the next decade.

Data storage will shape three major applications of the future.

Edge computing and Internet of Things (IoT): The integration of edge computing with IoT technologies is pushing the boundaries of data storage, demanding unprecedented scalability, latency, and operational flexibility to correlate real-time data with vast historical datasets for immediate analysis and forecasting.

Quantum computing and data processing: The rise of quantum computing demands new data storage architectures to prevent data loss due to the volatile nature of qubits. This will require quantum-safe cryptographic solutions.

Genomic data and precision medicine: A single human genome requires up to 200GB of storage space. As this data accumulates across millions of individuals, healthcare systems face logistical hurdles and ethical and privacy concerns.

Advanced analytics tools using machine learning algorithms are also being fine-tuned to analyse this vast amount of data swiftly and accurately. This evolving data infrastructure aims to pave the way for a future in healthcare where genomic profiles guide everything from preventive measures to targeted therapies, thereby enhancing patient outcomes and healthcare efficiency.

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“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.

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Digital technology and cloud capabilities are essential components in data-driven operations (DDO). IDC’s 2023 Worldwide Future of Operations Survey shows that cloud is one of the top technology priorities for organisations in Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ), with 77% of respondents in the region saying that cloud is essential or very important to their organisation’s operations.

Other key technologies needed to achieve efficient, resilient, and optimized operations include AI, robotics, mixed reality tools, edge computing, 5G and cybersecurity.

"Organisations in Asia/Pacific recognize the importance of investing in essential technologies for data-driven operations," states Rakesh Patni, associate research director for Future of Operations Asia Pacific.

Looking to the future

Generative AI (GenAI) will be essential to driving greater insights from operational data: 57% of APEJ respondents said GenAI tools (such as ChatGPT) will be one of the top 3 analytic tools and techniques their organisation plans to make significant new investments in to analyse operational data.

GenAI, employing both unsupervised and semi-supervised algorithms to produce new content based on existing text, audio, video, images, and code, represents a pivotal technology heralding the advent of a novel computing age - the Era of AI Everywhere.

AI: A Cornerstone of the Future of Operations

GenAI Data Discovery: By 2027, 30% of A2000 will utilize generative AI to produce ad-hoc operational performance reports, saving 10% of operations labour costs from manual data aggregation

AI-driven Industrial Automation: By 2026 20% of industrial operations in Asia will use AI/ML for vision-based systems and robotic and automation processes to achieve higher efficiencies, reduce downtime, and improve worker safety

Cybersecurity Impact of AI: By 2026, 50% of organisations in Asia will leverage AI-enabled advanced threat detection, to mitigate growing risks from GenAI cybercrime tools (WormGPT) used in phishing and ransomware attacks

Between 2024-2025, the focus will be on addressing the cybersecurity impact of GenAI cybercrime tools being used to launch ever more sophisticated ransomware attacks and investments in AI/ML vision-based systems and robotics to accelerate AI-driven industrial automation to improve operational efficiency and reduce downtime.

Longer term (2027 onwards) organisations will leverage GenAI to produce ad-hoc operational performance reports, saving on operations labour costs from manual data aggregation and increasing the speed of internal and administrative tasks.

While the current emphasis has been on AI, IDC also emphasizes the necessity of adopting an integrated approach, encompassing both a variety of technological and strategic facets, to adeptly manoeuvre through the era of digital business transformation.

IDC's Future of Operations Predictions for 2023

Talent development investment: Driven by rising digital talent shortages, over 40% of A2000 will need to increase talent development spending substantially to execute digital operations roadmaps and achieve ROI targets by 2024

Sustainability-driven OpEx: By 2027, 25% of industrial organisations in Asia will leverage real-time data capture and integration investments for sustainability initiatives to boost operational performance and visibility

Unified partnership transformation strategy: By 2027, 25% of A2000 companies will spend 15% of their digital technology budgets with third-party IT and engineering services partners to simultaneously transform multiple operations functions

Private Ops Networks: By 2028, 25% of industrial organisations in Asia will have deployed Private LTE or 5G networks to at least 30% of their operational sites to reduce up-front costs and improve data collection

Edge-native app data: By 2026, organisations in Asia that have embraced edge-native platforms will extract 2x more value from data, and deploy projects 3x faster than those with traditional core, edge, and cloud resources

Cloud data repatriation: By 2025, 30% of A2000 will undergo initiatives to pull data back from the public cloud, shifting operational data that does not require intensive processing locally, reducing OpEx costs by up to 10%

Human augmentation through technology: By 2027, 60% of Asia/Pacific-based organisations will augment operational roles with automation technology, elevating employee engagement and unlocking a 50% increase in worker efficiency

Patni suggests that organisations establish core technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence and advanced connectivity and acquire new digital capabilities to improve their ability to contextualize high-quality data and drive greater insights into their operations.

He cautioned, however, that they also focus on talent development through new hires, forming partnerships with service providers, or by enhancing the skills of their current workforce.

“The combination of skilled talent and appropriate technology, aligned with a strategic approach, is crucial for optimized and efficient operations. The Future of Operations predictions provide insights and guidance to help organisations in Asia Pacific navigate their digital transformation journey," concluded Patni.

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For organisations to reap the benefits of automation via AI/ML workflows and capabilities, there is an entrenched need to modernise and renew their legacy software applications with new intelligent ones.

These intelligent AI and GenAI infused applications will pave the way for enhanced user interface thus user experience; and boost data-driven insights, timely decisions, and better business outcomes.

IDC predicts that AI will create an organisational cultural shift and new technology frames will augment 50% of APEJ workforce by mid-2025, slowly reshaping the enterprise toward more technology usage, and enhancing performance.

IDC expects this transformation to reshape organisations towards higher technology usage with greater human-machine collaboration, which will generate demand for strategic and value-added roles which are not able to be fulfilled by AI and GenAI.

IDC predicts a substantial surge in technology buyers' investments in AI and GenAI-driven enterprise software applications to transform their business operations.

Top AI-driven predictions for APEJ for the next five years

• Human-like interfaces fast-track decision velocity. By end-2025, 30% of APEJ organisations will take advantage of humanlike interfaces in their enterprise applications to gain more insights quickly, improving decision velocity.

• Self-healing enterprise applications. By 2025, 15% of A2000 will gravitate to autonomous tech with self-healing code to improve processes; 30% will evolve for seamless integration in 2026, and 50% will evolve to self-healing apps by 2027.

• Enterprises applications modernisation. By early 2025, 60% of APEJ organisations still on legacy systems will need to modernise their applications immediately to survive and adapt to the digital world already surpassing them.

• Human-machine collaboration. GenAI/AI will close 15% of enterprise talent shortage gaps by 2025, but the practice and usage of GenAI/AI will create a surplus of talent across all lines of business by 2027.

• The time gap to decision-making narrows. By late 2024, 40% of the A2000 will focus on technology and the process time between the event that occurs and the point of decision-making to gain a competitive advantage.

Estelle Quek, senior research manager for software applications and channels strategies at IDC Asia/Pacific, says to expect a multi-phased adoption of intelligent enterprise applications by APEJ organisations between 2024 to 2028.

She opined that from 2024 to 2025, Asia's top 2,000 organisations will focus on changing internal perception and receptivity towards human-machine collaboration.

“By 2026, they will progress to integrate data and enterprise applications seamlessly and evolve to run as autonomous organisations by 2028. IDC outlines the deliberate strategies for tech buyer organisations to navigate this era of AI everywhere in this research," she concluded.

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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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In the region, Thailand is a major motorcycle manufacturing hub ranking 5th place in production capacity (2 million), after China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. After a decline by over half a million in the last decade, the 2-wheeler industry in the country is now recovering, reports MotorcyclesData.com.

One of the seven motorcycle-manufacturing companies in Thailand is Ducati, an Italian company headquartered in Bologna, Italy. Bruno Marvisi, the Asian suppliers development director for Ducati Motor Holding Thailand, says that the rising market demand, coupled with the pandemic brought about surprising challenges and innovations in the supply chain.  His experience with purchasing specialised motorcycle components during the pandemic led to a strategy he describes as "explore and evaluate."

"We produce, design, and assemble motorcycles in two locations. Our facilities are in Italy, and Thailand. Here at Ducati Motor Thailand, we produce bikes mainly for the Asian market, mostly ASEAN and Chinese markets, and some models also for the US market and the Australian market."

Bruno Marvisi

"My role in Thailand involves managing the supplier base in Asia: we have suppliers based in Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Taiwan," says the Ducati director. "We manage and follow all the activity for the complete group, including Italy."

Marvisi says that they receive the timing from the project manager and then they send their requests to the supplier of each commodity. "Our Italian colleagues send them to European suppliers, and we send the same requests to our Asian suppliers. Then we determine which would be the best supplier to develop with us—for example—a new part."

He adds that the main activity of the purchasing department is to try to find the right Original Equipment Manufacturer supplier for new parts.

Southeast Asia: Manufacturing Hub

Marvisi explains that Ducati Thailand was created to guarantee a certain level of local content and to leverage a more favourable tax position for the company when selling and shipping motorcycles within Asia.

"Manufacturers now have production plants here in Thailand or elsewhere in Asia: Triumph, BMW, and KTM each have a plant in the Philippines—all the European manufacturers operate plants in Southeast Asia so they can sell and ship bikes without passing duties and taxes onto their customers." Bruno Marvisi

The Ducati director explains that Asian suppliers must deliver the quality and technology standards that Ducati needs and must give feedback to their colleagues in Italy on Research and Development, and quality issues.

Pandemic Sales Boom

Ironically, during the pandemic, Ducati experienced its best year ever in terms of sales and revenue, according to Marvisi. "As people weren’t able to travel on holidays, they had more discretionary income," he says.

Stellar Market Research reported that the motorcycle market "is expected to witness growth post the pandemic since people will steer clear of public transportation to protect themselves from catching or spreading the virus."

During this time, both the motorcycle market and the bicycle market saw gains. However, this brought about some challenges that pushed Ducati to brainstorm innovations in the management of their supply chain.

"We have many suppliers in common with the bicycle industry, and we had a big supply chain problem with a Taiwanese supplier of parts and components," he says. "They told us that the bicycle market absorbed all their capacity."

Marvisi recalls how they also had problems outsourcing electronic parts like semiconductors. "We had a critical situation where we had to produce bikes that were essentially complete but missing one or two components due to supply chain issues."

He says that this created additional warehousing costs. "Fortunately, we benefitted from our synergy with Ducati Group, which is part of Volkswagen Group. Volkswagen offered a portion of their automobile production so that Ducati could use the requisite parts—which are common to both VW automobiles and our motorbikes." The company is directly owned by Italian automotive manufacturer Lamborghini and is connected to the Volkswagen group.

The pandemic also enhanced communication. "For two or three years we had daily calls with our suppliers—trying to find space in their pipelines, trying to find an alternate solution, looking for some way to feed our production lines," he says. "It was challenging, but it was also rewarding to learn how motivated our suppliers were to help us during this time."

New Normal

Things have righted themselves post-pandemic, but Marvisi says the rebalancing created additional supply chain problems. "Now we must slow our demands on our suppliers because of two factors. One is decreased customer demand because travel is once again possible, which attracts some of their income. The second is logistics, which are returning to pre-pandemic patterns."

"Transit during the pandemic was over 100 days of transhipment time from Asia to Italy, whereas now it’s more like 30-40 days," he says. "This creates high inventory stock, which we want to reduce to ease congestion at the warehouse. So, we ask our suppliers to slow production and we open discussion to find the right balance."

"The motorcycle market is seasonal," says the Ducati director. "If a certain model isn’t available during the summer, for example, customers may switch to one of your competitors. Every year we launch new models, but unlike the automobile market, consumers won’t wait four or five months—we must be agile and proactive."

Marvisi reflects on the realisations the pandemic taught them, such as strength, transparency and openness with their suppliers.  "It’s a partnership. The pandemic taught us that we need suppliers that are partners who understand Ducati and want to work with us."

"Now we go deeper with the details, and are willing to share information," says Marvisi. Transparency in the manufacturing process gives the chance to all parties to find alternative solutions, which led him to conclude that this kind of information exchange is crucial for them in the future.

Going Forward

The Ducati director says that they still apply the lessons they learned during the pandemic. "You must be open to listening, in a proactive way," he says. "Don’t just pretend to listen."

"Know what your colleagues—and your competitors—are doing," he says. "Understand the pros and cons of each alternative scenario, so you can help your company adapt. This is the way we can help suppliers, and leaders can help the team to find the right solution.

"Now that—post-pandemic—we can travel and visit suppliers in person, it’s imperative that we try to understand each step of each process in their manufacturing because that is where we might encounter bottlenecks," says Marvisi.

He says that they are more aware now that they need to understand the capacity of the supplier and detect any possible weak links within the organisation.

"If any given supplier has a problem, then it’s a problem for our company—we must be ready to have an alternative. We must be ready to explore and evaluate alternatives," says the Ducati director.

* Editor's notes: This article is part of the Cxociety Coffee Table Book project (The Project) which chronicles the journey and experiences of senior business, operations, finance and technology leaders in Asia in recent years. The Project illustrates the tenacity, ingenuity and resiliency of the human spirit in the face of seemingly endless challenges.

With nearly 50 stories chronicled in The Project, it is a must-read compendium of learnings and experiences from seasoned professionals in the region.

Click on the link here to order your copy.

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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.

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"The Smart Building of the Future," a new paper from Johnson Controls outlines how smart buildings equipped with advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, IoT, cloud and cybersecurity will help enterprises create a future where our buildings integrate with human and environmental ecosystems.

Smart buildings offer a harmonized environment that prioritizes both well-being and sustainability, using technology to adapt and unlock potential, support productivity and drive peak performance of building occupants.

"Never has it been more important for organisations to consider advanced and efficient ways to reduce their carbon footprint – especially in the buildings industry, which is the single largest source of our planet's greenhouse gas emissions," said Johnson Controls chief technology officer Vijay Sankaran.

He opined that the smart building of the future offers new and more effective ways to help companies meet critical climate goals, reduce costs, enhance daily operations to achieve business growth and improve personalized experiences.

“When a building 'comes alive' with smart technology, all stakeholders benefit from the integrated approach that ultimately creates a healthier, safer and more productive environment," he continued.

Factors Accelerating Smart Building Trends

Several factors are converging to accelerate the development and adoption of advanced building systems technology. As building owners work to respond to challenges such as rising energy costs and changes in occupancy patterns, among others, sophisticated IoT devices and the implementation of data analytics and AI have become more important than ever.

Key insights for building managers

Ubiquitous connectivity through cloud-based services on the edge breaks down barriers between siloed and integrated devices, enabling the flow of real-time information that business leaders can analyse for insights and continuous improvement.

AI-enabled autonomous smart buildings will be at the core of the next generation of smart buildings, driving efficiencies, enhancing the user experience and enabling advancements in sustainability. AI at the edge reduces privacy, compliance and cyber concerns by allowing data to be securely processed and stored within the building operator's network.

Digital twins enable a continuous feedback loop between the physical and the virtual by facilitating the integration of AI, IoT and cloud technologies to generate strategic recommendations for improving building performance and user experience.

As many of the technical foundations required to turn buildings into smart buildings already exist, organisations should take additional action to prepare for and improve their future building operations.

This includes developing a strategy that includes user experience, partnering with IT and cybersecurity teams, establishing partnerships with external consultants, investing in education and training, and running pilot projects.

The survey found building operators believe smart buildings are important in helping organisations accelerate sustainability initiatives and that adding or upgrading building automation and digital technologies to optmise energy use are among the most impactful sustainability investment areas. The survey also found that most leaders seek partners, like Johnson Controls, who can provide a digital platform across sites and use cases, which Johnson Controls provides.

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IDC’s 2023 Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending (FERS) Survey, Wave 6, highlights that almost half (43%) of organisations surveyed are currently exploring potential GenAI use cases, with 55% of financial organisations and telecom firms investing in GenAI technology in 2023.

"Generative AI can increase the overall productivity of ITOps teams by streamlining ITOps workflows, lowering operational expenses, and increasing system dependability. However, GenAI systems must be properly implemented to ensure that they correspond with enterprise goals and that adequate guardrails are in place to manage unanticipated events," says Dhiraj Badgujar, senior research manager for digital innovation practice and xOps program, IDC Asia/Pacific.

With the digital-first mindset gaining momentum in Asia/Pacific, businesses are seeking innovative solutions to enhance operations. GenAI stands out as a pivotal technology, offering companies the means to mitigate risks, boost efficiency, and improve overall productivity.

Generative AI is gaining popularity in IT operations and IT service management, particularly in cost-sensitive Asia/Pacific environments. This technology offers automation of ITOps tasks, reducing operational costs and optimizing resources.

The region, which includes mature economies like Australia, Japan, and Singapore, and rapidly growing markets like India and China, has diverse IT requirements and issues. In growing economies, generative AI plays a vital role in facilitating scalable ITOps.

ITOps trends influenced by GenAI

Rise of AIOps: AIOps solutions are becoming more popular in Asia/Pacific. ML and AI algorithms are being used by enterprises across the region to automate IT processes, monitor performance, and forecast and avoid IT disasters.

Predictive analytics: AI-driven predictive analytics in ITOps helps enterprises anticipate IT issues and prevent disruptions.

Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud management: As enterprises in the region embrace hybrid cloud and multi-cloud settings, GenAI will be used to manage these complex infrastructures.

Continuous improvement: GenAI models will evolve in complexity and quality, likely integrating with IoT and edge computing to enhance data collection and analysis.

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As a result, cyberattacks targeting manufacturing sites in industries such as semiconductors and automobiles have increased, leading to production disruptions and highlighting the growing need for more robust security measures in factories.

Mitsubishi Electric and TXOne Networks have signed a long-term cooperation agreement covering technology development and marketing, aiming at expanding the operational-technology (OT) security businesses of both companies.

The collaboration aims to create innovative new value in OT security by combining Mitsubishi Electric's assessment, maintenance and operation services as well as control equipment and systems with TXOne's OT security products.

The new OT security solutions are expected to improve manufacturing productivity, efficiency and safety as well as security levels throughout the supply chains of various industries.

"We look forward to creating new value in OT security by combining OT technology and expertise for manufacturing, infrastructure and building automation with security technology for information systems," said Kunihiko Kaga, Mitsubishi Electric's representative executive officer and industry and mobility business area owner.

"With the continued evolution of DX and the increasing sophistication and complexity of cyberattacks, OT security measures must extend from the information communication layer to the control communication layer and deeper into the network layer.” Kunihiko Kaga

“We are confident that our synergy with TXOne's OT network segmentation and defence technologies will enable us to contribute to greater safety and security in OT environments and the world beyond," he continued.

Dr. Terence Liu, CEO of TXOne Networks, concurs adding that the collaboration between Mitsubishi Electric and TXOne Networks creates a unique value with our deep-rooted expertise in both IT and OT, forming comprehensive and holistic security services to safeguard manufacturing assets against the ever-evolving cyber risks at once."

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However, these devices often lack proper security controls and are insufficiently tested for vulnerabilities. Sophisticated cyber adversaries increasingly attempt to exploit these devices, as evidenced by a growing number of CISA ICS advisories identifying significant threats to many life- and safety-critical devices.

The EMB3D Threat Model, a collaborative effort by MITRE, Red Balloon Security, and Narf Industries, provides a common understanding of the threats posed to embedded devices and the security mechanisms required to mitigate them.

“Together, we are committed to enhancing the cyber posture of critical infrastructure sectors that rely on Operational Technology (OT) technologies. This collaboration exemplifies the power of collective expertise and underscores MITRE's dedication to advancing the resilience and security of vital systems in today's interconnected world.”

What is EMB3D

EMB3D aligns with and expands on several existing models, including Common Weakness Enumeration, MITRE ATT&CK, and Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, but with a specific embedded device focus.

It provides a cultivated knowledge base of cyber threats to devices, including those observed in the field environment or demonstrated through proofs-of-concept and/or theoretic research. These threats are mapped to device properties to help users develop and tailor accurate threat models for specific embedded devices.

For each threat, suggested mitigations are exclusively focused on technical mechanisms that device vendors should implement to protect against the given threat with the goal of building security into the device.

EMB3D is intended to offer a comprehensive framework for the entire security ecosystem—device vendors, manufacturers, asset owners, security researchers, and testing organisations.

“Utilities have been forced to extreme measures to secure our infrastructures because of concerns about ICS device insecurities,” says Niyo Pearson of ONEGas.

“The EMB3D model will provide a means for ICS device manufacturers to understand the evolving threat landscape and potential available mitigations earlier in the design cycle, resulting in more inherently secure devices. This will eliminate or reduce the need to ‘bolt on’ security after the fact, resulting in more secure infrastructure and reduced security costs.”

EMB3D is intended to be a living framework, where new threats and mitigations are added and updated over time as new threat actors emerge and security researchers discover new categories of vulnerabilities, threats, and security defences.

Anticipated to be released in early 2024, EMB3D will be a public community resource, where all information is openly available, and the security community can submit additions and revisions.

“We encourage device vendors, asset owners, researchers, and academia to review the threat model and share feedback, ensuring our collective efforts remain at the forefront of safeguarding our interconnected world,” said Yosry Barsoum, vice president and director, Centre for Securing the Homeland at MITRE.

“Insights, expertise, and a collaborative spirit are invaluable as we work together to strengthen the resilience of our digital infrastructure. Together, we can build a safer and more secure future.”

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"With buildings accounting for over one-third of global energy consumption, the real estate sector is under mounting pressure to embrace net-zero," explains Dominique Bonte, vice president of end markets at ABI Research. "Governments, corporations, and society at large recognise the pivotal role buildings play in reducing emissions and energy use."

Despite currently representing just 0.023% of global buildings, the net-zero segment is gaining strong momentum. The report projects over 5,500 commercial and residential net-zero buildings globally by 2027, up from 1,200 in 2022. While still a niche, this growth signals the accelerating transition toward high-performance real estate.

The evolution is enabled by progress across renewable energy, efficiency software, and sustainable materials. Solar photovoltaics, geothermal heating, and battery storage make onsite zero-carbon energy generation achievable.

Digital twin systems and building management software from companies such as Siemens, Schneider Electric, and Univers optimise performance. Carbon-storing materials and circular construction techniques reduce lifecycle impacts.

Regions leading the net-zero building charge include North America, Western Europe, and progressive urban centres in Asia Pacific. Supportive policies, technology leadership, and climate awareness drive these markets.

Upfront, net-zero buildings carry a 5-19% premium for commercial and 5-15% for residential. However, the investment pays back over decades of operations through dramatically lowered utility and maintenance costs. Demonstrating positive value impacts for owners and occupants remains a priority.

Bonte concludes that technologies now exist to make net-zero energy feasible at scale.

"But the real estate ecosystem must continue collaborating across construction, policy, finance, and technology to make it accessible and attractive for owners globally."

Dominique Bonte

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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.

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From ensuring secure financial transactions to enhancing border control and streamlining retail interactions, advanced biometrics' ability to provide robust security while improving user experience marks a new era in sectors such as financial services, government & law enforcement, retail, automotive, healthcare, and consumer goods, says GlobalData.

Saurabh Daga, associate project manager of disruptive tech at GlobalData, comments: “Biometric technologies are transforming various sectors by uniquely identifying individuals through traits like fingerprints, voice, and facial patterns. The integration of AI and machine learning has boosted their accuracy and ability to detect fraud, especially in finance and healthcare. As privacy regulations evolve, the providers and implementors of biometric technologies are also adapting upgraded secure and ethical data practices. This blend of innovation and security is positioning biometrics as a key ingredient in future technology solutions, balancing user experience with individual rights.”

GlobalData’s “Advanced biometrics: emerging trends and technologies in authentication” report delves into over 60 real-life implementations of biometric technologies. The report categorizes these implementations based on the end-use sectors and applications.

Daga says “Advanced biometrics are likely to be a game-changer for a multitude of industries. Their ability to enhance security, streamline processes, and offer personalized experiences is reshaping the way businesses and governments operate.”

“By harnessing the power of advanced biometrics in combination with technologies such as AI, blockchain, and IoT, industries can unlock new levels of security and convenience, ultimately shaping a more secure and user-friendly future,” he concluded.

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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.

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“Third-party cybersecurity risk management is often resource-intensive, overly process-oriented and has little to show for in terms of results,” said Zachary Smith, Sr principal research at Gartner. “Cybersecurity teams struggle to build resilience against third party-related disruptions and to influence third party-related business decisions.”

Effective TPCRM depends on delivery of three outcomes

Successful management of third-party cybersecurity risk depends on the security organisation’s ability to deliver three outcomes – resource efficiency, risk management resilience and influence on business decision-making. However, enterprises struggle to be effective in two out of those three outcomes, and only 6% of organisations are effective in all three (see Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Security organisations’ ability to deliver on three outcomes for effective TPCRM

Four actions to manage third-party cybersecurity risks

Based on the survey findings, Gartner identified four actions that security and risk management leaders must take to increase their effectiveness in managing third-party cybersecurity risk. The survey found that organisations that implemented any of these actions saw a 40-50% increase in TPCRM effectiveness.

These actions include:

Regularly review how effectively third-party risks are communicated to the business owner of the third-party relationship: Chief information security officers (CISOs) need to regularly review how well the business understands their messaging around third-party risks to ensure they are providing actionable insights around those risks.

Track third-party contract decisions to help manage risk acceptance by business owners: Business owners will often choose to engage with a third party even if they are well-informed about associated cybersecurity risks. Tracking decisions helps security teams align compensating controls for risk acceptances and alerts security teams to particularly risky business owners that may require greater cybersecurity oversight.

Conduct third-party incident response planning (e.g., playbooks, tabletop exercises): Effective TPCRM goes beyond identifying and reporting cybersecurity risks. CISOs must ensure the organisation has strong contingency plans in place to prepare for unexpected scenarios and to be able to recover well in the wake of an incident.

Work with critical third parties to mature their security risk management practices as necessary: In a hyperconnected environment, a critical third party’s risk is also an organisation’s risk. Partnering with critical third parties to improve their security risk management practices helps promote transparency and collaboration.

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Getting better with time

IoT elevators are proving to be more efficient than traditional elevators compared to next-generation elevators.

With a growth rate valued at US$18.4 Billion, in 2022 the hardware demand has boomed significantly in the past few years. Based on the data that is being collected from daily usage of elevators, artificial intelligence is currently being used to assist both operators and mechanical contractors in keeping up with their daily routines finding ways to manage the flow of elevator traffic better and finding ways to prevent problems before they occur.

The integration of third-party systems with elevators is expected to become more prevalent as technology develops in the future. In addition, construction companies are raising their demands for efficient and safe technologies in the global elevator market.

The growth of the market will be driven by the increase in urbanization and the increased demand for residential & commercial amenities will significantly raise the market for IoT in elevators markets. These trends will likely lead to traction for the IoT market in elevators.

Devices powered by IoT technology can manage big data streams and perform predictive maintenance in elevators.

Key takeaways

• India to emerge as the dominant IoT in elevators market, reaching US$ 6.0 Billion by 2032
• China is the fastest-growing market, registering a CAGR of 14.6% across the decade

By component type, hardware to register maximum IoT in elevator usage, growing at a 12.1% CAGR

Preventive maintenance to emerge as the top application, growing at a rate of 13.9% through 2032

“With growing technology, AI and machine learning can be used to simulate the adoption and growth of smart elevators in the future,” remarks an analyst at Fact.MR.

Competitive landscape

Prominent manufacturers of IoT in elevators are eyeing technological innovations to provide their customers with the most accurate and precise elevator system arrangements. To enhance their presence across significant geographies, companies are forging collaborative agreements with government entities.

The need for smarter elevators has led to innovative IoT solutions being developed by several players in the current market landscape which will further boost various innovations over time.

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“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.

Red Hat Device Edge aggregates an enterprise-ready and supported distribution of the Red Hat-led open source community project MicroShift (a lightweight Kubernetes project derived from the edge capabilities of Red Hat OpenShift) along with an edge-optimized operating system built from Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

With general availability, Red Hat Device Edge now also includes Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for more consistent Day 1 and Day 2 management of hundreds to thousands of sites and devices.

As edge computing adoption grows across nearly every industry, Red Hat Device Edge offers customers and partners:

A minimal footprint that supports the deployment of workloads in small, resource-constrained devices in challenging environments by preserving system resources for workloads rather than using them for device operation itself;

One edge platform, two tailored deployment options based on specific edge needs. Red Hat Device Edge with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Podman is well-suited for very small deployments with static applications. Optionally, MicroShift can be added during or after deployment to bring Kubernetes for more dynamic environments that require advanced container orchestration and Kubernetes integration;

A more consistent operational experience at the edge using the same tools and processes used in centralized environments. Whether apps are deployed on Red Hat Device Edge for the smallest edge devices or Red Hat OpenShift for large systems in the datacentre and cloud - it’s all one environment;

Greater workload flexibility with support for deploying and managing bare-metal, virtual or containerized applications;

Simplified deployment at scale with automation, meaning it's easier to oversee hundreds or thousands of devices across heterogeneous hardware and software environments.

Red Hat is working with partners and customers including ABB, DSO National Laboratories, Dynatrace, Guise AI, Intel, Lockheed Martin and more to deploy, test and validate that Red Hat Device Edge can extend operational consistency across edge and hybrid cloud environments. Devices can be deployed in a remote desert, at sea or even in space, all while maintaining a consistent deployment and management experience, while using familiar processes and tools.

Delivering automation at the far edge

Effectively managing workloads at the edge increases the importance of consistent and reliable automation. The general availability of Red Hat Device Edge adds the power of Ansible Automation Platform to Red Hat Device Edge, adding the power of industry-leading IT automation.

What’s included?

• More predictability and repeatability in automating edge workloads;
• Standardized and repeatable connectivity configurations, policies and deployments to help maintain system health and integrity;
• Enhanced security and compliance posture at the edge with automated management and maintenance, including patches, updates and upgrades;
• Lowered barriers to entry for IT and OT (operational technology) teams, with automation tooling making it possible to manage edge workloads and devices with little to no IT specialty skills;
• The ability to configure and audit the devices and services needed like networking, Wi-Fi, DNS, SSL certificates and the applications running on the devices.

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In the report, Cybersecurity in Medical Devices, GlobalData forecasts the market for cybersecurity in medical devices to grow at a CAGR of 12.2% between 2022 and 2027, reaching US$1.1 billion.

Persistent challenges that must be addressed

There are several cybersecurity challenges in the medical devices industry, including legacy devices and outdated software. The vulnerabilities in medical devices pose significant risks, as they can compromise patient safety, privacy, and the overall integrity of healthcare systems.

Legacy devices are older medical devices that operate on outdated software, making them hard to update and ultimately vulnerable to cyberattacks. Additionally, a key piece of cybersecurity is training healthcare professionals who are using the tools that are at risk. Healthcare professionals should be able to recognize cyber threats so that action can be taken quickly, avoiding the potential detrimental outcomes of cyberattacks.

Alexandra Murdoch, senior medical analyst at GlobalData, comments: “The increasing number of digital health tools and the need for cybersecurity is important. However, as many digital health devices are interconnected, there is a larger attack surface, putting medical devices at higher risk of cyberattacks.” 

According to GlobalData, the growth is largely driven by the increasing connectivity and digital integration of medical devices, which makes them more susceptible for cyberattacks.

While cyberattacks are more likely with the adoption of digital health and connected devices, several strategies can be employed to mitigate said risks.

Murdoch explains: “Manufacturers should ensure that their devices are compatible with regular software updates and patching to address vulnerabilities. Additionally, implementing encryption and authentication mechanisms can safeguard data transmitted between devices, and using network segmentation to isolate medical devices from other critical systems can limit the potential impact of cyberattacks.”

As medical devices advance, addressing cybersecurity concerns is necessary to ensure patient safety and to maintain the integrity of healthcare systems. Collaboration, awareness, and the adoption of robust cybersecurity measures are essential components of a comprehensive strategy to mitigate risks.

Murdoch concludes: “By implementing these strategies, the medical device industry can work toward creating a more secure and resilient healthcare system.”

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1. AI Revolution: From healthcare innovations to job market shifts, Artificial Intelligence is transforming our lives. Find out how this tech marvel is becoming a daily reality!

2. Climate Politics in Action: As the climate crisis escalates, witness how politics is shaping our planet's future. Discover the critical role of clean energy and carbon capture!

3. Decisive Elections: 2024 is a monumental year with pivotal elections worldwide. Understand the impact these will have globally!

4. Economic Roller Coaster: Brace yourself for economic surprises! I'll break down what to expect from the global economy in 2024.

5. The Future of Work: Dive into the evolving work landscape. From office returns to the rise of remote work, see what's next!

6. The Wealth Gap Challenge: Explore the growing wealth gap between generations and its potential societal impacts.

7. Urban Expansion: With urban populations skyrocketing, uncover the challenges and opportunities this brings.

8. Culture Wars: See how the internet is fuelling societal divisions and what this means for the future.

9. Education Revolution: Lifelong learning is more crucial than ever. Learn about the changing face of education!

10. Migration Trends: Discover how global migration is shaping our world, from political landscapes to societal structures.

The post Top 10 global trends in 2024 appeared first on FutureIoT.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) outlines key strategies to cut carbon emissions in cement production include improving energy efficiency, switching to lower-carbon fuels, promoting material efficiency (to reduce the clinker-to-cement ratio and total demand), and advancing innovative near-zero emission production routes. The latter two contribute the most to direct emission reductions in the Net Zero Scenario.

Cement producers are now publishing their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) credentials concerning energy use in their operations, Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, and water usage.

Digital technologies will enable companies to collate and analyse the data to identify process improvements. Investments in optimising their production equipment and cement quality will also drive investments in digitalization. ABI Research forecasts total spending on digitalization is forecast to reach US$3.54 billion in 2033 (a 5.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR)).

“With all of the above in mind, cement producers are developing risk frameworks that present opportunities for technology suppliers to help firms assimilate information for presenting credentials and performing scenario planning exercises,” says Michael Larner, industrial and manufacturing markets research director at ABI Research.

Cement production accounts for 4% of global warming. However, concrete, from which cement is the main element, is the key material used in the construction industry and will continue to be required for buildings, roads, and infrastructure projects.

“This is the dilemma for the industry and can be considered an opportunity for both engineers and technology suppliers to devise solutions to develop cement that can fulfil industries’ requirements while not decimating the environment,” Larner explains. Digital technologies will have a role to play at the production level, and companies are developing and commercializing their expertise, with both TITAN Cement Group and Heidelberg Materials already commercializing their digital expertise in predictive maintenance and application development, respectively.

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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.”

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Recognising the impact of S&G factors is imperative for telcos navigating the complexities of corporate partnerships and global enterprises, suggests GlobalData.

GlobalData’s analysis of 11 global telecoms service providers finds that they are improving performance in terms of gender, minority, LGBTQ+, and disability balance, with most working from historic baselines and setting targets for future ratios.

These metrics are becoming increasingly widely adopted and assessed by independent third parties. No longer a “nice to have,” they can make a positive commercial contribution – or can cause significant damage if not adhered to or found to be false.

Robert Pritchard, principal enterprise technology and services analyst at GlobalData, comments: “It is widely recognised that a diverse workforce is better at decision-making, problem-solving, and innovating by avoiding groupthink and rearview mirror planning. Managed well, S&G improves engagement with talent, customers, suppliers, communities, and governments.”

Governance issues such as modern slavery, tax compliance, and ethical operating practices should always be a given – if not, failure can result in loss of business or the demise of the service provider, with WorldCom perhaps the most obvious historical example in telecoms.

“Service providers are also investing in employee training, contributing to the communities in which they work through technology initiatives to breach the digital divide, volunteering schemes that also work as team building exercises, as well as many broader activities to ‘give something back.’ Standards of support for employee health and wellbeing have also progressed substantially, again helping productivity and talent retention.”

Robert Pritchard

He observes that S&G has evolved from the fairly haphazard world of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) and can be seen as the poor cousin of Environmental issues in ESG, but together they all point the way forward – and tech companies as a sector can be proud to be leaders in this field.

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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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“AI-augmented and machine learning (ML)-powered software engineering is changing the way software is being created, tested and operated, and the need for responsible AI is growing,” said Dave Micko, senior director analyst at Gartner. “Practices such as platform engineering will begin injecting insights from deployed systems into the systems being developed.”

These technologies, along with others, are climbing the peak of inflated expectations and the transformational benefit they are expected to have on software engineering in the next few years could have a significant impact on an organisation’s business models, driving new strategies and tactics (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Hype Cycle for software engineering, 2023

AI coding assistants

Gartner predicts that by 2027, 50% of enterprise software engineers will use ML-powered coding tools, up from fewer than 5% today. Code generation products based on foundation models can generate complex and longer suggestions resulting in a significant increase in developer productivity.

Because software demand exceeds most organisations’ capacity, existing developers are maxed out, unable to build features fast enough or find satisfaction in their work. AI coding assistants are emerging as accelerators, boosting developer productivity and happiness. By handling routine tasks, the assistants enable developers to focus on higher-value activities. This allows organisations to deliver more features faster with existing teams.

AI-augmented software engineering

The software development life cycle includes routine and repetitive tasks such as boilerplate functional and unit-test code and docstrings, which AIASE tools automate. This allows software engineers to focus their time, energy and creativity on high-value activities like feature development.

Along with more productive, engaged and happier software builders. the benefits of using AIASE include the allocation of software engineering capacity to business initiatives with high priority, complexity and uncertainty, helping quality teams develop self-healing tests and nonobvious code paths which detect issues, offer fixes and automatically generate test scenarios. 

Platform engineering

To help manage the complexity of the technology ecosystem, many digital enterprises are embracing platform engineering practices and establishing platform teams to provide consistent, integrated and secure platforms to their development and product teams. Platform engineering focuses on providing self-service tools, capabilities and processes that help platform users deliver business value while managing cost and risk.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, 80% of software engineering organisations will establish platform teams as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery.

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The survey revealed a bifurcation between procurement leaders’ assessments of current and future talent needs in the function. While 46% of respondents are confident in their current talent needs, only 14% agree they have adequate talent to meet future requirements. The number of respondents who strongly disagreed with the statement that they have adequate talent tripled from current levels when asked about their future requirements (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Procurement talent readiness, current vs. future needs

“Procurement leaders are generally confident in the current state of their talent and the ability to meet their near-term objectives,” said Fareen Mehrzai, senior director analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain Practice. “However, our data shows that chief procurement officers (CPOs) are worried about the future and having sufficient talent to meet transformative goals based around technology, as well as the ability to serve as a strategic advisor to the business.”

What is sorely needed

Driving the lack of confidence in future talent readiness is a shift in the key competencies CPOs need to help drive objectives associated with procurement transformation. Sixty-nine per cent of respondents said business acumen had gained importance in the last 12 months, while 68% said technology and data skills had increased in importance. Only 26% said “traditional procurement competencies” had gained importance in the same period.

“Procurement leaders are aware that the competencies required to drive transformation are different from traditional procurement skills, and that there are significant gaps between their current and future needs for the most important competencies,” said Mehrzai. “Ninety-six per cent of respondents reported at least a small gap in their needs for technology and data skills, while 86% reported the same regarding business acumen.”

Gartner’s survey data suggests that more work needs to be done in refining competency planning strategies to meet future talent needs in the procurement function. While more than 65% of respondents reported that their organizations have dedicated strategies to target the most critical competencies, only 31% believe their current competency models are relevant to their staff’s work.

“In evaluating current competency levels, we see procurement leaders relying most on peer and stakeholder feedback, while less than half report engaging in competency-driven interviews to evaluate their staff’s skills directly,” said Mehrzai.

“Considering the significant gaps in the most critical future competencies, CPOs need to consider expanding their options in how they train and evaluate their staff.”

Fareen Mehrzai

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The Gartner CEO Survey shows that business growth remains the CEO's highest priority. Simon Bailey, VP analyst at Gartner reveals the first trend as showing leading chief supply chain officers playing their part by identifying where the supply chain can seize opportunities to support growth while mastering the risk that could undermine business performance.

Click on the video to watch Bailey elaborates on three points:

1. Identify and seize new opportunities for growth while mitigating risks

2. Transform how organisations work by reshaping skills, roles and relationships

3. Drive collective progress, leaving a lasting impact on industries and societies through ecosystem partnerships

“Leading supply chains drive customer retention through increased customer satisfaction and reduced customer effort,” said Bailey. “Those with a deep understanding of their customer needs also unlock new opportunities through customer enablement.”

By mastering risks through supply chain agility and resilience during times of disruption, they (supply chain) are also able to exploit emerging opportunities quicker than their competitors.”

The second trend sees leading supply chains transform how their organisations work by redefining the skills roles, relationships, and structures within them.

Bailey noted that to accelerate cultural transformation and enable innovation, the leaders are focusing on creating a new intersection between people and technology. “They enable employee autonomy and flexibility with enhanced employee value propositions and use digital tools to reduce fatigue whilst increasing productivity,” he added.

Gatner’s third trend is about driving collective progress. The analyst says leading chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) are delivering valued business outcomes like innovation, sustainability, and resilience through the power of ecosystem partnerships.

“By leading their supply chains to shift from independent networks to interconnected ecosystem, they're delivering in ways that no one company could do on its own,” said Bailey. “Take the learnings from our top 25 and master supply chains and use them as a resource to show you the way to solve problems and unlock opportunities in today's disrupted environment.”

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Schneider Electric will integrate Hailo Technologies’ advanced processors within Schneider Electric solutions. By integrating the Hailo-8 AI processor within its industrial automation solutions, Schneider Electric will unlock new intelligence at the edge and drive innovation for its customers, with significant and immediate improvements across several common manufacturing tasks.

Anticipated benefits because of the integration

• Pick and place: achieving object detection tasks six times faster than central processing units (CPUs)
• Quality control: running classification processes 20 times faster than a CPU
• Yield optimization: improving output and throughput, reducing waste by 15% on average

Hailo Technologies is leading the AI chip industry for edge devices, with

Hailo makes technology that enables new computing possibilities for sectors like automotive, security, retail, and manufacturing. Its Hailo-8 processor is an efficient and compact AI processor with low power consumption, enabling real-time, high-accuracy data analysis at the edge.

“We are always looking to partner with companies that can help us deliver the most cutting-edge solution available on the market,” said Aurelien LeSant, senior vice president of innovation & technology and chief technology officer for industrial automation at Schneider Electric.

He explained that the Hailo collaboration reinforces our commitment to innovation and next-generation technology. It signifies an important step in delivering intelligent, energy-efficient solutions that will shape the future of industries.

“We are proud to work with Schneider Electric, an industry pioneer that has recognized the transformative potential of integrating AI capabilities into its industrial automation solutions,” said Eyal Barnea, VP of business development at Hailo Technologies. “Our technology will empower its customers to create new powerful, cost-efficient, and smart AI-based solutions quickly and easily.”

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With a parallel approach, developers can compress the design cycle time and accelerate the time to market. In addition, Siemens has collaborated with Arm to help enable developers to access Arm-based technology running on Siemens’ PAVE360 Digital Twin solution via AWS cloud services.

Automakers are now able to develop software and evaluate key Arm-based system and software components earlier in their IP selection and design cycles, without the burden of conventional on-premises software, simply by accessing the PAVE360 solution available on AWS.

This not only helps address the technology and commercial challenges ahead but also helps empower developers to gain a competitive advantage by shifting left hardware and software development, with unprecedented simulation speeds, enabling them to meet shrinking time-to-market requirements.

By using AWS technology, developers can experience near real-time simulation speeds which are significantly faster than conventional on-premises modelling and simulation infrastructures.

“The automotive industry is facing disruption from multiple directions, but the greatest potential for growth and new revenue streams is the adoption of the Software Defined Vehicle (SDV),” said Mike Ellow, executive vice president for EDA Global Sales, Services and Customer Support, Siemens Digital Industries Software.

He adds that the hyper-competitive SDV industry is under immense pressure to quickly react to consumer expectations for new features all while being pushed to move towards shorter software development cycles.

“This is driving the adoption of the “shift-left” methodology for parallel hardware and software co-development and the move toward the holistic digital twin. Delivering PAVE360 on Arm-based AWS cloud services helps enable organisational efficiencies that are simply not available through today’s traditional development methods.”

EMike Ellow

Why PAVE360 on AWS

Siemens’ PAVE360, deployed on AWS includes IP from Arm that is built for automotive-specific workloads, functional system software, real-world stimulus and algorithm development tools such as Simcenter Prescan from Siemens, and mixed-fidelity EDA modelling and simulation engines.

PAVE360 seamlessly integrates all these sources to provide not only a virtual car on an engineer’s desk but also a virtual car in the cloud that is more integrated and secure, dramatically reducing resources and costs for manufacturers.

This helps to eliminate the need for costly IT upgrades to support high-speed simulation and can free up automotive engineers to focus on making more meaningful improvements.

"The software-defined vehicle is survival for the automotive industry, requiring new technologies and methodologies for faster and more agile development,” said Dipti Vachani, senior vice president and general manager for the automotive line of business at Arm.

She commented that Siemens’ PAVE360 solution is helping to accelerate the automotive system development required to address the increasingly demanding consumer expectations.

“Together with Siemens and AWS, we are enabling a breadth of use cases on the Arm automotive platform across the entire supply chain, from IP evaluation to fleet management,” she added.  

Wendy Bauer, vice president of automotive and manufacturing at AWS acknowledges that the proliferation of digital twin methodologies throughout the automotive industry uses the compute capabilities and world-class infrastructure of AWS.

She adds that with PAVE360 mapping accurate embedded environments to optimal AWS instances while using Arm automotive enhanced IP, OEMs and suppliers are enabling software-defined vehicle solutions and methodologies that were previously impractical.

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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.”

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Companies are adopting carbon management tools to address the potential 18% GDP loss from climate change by 2050. These tools, used to calculate, manage, monitor, and report emissions, help measure operational emissions throughout the supply chain.

ABI Research projects the carbon management software market to grow at a CAGR of 19.7%, reaching US$5.5 billion by 2032.

Scope 3 emissions, which can be 5 to 25 times higher than Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, constitute up to 90% of the overall environmental impact, according to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).

Accurate measurement of Scope 3 emissions is crucial for businesses to enhance resilience and efficiency throughout the supply chain.

Rithika Thomas, sustainable technology analyst at ABI Research says only what is measured can be managed. She added that taking responsibility for carbon emissions is the first step to mitigating catastrophic climate-related disasters.

“Accurately measuring Scope 3 emissions provides invaluable insights which will equip organizations to increase resilience and efficiency over the entire supply chain, future-proofing the company, and de-risking value chain from climate-related financial threats.” Rithika Thomas

The carbon management market is shifting from voluntary to mandatory reporting due to regulations, heightened climate change awareness, digitization of production, customer and investor pressure, and the pursuit of transparency for a competitive advantage.

Currently, the sustainability software market is a mixed bag with overlapping features and functionality with ESG, carbon management, smart building management, lifecycle analysis, and allied sustainability features.

According to Thomas, “As international and country-specific policies stabilize, there will be a significant growth shift post-2026 in the software suppliers and user base in Asia-Pacific and emerging markets.”

A robust ecosystem will develop around carbon software tools with dedicated expert solutions for each reporting aspect to address credibility, accuracy, and auditability.

Software developers should focus efforts on automating calculations, building industry-specific solutions with data assurances, and integrating AI and predictive capabilities to create value with actionable insights for end users to truly thrive in the current fragmented landscape. “As forward-looking companies and larger corporations are applying carbon management tools at scale, long-term strategic goals on sustainability become more evident with tangible short-term metrics,” Thomas concludes.

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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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ABI Research forecasts that automobile manufacturers will spend US$83.3 billion on digital technologies in 2023, growing by a CAGR of 8.5% to surpass US$188 billion in 2033.

“The transfer to EVs is driving demand for software, as manufacturers need to design new vehicles and simulate the vehicles' performance,” says Michael Larner, industrial and manufacturing markets research director at ABI Research.

He added that the new production lines will also need to be simulated before launch. Manufacturers are realizing the potential of digital twins to enable teams to collaborate to bring the new operations to life. 

Larner added that before creating digital twins, automobile manufacturers will need to remove data silos and create digital threads with suppliers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, NVIDIA, and Siemens standing to benefit.

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S&P Global Market Intelligence’s geopolitical risk analysts found that water stress will continue to impact governments and businesses in the years ahead. The prevalence of severe difficulties in predicting weather patterns is likely to continue across the globe affecting populations, countries’ economic performances, and key industries that rely on water as an essential resource.

The El Niño climate pattern is forecast to significantly impact the world in 2024. Water-related stress, however, will be an issue for many years to come in many parts of the world, with Australia being particularly pronounced as noted in the report.

According to Veronica Retamales Burford, senior research analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence, physical risks will play a key factor in business investment decisions, including the effects that water stress will have on manufacturing and on many countries’ plans to diversify their economies. “As the world adapts, companies will need to prepare for heightened water use scrutiny, not just by regulators but also by local communities,” she added.

Report highlights:

Access to sufficient supplies of water will be an essential facet of longer-term economic diversification plans. Governments and businesses will be faced with heightened risks due to water stress, including restricted electricity generation, agricultural losses, and supply chain disruption, among other economic effects. 

Regional and national governments will need to make policy interventions and support businesses navigating water stress.

Efforts like the use of desalination infrastructure will become more common as government and public pressure will ramp up on companies and sectors with high water usage, requiring them to donate or forego water supplies to increase availability for domestic use.

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A Gartner survey of 164 supply chain professionals in June 2023 revealed that 28% of supply chains expected no gain or loss in revenue, while 63% of respondents expected a loss of revenue due to exposure to uncertainty (see Figure 1).

“An antifragile supply chain starts with the Chief Supply Chain Officer’s mindset,” said Tim Payne, vice president analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain Practice.

“Rather than trying to keep uncertainty out of the supply chain, antifragile supply chains embrace uncertainty with the objective of learning, evolving and adapting their capabilities based on their improved knowledge of it.”

Tim Payne

Gartner’s analysis identified a select group of antifragile capabilities for Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs) to deploy that are 2.1 to 4.9 times more likely to gain revenue for their organisations when confronted with uncertainty.

Figure 1: Supply chain professionals’ estimated impact of uncertainty exposure on revenue

Payne opines that the inability to cope with uncertainty is driven by a misallocation of initiatives to the wrong strategy. He noted that in the survey nearly half of respondents said that more than 50% of their supply chains’ key capabilities are set up to attempt to keep uncertainty outside the supply chain. “This overinvestment in a barrier to keep uncertainty out stifles the ability to learn from it, keeping most supply chains today in a fragile state,” he added.

Antifragile capabilities to cope with uncertainty 

CSCOs must assess their current ability to cope with uncertainty so that appropriate strategies can be applied to evolve towards the antifragile supply chain state. Gartner’s research shows that supply chains can be in either a fragile, resilient or antifragile state. While resilient supply chains may not lose during periods of uncertainty, the focus remains on keeping most uncertainty out, reducing the ability of organisations to learn from it often leading to “resiliency fatigue.”

“An antifragile mindset changes how CSCOs approach and shape their capabilities, including in areas such as integrated planning, ROI calculations, supply chain redundancy and assessing uncertainty,” said Payne. “Our research shows that a select group of antifragile capabilities are especially effective in moving a supply chain into the antifragile state.” 

Gartner’s analysis of the survey data revealed the top six antifragile capabilities that are highly significant in driving a supply chain towards gains during uncertainty. These antifragile capabilities lead to a significantly greater likelihood of positive revenue gains when exposed to uncertainty, compared with the fragile or resilient versions of these capabilities.

Most impactful antifragile supply chain capabilities

Decision processes and collaboration: Enabling dynamic decision processes during uncertainty (4.9x more likely to have a positive revenue impact).

Calculating ROI for supply chain investments: Assessing the value of investing at different times due to uncertainty (4.5x).

Managing the assessment of uncertainty: Performing a high degree of experimentation on the supply chain to stress test it (3.7x).

Supply chain redundancy: Viewing redundancy (e.g., inventory, capacity, multiple suppliers) as an investment opportunity (3.6x).

Supply chain planning: A focus on end-to-end (E2E) planning policies (probabilities, options, thresholds) in the midterm and accurate functional short-term planning (2.5x).

Monitoring, adjustments and responsiveness: Monitoring at “arm’s length” to intervene only if policies are breached and empower local stakeholders to adjust within policies (2.1x).

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Zebra Technologies’ 16th Annual Global Shopper Study confirmed that retailers are feeling the omnichannel squeeze, particularly with managing online returns and reducing shrink caused by theft, fraud and other contributing factors.

Notable observations

Globally, eight in 10 retailers agree minimizing fraud/shrink is a significant challenge (82%), and the ability to forecast demand is important to their organization (86%). In APAC, retailers’ responses stand at 74% and 89% respectively.

According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), retailers lost US$112 billion due to shrink in 2022, up from nearly US$94 billion in 2021.

The Zebra study indicates that 36% of global retailers (40% in APAC) believe better analytics on shrink could help drive profitability. Many retailers expect to deploy loss prevention analytics (49% globally, 55% in APAC) and demand planning and forecasting (54% globally, 61% in APAC) by 2026.

While omnichannel shopping causes challenges for retailers, most shoppers prefer options. Nearly eight in 10 global and APAC shoppers favour a blend of online and in-store shopping, while 75% global and 72% of APAC shoppers choose to shop with online retailers that have a brick-and-mortar location.

As omnichannel shopping continues to grow, the volume of returns increases along with it. Around seven in 10 of global and APAC retailers say the pressure is mounting to improve the efficiency and expense of managing online orders, returns, and the fulfilment process.

Six in 10 retailers say they are upgrading their returns management technology by 2026. In APAC, more retailers are in the process of upgrading at 74%, 12% higher than global retailers surveyed.

Store associates will be pleased with this technology investment. Among associates managing returns from online orders, 74% globally and in APAC, cite frequent returners as their top challenge. This year, the ease of making returns has moved ahead as a leading reason shoppers choose to shop in stores, outpacing comparison shopping.

Where easy returns for global shoppers have increased slightly (32% in 2022 to 33% in 2023), APAC shoppers reported the greatest increase of 7%, from 32% in 2022 to 39% in 2023. The increase in returns has impacted retailers globally, growing to US$1.8T according to the IHL Group.

 “We are seeing a significant uptick in both sales and returns as e-commerce continues to grow,” said Christanto Suryadarma, sales vice president for Southeast Asia (SEA) and South Korea, Zebra Technologies Asia Pacific.

“What's becoming increasingly apparent is the pivotal role of technology in navigating this competitive landscape. Retailers are realizing the importance of employing technology to smartly manage the surge in demand and ensure a seamless and efficient handling of orders and processes.” Christanto Suryadarma

The returns conundrum also impacts related industries, particularly warehousing. Retailers are tapping into the power of technology to help manage returns with 62% globally (68% in APAC) saying they plan to deploy reverse logistics technology by 2026 to better manage fulfilment pressures. Nearly three in 10 (31% globally, 32% in APAC) of retailers think charging a fee for online orders from frequent returners could potentially improve the overall profitability of online orders.

Consumers dialling into digital checkouts

Since 2020, the number of shoppers who favour digital payment applications has increased substantially; solutions like ZebraPay align with this trend. Those preferring pay/checkout anywhere in-store almost doubled from 15% to 26%, mobile payments jumped from 33% to 50% and “just walk out” to avoid a long checkout line doubled from 14% to 30%.

In APAC, shoppers who preferred pay/checkout anywhere jumped from 16% to 28%, opted for mobile payments went from 46% to 58% and walked out due to long queues soared from 17% to 33%. Meanwhile, more than 4-in-10 (48% globally) of consumers opt for self-checkouts, with three-quarters (75% globally) saying it helps improve their experience. This is also true for 45% and 74% of APAC shoppers respectively.

Hence, there is a clear signal that consumers want to settle their shopping experience quickly and will adopt any means to get to the end of the line. Unsurprisingly, most retailers agree that self-checkouts deliver value.

Eight in 10 of them agree the investment in self-checkouts is paying off (87% globally, 88% in APAC), as this technology allows associates to work on higher-value tasks and improves the customer experience.

However, around eight-in-10 retail decision-makers and associates agree store shrinkage and theft a major issue with self-checkouts. These sentiments are similarly echoed in APAC by 85% of decision-makers and 79% of associates.

Moving modern retail forward

In anticipation of the advancement of retail offerings, consumers understandably have high expectations for technology. In fact, eight in 10 of surveyed consumers (80% globally, 81% in APAC) expect retailers to use the latest technology, and seven in 10 (74% globally, 77% in APAC) say it improves their shopping experience. In alignment with this trend, over half of retailers plan to deploy handheld mobile computers (56% globally, 64% in APAC), scanners (54% globally, 61% in APAC), RFID (61% globally, 69% in APAC) as well as task (54% globally, 62% in APAC) and workforce (56% globally, 62% in APAC) management software by 2026.

Store associates will favour this outcome as the study shows 84% of both global and APAC associates feel more valued–and view their employer more positively (81% globally, 79% in APAC)–when they have the technology to help them do their work.

Today, 77% of associates–up from 67% in 2022–feel shoppers are better connected to information than they are. There is a similar increase for APAC associates, from 64% in 2022 to 73% in 2023.

“In view of ever-evolving consumer expectations, providing a seamless experience is no longer a luxury but a necessity - whether it is browsing, acquiring, consuming, or returning merchandise,” said George Pepes, APAC Vertical Solutions Lead, Healthcare and Retail, Zebra Technologies. “The successful operation of a modern store needs to elevate the customer experience, foster stronger engagement among retail associates, optimize inventory management to build brand preference, and increase profitability in today’s dynamic environment.”

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ABI Research forecasts a steady increase in uptake for cloud-driven digital twin solutions, driven by advancements in AI/ ML, edge computing, multi and hybrid cloud deployments, 5G networks, and smart connectivity.

“We are seeing the emergence of cloud computing in operational technology (OT). The deployment and integration of cloud solutions with OT solutions in areas such as asset performance monitoring and product lifecycle management provide compelling benefits such as performance reliability, increase in computational power, and seamless AI/ ML processing,” explains Yih-Khai Wong, distributed and edge computing senior analyst at ABI Research.

Cloud hyperscalers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud provide tools and packaged solutions to build digital twin solutions. Customers can also leverage contextual data from public datasets and funnel this information to optimize their digital twin platforms.

Benefits of cloud-driven digital twin solutions

Scalability: Provides flexibility for businesses to scale up or down according to current business needs, ensuring optimal performance of the digital twin solution.

Computational Power: Complex simulations can be processed on the cloud using solutions such as Virtual Machines (VMs) and containers. The availability of various cloud computational components ensures that businesses can match resources according to specific digital twin platforms.

AI/ML Processing: Cloud computing platforms often provide data analytics tools to help process AI/ML workloads. These tools range from the infrastructure compute power components such as the Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to industry-specific application software that can analyse, predict, and make recommendations based on data processed by a digital twin.

“The convergence of IT and OT is gathering pace, and digital twin is a great example of how this convergence can elevate existing scenarios into achieving greater possibilities and ultimately increase the value, productivity, and competitive advantage of enterprises,” Wong concludes.

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There are nine operational AutoStore warehouse projects with four more in the planning stage. This will position DHL Supply Chain as one of AutoStore’s largest 3PL clients, reinforcing their commitment to digitalisation and automation.

The nine existing Systems effectively operate 800,000 bins, with the forthcoming four Systems elevating the total number of bins to a remarkable 1.2 million. In the future, DHL intends to construct five further facilities in addition to those already in operation or planning.

This innovative automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) technology has been developed to efficiently manage and optimise inventory using vastly reduced warehouse space. Its highly modular and scalable design makes it a preferred solution for e-commerce and businesses handling smaller products such as fashion and tech items.

The partnership aims to accelerate the implementation of this technology that enhances abilities to meet diverse client needs.

A fleet of more than 1,000 robots will enhance operational efficiency and throughput

Markus Voss, COO and CIO at DHL Supply Chain, emphasises the importance of this collaboration: "We are pleased to expand our existing relationship with AutoStore as we continue to implement our digitalisation and automation strategy in a growing number of warehouses, allowing us to better and faster serve our customers.”

He commented that AutoStore’s standardised and modular technology perfectly aligns with DHL’s aim to make operations more efficient, enabling swift scalability and adaptability across various use cases and end markets – a crucial factor for DHL as a third-party logistics provider.

“Through a standardised approach and dedicated stock availability we will be able to significantly drive down implementation times,” he added.

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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.

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“The results revealed that investments made by ArcelorMittal, Glencore, and Vale have not yet significantly grown the bottom line. While correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, BHP Billiton is deploying digital technologies across its operations and achieving some impressive financial metrics,” says Michael Larner, industrial and manufacturing research director at ABI Research.

He added that the exercise highlights that some mining firms are more digitally mature than others, and in the case of BHP Billiton, data analytics is being utilized to support operations in real-time and underpinning efforts to improve safety and the mine’s overall capacity.

Further use cases that data analytics underpins include Rio Tinto automating large parts of their operations, while Anglo American has developed digital twins of their equipment and control systems.

“As much as we’d like to believe that digital transformation is the sole component delivering to the bottom line, numerous other factors contribute to the firm’s financial performance,” continued Larner. “But suppliers such as Hexagon, with a broad portfolio of applications that support individual workflows (such as sequencing blasts and creating 3D models of a mine), and the likes of ABB, GE Digital, Honeywell, and Rockwell Automation can support the miners’ asset performance and operational goals.”

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The 'Big 4' manufacturing nations (China, the U.S., Japan, and Germany) now contribute a higher share, accounting for 57% of the world's manufacturing value added, reflecting an increase from the previous year.

“The primary change to the largest manufacturing companies globally is the absence of electronic companies in the top 10,” says James Prestwood, industrial and manufacturing markets industry analyst at ABI Research. He listed petroleum refining, mining, and automotive manufacturers as continuing to dominate the top 10 spots.

He added that while automotive manufacturing still boasts the largest factories by size, its dominant status at the top is contested by the construction of massive semiconductor plants in the United States.

“TSMC’s Pheonix Arizona Plant, for example, is now the third largest factory in the world at over 5.1 million square meters. Samsung and Texas Instruments are also constructing large manufacturing plants in the United States,” he continued.

Asia’s manufacturing landscape

Vietnam has the second largest manufacturing sector by employment in the APAC region, second only to China, employing more people in manufacturing than Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and South Korea combined. The country has also seen its MVA double from 2015 to 2022.

The revenues of Chinese metal products manufacturers saw an excellent recovery in 2021 compared to its disastrous 2020 levels, jumping back up to US$680 billion from US$56 billion. 

The Japanese market has not been so fortunate, with 8 out of the top 10 largest manufacturing markets seeing revenue fall between 2020 and 2022.

The United States showed interesting trends in the petroleum and coal products manufacturing market, with MVA more than doubling from US$65 billion in 2020 to US$144 billion in 2021. However, CAPEX has not seen the same growth rate in the same period, with expenditure on machinery equipment dropping from 2020 to 2021 by US$1.3 billion.

“CAPEX in other markets has similarly seen a lack of return to pre-COVID levels, with expenditure on data processing and communication services for the transport equipment and electronics markets remaining lower in 2021 than 2019,” Prestwood concludes.

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Adding to the observation, Gartner distinguished VP analyst and chief of research Chris Howard says CIOs and other executives must evaluate the impacts and benefits of strategic technology trends, but this is no small task given the increasing rate of technological innovation.

“For example, generative and other types of AI offer new opportunities and drive several trends. But deriving business value from the durable use of AI requires a disciplined approach to widespread adoption along with attention to the risks.” Chris Howard

The top strategic technology trends for 2024 are:

Democratised Generative AI

Generative AI (GenAI) is becoming democratised by the confluence of massively pretrained models, cloud computing and open source, making these models accessible to workers worldwide. By 2026, Gartner predicts that over 80% of enterprises will have used GenAI APIs and models and/or deployed GenAI-enabled applications in production environments, up from less than 5% in early 2023.

GenAI applications can make vast sources of information — internal and external — accessible and available to business users. This means the rapid adoption of GenAI will significantly democratise knowledge and skills in the enterprise. Large language models enable enterprises to connect their workers with knowledge in a conversational style with rich semantic understanding.

AI Trust, Risk and Security Management

The democratisation of access to AI has made the need for AI Trust, Risk and Security Management (TRiSM) even more urgent and clear. Without guardrails, AI models can rapidly generate compounding negative effects that spin out of control, overshadowing any positive performance and societal gains that AI enables. AI TRiSM provides tooling for ModelOps, proactive data protection, AI-specific security, model monitoring (including monitoring for data drift, model drift, and/or unintended outcomes) and risk controls for inputs and outputs to third-party models and applications.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, enterprises that apply AI TRiSM controls will increase the accuracy of their decision-making by eliminating up to 80% of faulty and illegitimate information.

AI-augmented development

AI-augmented development is the use of AI technologies, such as GenAI and machine learning, to aid software engineers in designing, coding and testing applications. AI-assisted software engineering improves developer productivity and enables development teams to address the increasing demand for software to run the business.

These AI-infused development tools allow software engineers to spend less time writing code, so they can spend more time on more strategic activities such as the design and composition of compelling business applications.

Intelligent applications

Intelligent applications include intelligence — which Gartner defines as learned adaptation to respond appropriately and autonomously — as a capability. This intelligence can be utilised in many use cases to better augment or automate work.

As a foundational capability, intelligence in applications comprises various AI-based services, such as machine learning, vector stores and connected data. Consequently, intelligent applications deliver experiences that dynamically adapt to the user.

A clear need and demand for intelligent applications exist. In the 2023 Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey, 26% cited the talent shortage as the most damaging risk for their organisation. Attracting and retaining talent is CEOs’ top workforce priority, while AI was named the technology that will most significantly impact their industries over the next three years.

Augmented-connected workforce

The augmented-connected workforce (ACWF) is a strategy for optimising the value derived from human workers. The need to accelerate and scale talent is driving the ACWF trend. The ACWF uses intelligent applications and workforce analytics to provide everyday context and guidance to support the workforce’s experience, well-being, and ability to develop its skills. At the same time, the ACWF drives business results and positive impact on key stakeholders.

Through 2027, 25% of CIOs will use augmented-connected workforce initiatives to reduce time to competency by 50% for key roles.

Continuous threat exposure management

Continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) is a pragmatic and systemic approach that allows organisations to evaluate the accessibility, exposure and exploitability of an enterprise’s digital and physical assets continually and consistently.

Aligning CTEM assessment and remediation scopes with threat vectors or business projects, rather than an infrastructure component, surfaces not only the vulnerabilities but also unpatchable threats.

By 2026, Gartner predicts that organisations prioritising their security investments based on a CTEM program will realise a two-thirds reduction in breaches.

Machine customers

Machine customers (also called 'custobots') are nonhuman economic actors that can autonomously negotiate and purchase goods and services in exchange for payment. By 2028, 15 billion connected products will exist with the potential to behave as customers, with billions more to follow in the coming years.

This growth trend will be the source of trillions of dollars in revenues by 2030 and eventually become more significant than the arrival of digital commerce. Strategic considerations should include opportunities to either facilitate these algorithms and devices or even create new custobots.

Sustainable Technology

Sustainable technology is a framework of digital solutions used to enable environmental, social and governance (ESG) outcomes that support long-term ecological balance and human rights. The use of technologies such as AI, cryptocurrency, the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing is driving concern about the related energy consumption and environmental impacts.

This makes it more critical to ensure that the use of IT becomes more efficient, circular and sustainable. Gartner predicts that by 2027, 25% of CIOs will see their compensation linked to their sustainable technology impact.

Platform Engineering

Platform engineering is the discipline of building and operating self-service internal development platforms. Each platform is a layer, created and maintained by a dedicated product team, designed to support the needs of its users by interfacing with tools and processes. The goal of platform engineering is to optimise productivity, and the user experience and accelerate delivery of business value.

Industry Cloud Platforms

By 2027, Gartner predicts more than 70% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms (ICPs) to accelerate their business initiatives, up from less than 15% in 2023.

ICPs address industry-relevant business outcomes by combining underlying SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services into a whole product offering with composable capabilities.

These typically include an industry data fabric, a library of packaged business capabilities, composition tools and other platform innovations. ICPs are tailored to cloud proposals specific to an industry and can further be tailored to an organisation’s needs.

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This breakthrough empowers Zebra partners and customers to unlock exciting productivity gains that will shape the future of work across industries from retail to warehouse and logistics to hospitality and healthcare. On-device execution of GenAI LLMs has the potential to empower front-line workers with new capabilities so they can deliver new outcomes for their end customers.

On-device AI can offer additional personalization as well as enhanced privacy and security as data remains on the device. It also drives faster performance and lower costs as GenAI searches on the cloud can be expensive.

A whitepaper published by Qualcomm Technologies suggests that GenAI-based search cost per query is estimated to increase by ten times compared to traditional search methods. By removing the need to utilise the cloud, costs can be reduced.  

"Zebra’s devices are powerful platforms boasting cutting-edge software and AI models," said Christanto Suryadarma, Southeast Asia (SEA) sales vice president, Zebra Technologies Asia Pacific.

He added that through collaborative efforts with our partner ecosystem, we're propelling novel technologies like GenAI forward and applying its capabilities to diverse domains such as voice AI, computer vision, and deep learning-powered machine vision software to effectively tackle customer challenges and elevate our overall value proposition.

Potential use cases for LLMs include improving associate effectiveness by enhancing their product and customer service knowledge, acting as an efficient internal communications tool by answering employee queries on things like store policies, collecting and analysing feedback from associates to identify areas of improvement, enhancing productivity and increasing job satisfaction levels.

LLMs also have the potential to elevate the customer experience by powering personalized shopping assistants that could provide product recommendations, integrating shopping experiences across in-store, online, and mobile platforms as well as potentially enabling fully voice-activated shopping.

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“Though metaverse is undeniably overhyped and steeped in vagueness, the urban context offers interesting value-generating use cases and applications, ranging from seamless interaction of citizens with eGovernment services, virtual tourism, smart infrastructure design, planning and development, and urban workforce enablement and enhancement. ,” explains Dominique Bonte, vice president, verticals & end markets at ABI Research. “This is especially important in complex urban environments which are challenging to design, maintain, explore, and engage with.”

Benefits for city governments include gaining political capital through enhanced citizen engagement and participation and significant cost savings related to smarter and more effective urban infrastructure design, operations, and maintenance. The urban metaverse will also play a critical role in making cities net zero and circular.

Early urban metaverse case studies and examples include:

Metaverse Seoul – Government services (tax assistance); 3D environments; User-based avatars; Virtual multi-office communication tools; Urban gaming; Virtual tour programs

Tampere Metaverse Vision 2040 – Urban development and planning; Workforce management; Citizen wellbeing, equality, education, and healthcare; Climate actions and sustainability; Urban governance; Virtual City Exploration

Rome Advanced District (ROAD) project – Development of new energy supply chains; energy district modeling (Eni, Acea, Autostrade per l’Italia, Bridgestone, Cisco, Gruppo FS, NextChem)

Maxar Technologies (SYNTH3D) – Digital twin enabling seamless simulation, visualization, and AR/VR experiences of hyper-realistic satellite imagery-based 3D environments for smart cities 

Urban metaverse technologies are centred around generating immersive 3D experiences combining digital twins, AR/VR/XR, avatars, AI, cloud, compute, and mobile devices.

The urban metaverse ecosystem will be heavily dominated by urban digital/virtual twin providers such as Dassault Systèmes, Siradel (Engie), Greehill, and Autodesk in combination with mainstream XR hardware and software metaverse vendors, including NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft (HoloLens 2), Magic Leap (Magic Leap 2), HTC (XR Elite), Apple (Vision Pro), and Meta (Quest 3).

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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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“Weak enforcement of security standards for IoT device manufacturers coupled with the proliferation of shadow IoT devices at the enterprise level poses a significant threat to global organisations. Often, threat actors target ‘unmanaged and unpatched’ devices to gain an initial foothold into the environment,” said Deepen Desai, global CISO and head of security research at Zscaler.

He encourages organisations to enforce zero trust principles when securing IoT and OT devices - never trust, always verify, and assume breach. “Organisations can eliminate lateral movement risk by utilizing continuous discovery and monitoring processes to segment these devices,” he continued.

Consistent growth in attacks

With the steady adoption of IoT and personal connected devices, the report found an increase of over 400% in IoT malware attacks year-over-year. The growth in cyber threats demonstrates cyber criminals’ persistence and ability to adapt to evolving conditions in launching IoT malware attacks.

Additionally, research indicates that cybercriminals are targeting legacy vulnerabilities, with 34 of the 39 most popular IoT exploits specifically directed at vulnerabilities that have existed for over three years.

The Mirai and Gafgyt malware families continue to account for 66% of attack payloads, creating botnets from infected IoT devices that are then used to launch denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against lucrative businesses.

Botnet-driven distributed DDoS attacks are responsible for billions of dollars in financial losses across industries around the globe. In addition, DDoS attacks pose a risk to OT by potentially disrupting critical industrial processes and even endangering human lives.

Industries favoured by attackers

Manufacturing and retail accounted for nearly 52% of IoT device traffic, with 3D printers, geolocation trackers, industrial control devices, automotive multimedia systems, data collection terminals, and payment terminals sending the majority of signals over digital networks.

However, the quantity of device traffic has created opportunities for cybercriminals, and the manufacturing sector now sees an average of 6,000 IoT malware attacks every week.

Moreover, these substantial IoT malware attacks can disrupt critical OT processes, which are integral in many industrial manufacturing plants like automotive, heavy manufacturing, and plastic & rubber.

This creates long-term challenges for security teams at manufacturing businesses but also demonstrates that industrial IoT holds a substantial lead in adopting unique IoT devices (nearly three times more than other sectors). This increase is critical as manufacturing organisations continue adopting IoT tools for automation and digitization of legacy infrastructure.

Education is another sector that suffered from outsized attention from cybercriminals in 2023, with the propagation of unsecured as well as shadow IoT devices within school networks providing attackers with easier access points.

The wealth of personal data stored on their networks has made educational institutions particularly attractive targets, leaving students and administrations vulnerable. In fact, the report found IoT malware attacks in the education sector increased by nearly 1000%.

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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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While these pillars are developing asymmetrically from a metaverse perspective, changes to regulations, standardisation, technological advancements, and new business models will synergistically impact all these areas to keep the metaverse buildup moving forward. This progress is expected to push core (high metaverse engagement) metaverse user growth to 1 billion users by 2030.

ABI Research expects key inflexion points within the next three to four years as developments within the three pillars accelerate the pace of metaverse adoption. This is primarily within the consumer segment that developmentally lags the industrial market. In the consumer space, this growth is expected to push metaverse revenue close to US$50 billion by 2030.

Michael Inouye, principal analyst, metaverse markets and technologies at ABI Research, explains, “While we refer to the metaverse, we shouldn’t place too much value on this term – it is not a market in of itself, and it certainly didn’t start when Facebook changed its name.”

He suggests that the metaverse should be viewed as a useful way to codify ongoing market transitions and industry trends rather than positioning it as a new phenomenon – this is why we remain confident progress toward this future metaverse is still ongoing.

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken the spotlight, but it’s not replacing metaverse it is a critical enabling technology and a catalyst toward this future,” he continued.

New XR devices like Apple’s Vision Pro highlight the potential for spatial computing, which creates a stronger bridge between pre-existing workflows and applications in more immersive environments. Updates to technologies like Wi-Fi (e.g., Wi-Fi 7) will improve wireless tethering between mobile devices and XR viewers – making these devices more accessible to a broader audience.

New business models tied to digital asset ownership will come out of gaming and social media markets (beyond what is happening in Web3), spurring content development akin to what was seen with streaming video.

All these key developments will impact the demands and needs of networks and computational resources, creating new opportunities across value chain players, from operators to hyperscalers, retailers/brands, and industrial companies.

Inouye concludes, “Look at the trends around privacy, shifting power and control to the consumer, industry 4.0, network convergence, live service gaming, etc., and you start to see the clear parallels and pathway toward a future metaverse – even if the future isn’t referred to the metaverse, a similar future is still very much in the cards.”

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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.

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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.

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The partnership aims to transform the cleaning industry, especially in the face of the current tight labour shortage post-pandemic as companies look to use manual labour less and make smarter decisions about how, where and when to deploy machines.

Through this cooperation, SBRSG and Conrad Maintenance aim to transform the cleaning business by integrating and scaling with robotic solutions. SBRSG will be able to accelerate the growth and adoption of "Cleaning Digital Transformation" through Conrad Maintenance and provide high-quality and low-cost cleaning with substantial cost savings.

Raymond Ng, founder and chief executive officer at Conrad Maintenance, says its partnership with SBRSG allows for the enhancement of world-class cleaning services that will seamlessly integrate all Conrad’s offerings into one user-friendly system making it easier than ever for the company to manage its cleaning and facility maintenance solutions.

Advanced cleaning services utilising robots have been proven to significantly reduce costs and improve cleanliness, allowing employees to gain new technical skills and work with new technologies. Conrad Maintenance will leverage SBR’s knowledge and experiences accumulated in a smart facilities management service.　

Coinciding with SBRSG’s investment in Conrad Maintenance is the launch in Singapore of SmartBXTM (Smart Business Transformation) – a facilities management service which Kenichi Yoshida, chief business officer at SoftBank Robotics says brings unparalleled automation, convenience and robotics solutions to their customers.

“This move signals the true transformation of SoftBank Robotics to a Robot Integrator and a robotics services provider in the cleaning space while delivering the seamless integration of robotics, AI and sensors on top of cleaning efficiency and efficacy,” he added.

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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.

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Finalists to the Going Digital Awards reported media savings of 18% in engineering hours saved through digital advancements.

Digital twins use on the rise

Engineering data serves as the foundation and digital twins are the building blocks of infrastructure intelligence.

According to Bentley multiple infrastructure intelligence strategies that organizations are using to compound further the value of their data, including reusing digital components, integrating subsurface modelling, and incorporating, into evergreen digital twins, operational data from IoT sensors, drones, and even crowdsourcing.

Bentley Systems estimates that the company’s engineering users accumulate at least 100 million new unique digital components per month within their respective ProjectWise environments, teeing up potential infrastructure intelligence benefits across construction, operations, and maintenance.

Among finalists to the Going Digital Awards, the use of Bentley Systems' iTwin Platform has risen to 64% in 2023 suggesting that digital twins are becoming mainstream.

Groundbreaking infrastructure intelligence in Singapore

In Singapore, the location for the 2023 Year in Infrastructure conference, digital twins are extensively used to optimize decision-making and operations:

Singapore’s Public Utilities Board (PUB) is working in collaboration with Bentley Systems on a Singapore National Research Foundation-funded project to develop a new system for detecting and localizing water system anomalies and leaks in near real time.

Through a high-fidelity digital twin, AI-based predictive models, and hydraulic network model calibration and simulation, the project could potentially help in improving network resilience and water conservation.

SMRT Trains use AssetWise Linear Analytics software as the basis for its Predictive Decision Support System to prioritize maintenance. The digital twin system has enabled SMRT to meet its service reliability targets by optimizing maintenance deployments.

Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) fully leverages Bentley Systems’ EMME and DYNAMEQ mobility digital twin software for long-term and short-term planning, including operational traffic models for traffic impact and scheme analysis. This includes using Bentley Systems’ agent-based travel demand model.

Cloud to accelerate infrastructure intelligence

Mike Campbell, Bentley Systems’ chief product officer, says Bentley Infrastructure Cloud, including ProjectWise, leverages infrastructure digital twins to unlock data in order to apply AI and accelerate infrastructure intelligence.

“As we’ve digitally matured, we’ve been able to embrace capabilities from Bentley Infrastructure Cloud to improve construction staging and planning, track and export quantity data across project phases, reduce the need for physical site visits, and a lot more,” said Henry Okraglik, global director of Digital, WSP Australia.

For example, using ProjectWise, SYNCHRO, iTwin, and other Bentley products, WSP was able to reduce modelling time by 60%, increase productivity by 25%, and reduce the carbon footprint by 30% on a rail network project in Melbourne.

Advancing Bentley open applications with iTwin

To systematically introduce the benefits of digital twins in the design phase, Campbell announced the addition of iTwin capabilities in Bentley Open Applications, for modelling and simulation, starting with MicroStation.

With iTwin capabilities and workflows natively integrated, Bentley Open Applications will be able to automatically create digital twins during the design process, enabling users to collaborate in real time, evaluate the impact of changes more seamlessly, reduce rework, and expedite infrastructure intelligence. 

“Today, digital twins are critical enablers of how infrastructure assets are built and operated. With iTwin-powered capabilities coming to Bentley Open Applications, all our users will also be able to leverage digital twin technology to improve their efficiency and effectiveness during design,” said Campbell.

Generative AI, powered by iTwin

Embracing AI’s potential to accelerate infrastructure intelligence, the company highlighted its existing analytical AI capabilities, powered by iTwin, for asset monitoring, and articulated its multi-faceted approach to generative AI for design.

This approach is guided by the company’s commitment to helping users gain ever more value from their own engineering data secured in Bentley Infrastructure Cloud – maximizing their potential from generative AI, while also ensuring each account retains explicit access and control.

With the increased interest in artificial intelligence in general and generative AI (GenAI) in particular, Bentley Systems chief technology officer, Julien Moutte, noted an AI agent can assist engineers in further optimising site layouts by leveraging designs and data from previous projects.

He also showed how GenAI can be applied to minimize time spent on project documentation by automating drawing production with fit-for-purpose annotations.

“We believe iTwin-powered generative AI capabilities will support engineers by augmenting the work they’re already doing. We see iTwin becoming a copilot to support better decision-making, reduce repetitive tasks, and increase design quality. It can help close the engineering resource capacity gap – not only by empowering current engineers to produce more but also by enabling a more rewarding work experience, enticing future engineers to join the community advancing infrastructure,” said Moutte.

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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.

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In addition to securing facilities, CISOs of publicly traded companies throughout Europe are now required to run recurring vulnerability scans, report on cybersecurity breaches within a reasonable timeframe, and report their risk exposure.

To bring companies in line with the new requirements in addition to their existing regulations, Radiflow has developed a three-pillar approach consisting of OT network illumination, prioritizing security for business-critical assets, and a clear onboarding process. In addition, they help ease the transition to new regulations by offering risk assessment and compliance services for companies going through the NIS2 journey.

“Many companies are entering a new world of cybersecurity regulation, unsure of how to go from their current security systems to more advanced ones that comply with regional legislations,” said Ilan Barda, co-founder & CEO of Radiflow.

“The want to comply is there, however, it’s a big leap for many teams. We’ve found that a customer-first approach to onboarding is allowing for faster time to be cyber-secure while demanding fewer resources.”

Ilan Barda

Many companies utilize older cybersecurity practices, outdated tools, or have no OT cybersecurity program at all. This presents a large skill gap between OT cybersecurity professionals today and the capabilities of a modern platform.

The CIARA 4.0 platform allows teams to gain insights into best practices for security controls, allowing for better mapping and reporting of their security posture. Working with teams allows for a smooth transition while integrating into existing systems, CIARA V4.0 can assist with compliance by focusing on continuous risk monitoring, enabling analysis of actions caused by the recent changes to the risk score.

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To overcome this challenge, German steel manufacturer, thyssenkrupp Steel selected Samotics’ SAM4 Health solution to monitor its hot rolling mill at its Duisburg plant in Germany—Europe’s biggest steelmaking site.

SAM4 Health delivers continuous insight into the health and performance of the rolling mill. This empowers maintenance teams to take proactive measures against developing faults and prevent unexpected breakdowns.

Continuous monitoring also enables teams to detect and address root causes that might lead to future degradation, leading to extended equipment lifetime and better performance. This way equipment runs more efficiently and saves energy.

Samotics’ SAM4 technology achieves this by using a technique called electrical signature analysis (ESA). ESA analyses current and voltage data of electric-driven motor systems using sensors installed in the motor control cabinet, rather than on the asset itself. This enables continuous monitoring of assets operating in extreme temperatures, hard-to-reach places and ATEX zones.

Christian Weiß, lead engineer HTM1 at thyssenkrupp Steel said: “Industrial analytics underpin our mission to improve delivery performance and reduce energy waste. The capability of Samotics’ SAM4 system to operate effectively in extreme environments made it the obvious choice to help increase the reliability and efficiency of our hot rolling mills. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Samotics and continuing to improve our service to our clients”.

Commenting on thyssenkrupp’s commitment to the digitalization and automation of the steelmaking process promises environmental, safety and commercial benefits, Samotics’ founder

Simon Jagers, says Samotics's technology helps thyssenkrupp Steel address a fundamental challenge by identifying and resolving developing faults before they happen.

"With accurate health and performance data, maintenance teams can schedule maintenance at their convenience rather than reacting to an unforeseen fault. We’re delighted to join them on the journey toward creating a smarter, safer and more sustainable future for steel production."

Simon Jagers

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The analysis reveals key insights about the OT cybersecurity threat landscape, outlines high-level security architecture for OT, critical infrastructure systems (CIS) and industrial control systems (ICS), and evaluates key requirements of security regulations and frameworks. 

OT environments experience the same kinds of threats as enterprise IT – including ransomware, account takeovers, APTs, and supply chains as vectors – while experiencing expanded OT-specific threats.

While traditional IT security tools may be adapted, developing robust security architectures for OT environments is inherently complex compared to their IT counterparts. Its unique nature, from equipment and software to communication protocols requires dedicated OT security solutions.

Key insights

OT threat landscape. Heightened geopolitical factors have intensified attacks on OT and ICS, posing significant consequences ranging from operational disruptions and service denial to financial repercussions and potential harm to human well-being.

Core cybersecurity regulations. The risks and consequences of cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure advanced regulations globally mandating secure architectures and technical controls. KRITIS and the follow-on IT Security Act 2.0 are related examples of such regulations, as well as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.

OT security architectures and key functionalities. There are eight areas of functionality that are central to effective OT security architectures. Cybersecurity architectures for OT must address asset discovery, access control, IT security tool integration, detection and response capabilities, and OT protocol-level threats.

As the analysis breaks down, within critical infrastructure interruptions and downtime are not an option. To address the increasing need for secure access in OT environments, Cyolo introduced Cyolo 4.3, which expands key capabilities with more layers of security and makes the product easier than ever to use for both administrators and end users in the industrial space.  

With Cyolo 4.3, industrial organisations will be able to extend their multi-factor authentication (MFA) across environments through integration with Duo Security to support their physical tokens as required.

Cyolo has implemented another layer of security for file transfer within the OT/ICS environment, through query anti-virus software to scan files before they are delivered to their destination. The company is also adapting for further usability, allowing teams to securely invite external users by generating a secure one-time password; and import groups from existing IdPs, using System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM).

“Ensuring the security of critical infrastructure and industrial processes has become increasingly critical as organisations unite their IT and OT systems. This convergence has expanded the OT threat landscape and introduced significant cybersecurity challenges, as the once-isolated OT networks are now vulnerable to the same threats that have targeted IT networks for years” said Joe O'Donnell, vice president ICS/OT of Cyolo.

“With Cyolo 4.3, industrial entities can confidently navigate the complexities of the modern threat landscape and fortify their defences against evolving cyber threats,” he added.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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

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Keysight Technologies says its hardware-accelerated Infiniium MXR B-Series offers automated analysis tools that enable engineers to find anomalies quickly and shorten the time to market.

The MXR B-Series meets these needs by giving engineers built-in, automated debug tools such as zone triggering, fault detection, real-time spectrum analysis (RTSA), and a 50 MHz waveform generator.

The MXR B-Series also features eight instruments in a single comprehensive, benchtop solution that conserves both bench space and budget. All features of the MXR B are upgradeable, allowing engineers to add capabilities as requirements change.

Benefits

Reduces test time with hardware-accelerated, automated analysis – Saves troubleshooting time by automating fault detection, design compliance testing, power integrity analysis, protocol decoding of more than 50 serial protocols, mask testing on all channels simultaneously, and more.

Displays the truest signal representation – Provides the maximum resolution possible with an industry-low noise floor, industry-high effective number of bits (ENOB), and exceptionally low system jitter that ensures accurate visualisations and confident measurements.

Empowers robust design development with uncompromised performance – Captures important events in the signal with an uncompromised update rate of greater than 200,000 waveforms per second (wfms/s), a fast sample rate of 16 Giga samples per second (GSa/s), and bandwidth up to 6 GHz that does not decrease with channel usage. Competitive scopes in normal mode can only reach update rates of greater than 200 wfms/s while maximum bandwidth and sample rates are limited to a subset number of channels.

Robert Saponas, vice president for Keysight Digital Photonics Centre of Excellence, said: "The MXR B-Series leverages the same hardware acceleration ASIC as Keysight's 110 GHz Infiniium UXR B-Series oscilloscopes to accelerate analysis, eye diagrams, and triggering with the excellent signal integrity you've come to expect from Keysight. Engineers designing complex systems can now get from symptom to root cause in a matter of minutes instead of hours."

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From idling times to fuel economy comparisons, vehicle usage, cost savings, and beyond, Project G aims to deliver comprehensive, digestible information with ease.

By harnessing the power of natural language models, Project G reduces the time to insight for customers and transforms the process of analysing fleet data into a simple and intuitive experience. Project G is built on privacy-by-design principles and keeps all customer telematics data within Geotab’s environment, never shared with any Large Language Model (LLM).

In explaining the application of generative AI in the connected transportation landscape, Mike Branch, vice president of data & analytics at Geotab says the company's experience presents it with a unique opportunity to analyse vast amounts of fleet data, identify patterns, and generate invaluable recommendations to optimise operational efficiency and performance.

For his part, David Brown, assistant VP for APAC at Geotab says Project G opens doors to actionable insights, leveraging Generative AI to enhance vehicle performance, operational efficiency, and sustainability, ultimately shaping the future of connected transportation in SEA.

Over the past year, Generative AI has become a significant area of focus and organisations worldwide are exploring its potential to drive customer and performance business efficiencies. According to Statista, the value of Generative AI is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2023-2030) of 27.33%, resulting in a market volume of US$8bn by 2030 in SEA.

The region has also seen an extraordinary boost in AI adoption in 2023 with 76% of businesses now using AI in 2023 in a study done by IDC.

“The beta project is an exciting collaboration with select customers. We are able to align real-world requirements and challenges with data science expertise to learn, adapt and evolve capabilities. The possibilities are limitless, and we're committed to delivering cutting-edge solutions that make data easily accessible for our customers."

Mike Branch

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Nick Jones, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner said, “All five of these technologies are potentially transformational and should be investigated now due to their wide scope and ability to enable new business models or significant new capabilities.

“Everyone's definition of disruptive is different, however, so evaluate them from your organisation’s unique perspective and their potential impact. Then consider new business opportunities enabled by individual technologies, as well as combinations of them." (See Figure 1)

Figure 1: Five Technologies That Will Transform Your Digital Future

1. Satellite Communications

Increasing interest in low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications is being driven by the democratisation and commercialisation of space. Low latency makes LEO an important technology for enterprises to revolutionise communications with people and things.

According to Gartner, LEO will deliver broadband with global coverage and low enough latency for a wide range of tasks; direct satellite connection for small IoT devices to provide affordable global coverage without involving SIMs, telco providers and roaming complications; and voice and data services from a satellite to an unmodified 4G smartphone to extend coverage to remote locations.

“The industry remains nascent, with a lot of evolution expected, so take a cautious approach to adopting LEO early as this is an emergent technology in a complex market,” said Jones.

2. Tiny Ambient IoT

Tiny ambient IoT enables tagging, tracking and sensing of anything without the complexity or cost of battery-powered devices. The result is the ability to unobtrusively sense more information, about more things, in more ways, at a lower cost than in the past.

This will enable new ecosystems; new business models based on knowing the location or behavior of objects; smarter products with new behaviors; and a much lower cost of tracking and monitoring. Tiny ambient IoT will expand opportunities for a wide range of businesses, but Gartner recommends assessing potential social and regulatory issues before adoption.

3. Secure Computation

Secure computation is becoming vitally important as things become increasingly connected and as ecosystems access more personal information. It enables data to be exploited without compromising privacy.

While many of the principles of secure computation are already established, implementation is challenging for reasons of cost, skills, performance and availability. To help overcome these, Gartner suggests emerging technologies such as optical accelerators will be important to enable deployment.

4. Digital Humans

Digital humans are interactive, AI-driven representations that imitate some characteristics, personality, knowledge and mindset of a human. They range from physical (e.g. humanoid robots) to virtual (e.g. virtual pop stars); or human-driven (e.g. mimicking aspects of a human) AI-driven where they do not need to be human-like in all aspects (e.g. a digital twin or chatbot).

Despite their potential, digital humans pose many challenges, including unethical applications; inappropriate behaviour; creation of bias and stereotypes; lack of regulation; risk of social backlash; varying cultural attitudes; and more. Gartner recommends assessing potential social and regulatory issues before adoption.

5. Adaptive Autonomic Drones and Robots

Autonomic systems are self-managing physical or software systems, performing tasks that exhibit autonomy, learning and agency (sense of own personal purpose). Systems that learn and adapt autonomously will be essential if technologies like robots are scaled to achieve their full potential.

However, a multitude of challenges exist as it may not be obvious what a robot or AI system has learned or what it can (or cannot) do. Gartner recommends piloting them in complex and rapidly changing environments, where early adoption will deliver agility and performance benefits. Manage risk by analysing the business, legal and ethical consequences.

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Samotics launched Energy Analytics – a platform it claims enables industrial organisations to unlock the full value of existing data to realise energy savings of up to 15% and reduce associated CO2 emissions.

Hoogeweegen says Energy Analytics enables organisations to act immediately with no hardware investment, transforming fragmented, granular datasets into concrete recommendations to reduce energy costs and emissions.

Energy Analytics leverages Samotics’ years of experience monitoring electrical signals to provide insight into the efficiency of rotating equipment, benchmark performance against industry best practices, and deliver actionable, prioritised savings recommendations.

With Energy Analytics, organisations simply enable access to historic telemetry data from their existing measurement infrastructure (e.g., SCADA systems), which is then mapped, cleaned, and pre-processed to enable structured analysis within the industry-leading analytics platform. Support from Samotics’ expert team then enables organisations to quickly realise and report significant energy savings of up to 15% through continuous optimization, without the CAPEX investment and complexity associated with the installation of hardware.

Energy Analytics directly complements Samotics’ widely deployed and proven SAM4 technology ecosystem which uses electrical signature analysis (ESA) to enable continuous monitoring of the assets' health, performance and energy efficiency.

Where an organisation’s existing monitoring data is incomplete in terms of volume or quality, for example, SAM4 Energy sensors can be quickly and easily installed. This is particularly beneficial for equipment in harsh or submerged environments, as the sensors are installed in the motor control cabinet rather than on the asset itself.

“Adding a software-only solution to our product suite equips industrial organisations with another powerful, flexible tool to unlock performance and sustainability benefits through a smart, proactive condition-based maintenance approach while providing an opportunity to significantly scale our ability to support organisations around the world."

Jasper Hoogeweegen

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This initiative, part of the Korean Ministry of Education’s Green Smart School program, aims to transform existing school facilities into smart learning environments for new-age and digital ways of learning, including the creation of large-capacity multimedia classes.

The newly upgraded network allows the educational institutions to conduct Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR)-based classes. The network is also capable of being upgraded to 10G and beyond without any additional cabling.

What's in the solution

Nokia’s solution, including Passive Optical LAN (POL), Optical Line Terminal (OLT) and Optical Network Terminal (ONT), is designed to streamline operations and reduce energy consumption cost-effectively by decreasing equipment and cabling expenses. Nokia, Dongkuk Systems and Erum I&C customised the solution for the specific needs of the schools.

Jung Yong Park, CEO of Erum I&C, said: “Legacy networks are not built to address the needs of digital learning, which demands a network designed for large-capacity transmission. Nokia’s POL solution allows educational institutions to quickly expand capacity while keeping costs under control. Seamless collaboration and cooperation between all of the partners ensured a timely and seamless execution of the project.”

According to Josh Lee, head of enterprise at Nokia Korea, the Nokia POL solution is designed to boost network performance while increasing efficiencies, thus enabling educational institutions to extend the benefits of digitalisation to a greater number of students in a cost-effective manner.

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“Energy, critical manufacturing, water treatment and nuclear facilities are among the types of critical infrastructure industries under attack in the majority of reported incidents,” said Mark Cristiano, commercial director of global cybersecurity services at Rockwell Automation.

He added that anticipating that stricter regulations and standards for reporting cybersecurity attacks will become commonplace, the market can expect to gain invaluable insights regarding the nature and severity of attacks and the defences necessary to prevent them in the future.

Key findings

OT/ICS cybersecurity incidents in the last three years have already exceeded the total number reported between 1991-2000.

Threat actors are most intensely focused on the energy sector (39% of attacks) – over three times more than the next most frequently attacked verticals, critical manufacturing (11%) and transportation (10%).

Phishing remains the most popular attack technique (34%), underscoring the importance of cybersecurity tactics such as segmentation, air gapping, Zero Trust and security awareness training to mitigate risks.

In more than half of OT/ICS incidents, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are targeted (53%), with Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) as the next most common target (22%).

More than 80% of threat actors come from outside organisations, yet insiders play an unintentional role in opening the door for threat actors in approximately one-third of incidents. 

In the OT/ICS incidents studied, 60% resulted in operational disruption and 40% resulted in unauthorized access or data exposure. However, the damage of cyberattacks extends beyond the impacted enterprise, as broader supply chains were also impacted 65% of the time.

The research indicates strengthening the security of IT systems is crucial to combatting cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and manufacturing facilities. More than 80% of the OT/ICS incidents analyzed started with an IT system compromise, attributed to increasing interconnectivity across IT and OT systems and applications.

The IT network enables communication between OT networks and the outside world and acts as an entryway for OT threat actors. Deploying proper network architecture is critical to strengthening an organisation’s cybersecurity defences.

It is no longer enough to simply implement a firewall between IT and OT environments. Because networks and devices are connected daily into OT/ICS environments, this exposes equipment in most industrial environments to sophisticated adversaries.

Having a strong, modern OT/ICS security program must be a part of every industrial organisation’s responsibility to maintain safe, secure operations and availability.

“The dramatic spike in OT and ICS cybersecurity incidents calls for organisations to take immediate action to improve their cybersecurity posture or they risk becoming the next victim of a breach," said Sid Snitkin, vice president of cybersecurity advisory services, ARC Advisory Group.

He added that the threat landscape for industrial organisations is constantly evolving, and the cost of a breach can be devastating to organisations and critical infrastructure. "The report’s findings underscore the urgent need for organisations to implement more sophisticated cybersecurity strategies," he concluded.

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The SiTime Epoch Platform is a Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS)-based, oven-controlled oscillator (OCXO) that delivers an ultra-stable clock to the datacentre and network infrastructure equipment, unlocking a cumulative US$2 billion served addressable market (SAM) in the next decade.

SiTime confirmed that it plans to extend the Epoch technology to other high-growth electronics markets, such as aerospace and defence, industrial controls and more.

Declaring that precision timing will be a catalyst for innovation in all electronics and drive the company's future success, Rajesh Vashist, CEO and chairman of SiTime, says the Epoch Platform delivers higher performance and reliability with lower power that was unavailable until now. These benefits are a result of a half-decade of engineering investment and a systems-based development approach that combines MEMS, analogue, packaging, and algorithms.

The value of precision timing

Precision timing is critical to network performance and reliability. All nodes in the network must be synchronised in time. In the case of a 5G network, nodes must always be synchronised within hundreds of nanoseconds – 10X more stringent than 4G. Just as important the synchronisation must be maintained despite network outages.

The company says by delivering up to 2X better performance, 9X smaller size and 3X lower power in applications such as data centre switches and routers, 5G base stations and core infrastructure, the Epoch Platform sets a new bar in performance and reliability.

“As the world embraces next-gen technologies, like the explosion of AI, the reinvention of the cloud data centre, and high speed 5G/6G cellular networks, advanced circuit and network timing solutions have become critical in ensuring performance, fault tolerance and reliability,” said Dave Altavilla, co-founder, president and principal analyst at HotTech Vision & Analysis.

Citing the example of AI, he commented that the high bandwidth, low latency data centre infrastructure needed to support AI will require robust precision timing for critical wired and wireless network connectivity. "These technologies will also be deployed at the edge and in the field, where tough environmental conditions will require more ruggedness and higher reliability than ever before,” he added.  

Quartz just doesn't cut it

A synchronised network relies on multiple, redundant timing sources to ensure continuous operation. One of these sources is an ultra-stable, local oscillator, typically an OCXO, which will “holdover” the network and ensure continued operation when other timing sources are impacted.

Legacy quartz OCXOs are inherently unreliable and prone to performance degradation due to environmental stressors such as temperature changes and vibration. To date, electronics companies compromised on real-world performance, reliability, size, power, and warm-up time, to get the one thing that an OCXO delivered – a stable clock reference.

With the Epoch Platform, SiTime is breaking through all these limitations of quartz OCXOs. Epoch delivers 2X longer holdover, even under environmental stress, enabling telecom and cloud service providers to provide service continuity in real-world conditions.

Key Features of SiTime Epoch Platform

• Any frequency between 10 and 220 MHz, programmable up to 6 decimal places of accuracy.
• 8 hours of holdover, up to 12 hours with ageing compensation – 2X better than other solutions in real-world environments.
• ±1, ±3, ±5 ppb frequency stability over temperature
• Highest operating temperature range: -40 to 95°C
• 2.5, 2.8, and 3.3 operating supply voltage
• 3X lower power: 420 mW
• 3X better ADEV under airflow: 5e-12 at 10 seconds averaging time
• 3X lower aging: ±0.08 ppb/day
• 2X faster time to stability – 60 seconds
• 9X smaller, 3X lower: 9 mm x 7 mm x 3.73 mm
• Digital control with 5E-14 resolution: I2C and SPI interfaces

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Against this backdrop, GlobalData forecasts the Asia-Pacific (APAC) automotive sensors market to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.7% over 2023-28.

GlobalData’s “Global Sector Overview & Forecast – Sensors” estimates the APAC automotive sensors market to reach 7.6 billion units in 2023 and 8.3 billion units in 2028.

The key proponents of sensors are parking assistance, interior technologies, gasoline direct injection (GDI), anti-lock braking system (ABS) adaptive cruise control (ACC), electronic stability control (ESC), crash, safety and body control, powertrain, and emission control. Both advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) and global positioning systems (GPS) also require sensors.

Lucy Tripathi, senior automotive analyst at GlobalData, says the intelligent sensors are being used to control and process coolant levels, temperature, and oil pressure in vehicles.

"Increased electronic market competitiveness, ongoing device improvements, and increased automation in the automotive sector via electronic devices are anticipated to drive the automotive sensors market.”

Lucy Tripathi

Regional trends and opportunities

The APAC region, particularly China, is making a substantial contribution to the expansion of the global automotive sensors industry. China is also home to some of the biggest automakers in the world, which is expected to advance its automotive sensors market in the upcoming years.

Tripathi says China is expected to dominate the APAC automotive sensors market in the coming years. She cites lane departure warning, parking assistance, ACC, blind spot recognition, and forward collision warning as significantly boosting market growth.

"Due to their low cost, China has been able to deploy advanced sensors and semiconductors at an even faster rate than other countries in the region,” she added.

Safety & body control and powertrain & emission control sensors are expected to garner the largest share among all the sensors, primarily owing to the increased focus on driver assistance systems and fuel efficiency.

For example, Cipia’s driver monitoring system (DMS) employs computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) to track the driver for signs of inattentiveness and fatigue while they are behind the wheel, making roads safer.

To watch out for potentially dangerous situations, the organisation monitors crucial indications, including gaze direction, blink rate, and eye openness. Additionally, it has the ability to detect smoking, precisely monitor the driver while a face mask is worn and ensure that seat belts are worn.

Tripathi comments that car buyers in APAC are increasingly interested in high-tech features like ACC, parking assistance, and accident avoidance.

"The rising use of automotive sensors is supported by large-scale production facilities and adherence to international quality standards, which is encouraging market expansion,” she concluded.

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The trend is driving the adoption of technologies to help track, allocate, and optimise assets in the yard. ABI Research forecasts that the installed base of artificial intelligence (AI) enabled cameras in the yard will reach 11.2 million globally by 2030, and the uptake of autonomous yard trucks will rise significantly at a global CAGR of 52.7% from 2022 to 2030.

Trending

“Yards surrounding warehouses, distribution centres, and manufacturing facilities are becoming the new stomping ground for established supply chain solution providers as they diversify into Yard Management Systems (YMS) and join a growing number of emerging companies focusing on automating yard trailer movements and live asset tracking.

In a bid to digitalise and update yard operations, instalments of yard systems, enabling tracking technologies, and autonomous tractors are expected to rise considerably in the short to medium term,” explains Ryan Wiggin, industry analyst at ABI Research.

Competitive landscape

Blue Yonder, Körber, and FourKites are adding YMSs to their extensive software portfolio, joining more focused yard solution vendors such as Kaleris and C3 Solutions.

To enable tracking and visibility of assets and workers in the yard, handheld devices and AI-enabled yard cameras will see increasing deployments in yards globally, growing at a CAGR of 13.0% and 14.8%, respectively, from 2022 to 2030.

Established providers Advantech, Honeywell, and Zebra will lead the rise in handheld devices, while Blue Yonder, Peripass, and Robovision are pioneering AI-enabled yard camera systems.

Outrider, Phantom Auto, EasyMile, and Fernride are some of the few companies doubling down on yard automation, with small-scale deployments paving the way for wider commercial uptake in the coming years.

Wiggins says advancements in AI are breaking down many of the limitations faced by technologies in outdoor environments.

"Advanced computing power helps to process data from camera feeds, identify trailers and equipment, and guide autonomous vehicles safely. Where certain technologies couldn’t operate before, AI has helped unlock new use cases and will continue to drive solution adoption within yards."

Ryan Wiggin

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Therefore, to better understand the smart device market, IDC has divided the usage scenarios into six "smart life" scenario groups: leisure and entertainment, mobile office, learning and education, fitness and health, smart home, and smart mobility.

As the summer vacation ends, the new education semester will bring more focus on new scenarios in education that are enabled by smart devices and associated ecosystem developments.

Sales for key devices in learning and education in Summer 2023

The device sales total in the month of July (including tablets, children's smart watches and PCs) was higher than the monthly average over the first half of 2023. However, we have seen sales trends vary strongly by-product as they follow very different product development cycles.

Smart Tutoring Tablets are a popular and rapidly developing category in the education and learning devices market with new players still joining. In the first half of 2023, 2.19 million units were shipped to the learning and education market - an increase of 37% over last year; In July 2023, 410 thousand units were shipped - an increase of 49% over July 2022.

Kid's smartwatch sales for children were stable with sales in the first half of 2023 at 6.88 million units, up 1% from 2022. Demand is supported by an increase in children's outdoor activities but is still recovering. Sales in July 2023 were down 3% from July last year at 1.6 million units, with more demand expected in August as new products are released.

K12 and College PCs recorded historically high sales during the pandemic, such that shipments in the following first half of 2023 dropped by 26% at 5 million units; In July 2023, this significantly recovered, with sales down only 12% YoY at 1.04 million units.

Five key sales highlights over the Summer

The Chinese lifestyle-sharing platform Xiaohongshu, increased sales with a new closed-loop grass-roots live broadcasting solution;

Summer promotions drove sales in the recycling end of the second-hand market and second-hand platforms also tried summer sales;

The E-commerce platforms that support student identity authentication have improved the efficiency of sales to their members;

Consumer choice has been improved with promotions that integrated the devices across areas such as entertainment and fitness;

Summer promotions are demonstrating an increased convergence of online and offline channels, such as in experiential retail and short-term leases for temporary tenants.

Market size and forecasts

IDC forecasts the market for devices used in education and learning scenarios to reach US$110.2 billion in 2023, up 4.2% from 2022. It is expected to grow by 9.6% year-on-year in 2024, and the market size will exceed US$150 billion by 2027.

In education and learning, many hardware manufacturers work with different software and service providers, including AI solution providers and cloud service providers.

Smart device trends

Growth to be driven by personalisation

The market size and per capita expenditure have increased as devices and services have improved functionality, and personalization and widened their value-add.

Device innovation will intensify

From the rise of the Internet to the application of AI, new technology has brought about product category expansion and stronger growth across the learning and education market.

IDC forecasts shipments of products for use in learning and education to reach 99.3 million units in 2023 and are expected to exceed 100 million units in 2024. In addition, it is estimated that by 2027, more than 90% of these devices will be equipped with AI-enhanced functionality.

The influencers: AI, security, health factors and content resources

AI has become one of the core differentiators in personalization and value-add;

Endpoint security will expand across content security, information security, user safety etc.

Health-related functions have become an important upgrade direction, using sensors and other technical advances to protect eyes, correct posture, encourage regular exercise, monitor sleep, etc.

Increased content drives the creation of ecosystems and is an important differentiator, that especially attracts parents.

Sophie Pan, assistant research director at IDC China, believes that despite the age of the market for smart devices in education, it will remain strong for many more years with new suppliers joining the ecosystem to meet changing user's needs.

"We will also see a growing space for innovation and improvement of smart devices used in learning and education due to new technology being easy to put into application; high market segmentation; and user's needs changing from one generation to the next whilst their remains stable within-generation demand," she added.

Generative AI and large language model AI will continue to be a catalyst for the development of smart devices in education, specifically towards greater personalization and value-add.

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According to GlobaData Vietnam is projected to see a 5.1% growth rate in 2023, exceeding the 4.5% three-year average (2020-22). The government’s proactive measures, including monetary easing and increased public investment, are set to further drive growth at a rate of 6.5% for 2024-25.

The GlobalData report, Macroeconomic Outlook: Vietnam, reveals that the country’s domestic demand remains resilient due to the combination of easing inflation and reduced borrowing costs. During the first half (H1) of 2023, final consumption experienced a notable uptick of 2.68% compared to the same period in 2022.

The value added in agriculture and services witnessed a growth of 3.1% and 6.3%, respectively, contributing to the overall expansion of the GDP by 3.7% in H1 2023. However, the industrial sector's value-added saw a modest increase of 0.4% during H1 2023, marking the lowest growth during 2011-23 due to subdued trade.

This was reflected in a significant decline of 10.0% in exports of goods and services, along with a notable drop of 13.2% in the import of goods and services on an annual basis throughout H1 2023.

Maheshwari Bandari, economic research analyst at GlobalData, posits that if external demand remains subdued or investment remains constrained, there is a possibility that growth could fall short of expectations.

"The ongoing issues in the real estate sector, including the suspension of US$34 billion worth of projects as of June 2023, along with a rise in non-performing loans, have the potential to negatively impact Vietnam's economic prospects.”

Sector activity

Sector-wise, mining, manufacturing, and utilities contributed 35.0% to Vietnam’s gross value added (GVA) in 2022, followed by wholesale, retail, and hotels (13%), and financial intermediation, real estate, and business activities (12.6%).

In nominal terms, the three sectors are forecast to grow by 12.8%, 12.8%, and 12.4%, respectively, in 2023 compared to 14.2%, 20.5% and 11.7%, respectively, in 2022.

Vietnam's semiconductor sector is poised for growth as Samsung invested US$3.3 billion (August 2022) and Intel considers a US$1 billion increase in its US$1.5 billion chip production investment (February 2023). Amid the supply chain disruptions and trade conflicts, Vietnam aims to be a key player in the semiconductor industry.

Between January and July 2023, Vietnam welcomed around 6.6 million international visitors, hitting 83% of its yearly goal, as reported by the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism. GlobalData anticipates international arrivals to surge from 2.2 million in 2022 to 11.4 million in 2023 and even higher, reaching 19.5 million in 2025.

Bandari concludes: “Vietnam is becoming a pivotal figure in the redirection of worldwide supply chains, moving away from China. The focal point is the Deep C Two industrial estate in northern Vietnam, a hub for major global suppliers. The escalating demand in this zone emphasizes its importance as businesses aim to diversify beyond China's reach. Vietnam's advantageous geographical position and growing industrial areas, managed by entities like Deep C, are drawing manufacturers. This transition highlights Vietnam's escalating role in the reconfiguring global supply chain scenario, signifying a fresh phase in its economic journey.”

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The performance of the combined unified threat management (UTM) and firewall markets drove the growth of the overall market in 2Q23 with revenue growth of 9.7% compared to 2Q22. The intrusion prevention systems (IPS) market grew 2.3% year over year, while content management and virtual private networks (VPN) both experienced a single-digit year-over-year decline in the quarter.

"Supply chain constraints that have impacted the hardware-based markets continue to improve and IDC expects the security appliance market to maintain a healthy rate of growth in the years ahead as hardware-based security platforms remain a key component in a customer's cybersecurity investment strategy," said Carlo Dávila, research manager, Enterprise Trackers at IDC.

Competitive landscape

* Note: IDC declares a statistical tie in the worldwide security appliances market when there is a difference of 1.0% or less in the share of revenues or shipments among two or more vendors.

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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.

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With the higher data throughputs and lower latencies required by 5G networks, backhaul or transport solutions must also adapt to meet the increased requirements needed by 5G technology.

Near-term opportunities

While fibre-optic remains a preferred choice for 5G backhaul, wireless backhaul technology is still seen as a key component in many 5G networks due to its lower deployment costs and ability to be deployed in areas where fibre deployment is complex, as well as its capacity to handle 5G backhaul requirements.

Additionally, wireless backhaul deployments can also be used to complement fibre backhaul deployments by providing increased resiliency. ABI Research forecasts that the total number of cellular base stations (including both macro and small cells) using wireless backhaul links will increase from 6.3 million in 2022 to 7.6 million in 2027 (at a CAGR of 4%), with E-band growing rapidly from almost 400,000 links in 2022 to 2.5 million links in 2027 (at a CAGR of 44%).

“Technological advances for Microwave and Millimeter Wave (mmWave) solutions, such as Band and Carrier Aggregation (BCA), Cross Polarization Interference Cancelling (XPIC), adaptive modulation, antenna stabilisation technology, and high-powered radios, etc., have led to increased link capacities and distances attainable by the various frequency bands, thereby making microwave and mmWave backhaul more viable options for Communication Service Providers (CSPs),” says Matthias Foo, industry analyst at ABI Research. “A light licensing regime for E-band, implemented in several markets, has also lowered the costs for E-band, thus making the band an attractive option for standalone and multi-band deployments.”

Longer term developments

ABI Research expects a gradual migration of existing backhaul links in the lower microwave band to higher frequency bands due to spectral congestion. For example, there has been strong interest in using the 6 GHz band for unlicensed services, such as Wi-Fi, with South Korea already adopting license-exempt access to the entire 6 GHz band.

For the upcoming World Radiocommunication Conference to be held between November and December 2023 (WRC-23), frequency bands—6.425 – 7.025 GHz, 7.025 – 7.125 GHz, and 10.0 – 10.5 GHz—are also being considered for International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT).

Additionally, it can also be observed that research into the use of even higher frequencies, such as the W-band and D-band, is already underway, with some companies also offering the use of Free Space Optics (FSO) communications and satellite 5G backhaul as alternate solutions.

“With the improving capabilities of various wireless backhaul technologies, the industry has strong growth potential. However, despite an overall positive outlook, challenges remain. Macroeconomic factors, such as strong global headwinds, the continuing impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the present global energy crisis, and chipset shortages, are expected to have some impact on the industry,” concludes Jake Saunders, vice president Asia Pacific and research director at ABI Research.

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ABI Research says manufacturers can tie investments in GenAI to additional revenues with a significant spike of US$4.4 billion from 2026 to 2029. By 2033, revenue added from the use of generative AI in manufacturing will reach US$10.5 billion.

“Generative AI has growth that will derive from functionality and use cases across market verticals. The deployment of generative AI will come in three waves as the technology matures, with manufacturing seeing the largest revenue growth during the second and third waves,” explains James Iversen, manufacturing and industrial industry analyst at ABI Research.

He further posits that during the second and third waves of adoption, generative AI will be deployed into four domains of manufacturing: design, engineering, production, and operations.

Design will see the fastest mainstream deployment with use cases such as generative design and MBOM (manufacturing bill of materials) and EBOM (electrical bill of materials) reductions already having existing solution offerings from companies such as Siemens and Microsoft.

Engineering, production, and operations use cases will take longer and require further maturity from GenAI providers due to the complexity of the tasks and required model training.

Use cases for generative AI in manufacturing can be compared by looking at expected TTV (time to value) and ROI (return on investment). For the four domains, the top performers are:

Design: Generative design, part consolidation

Engineering: Tool path optimisation, part nesting

Production: Product quality root cause analysis, correction of bugged software code

Operations: Inventory stock and purchasing period management, employee work path optimisation

Both manufacturers and manufacturing software providers should prioritise top-performing use cases as they yield the highest returns and can be easily built out with existing GenAI capabilities.

Iversen opines that starting from the ground up, implementing these use cases will lay the groundwork for more extensive use cases.

"It is important not to jump the gun and develop high-functioning use cases that will see little implementation as trust in generative AI will need to be built up before overhauling significant portions of current manufacturing operations." James Iversen

James Iversen

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Gartner forecasts that shipments of all electric vehicles (EVs) - cars, buses, vans and heavy trucks - will total 18.5 million units in 2024, with electric car shipments will representing 97% of total EV shipments next year (see Table 1).

Table 1. Electric vehicle shipments by vehicle type, worldwide, 2022-2024 (actual units)

Globally, battery electric vehicles (BEV) shipments are forecast to grow from 9 million units in 2022 to 11 million units by the end of 2023. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are expected to grow at a slightly slower rate, from 3 million units in 2022 to 4 million units in 2023.

“The proportion of PHEV, as a percentage of total EVs in countries like the U.S., Canada and Japan will slightly grow as consumers in those countries prefer PHEVs to BEVs. U.S. consumers who are transitioning from a pure internal combustion engine (ICE) car are choosing to adopt PHEVs over their BEV counterparts because PHEVs combine the ability to deliver emission-free urban driving, with the convenience of gasoline-powered propulsion for longer journeys,” said Jonathan Davenport, Sr director analyst at Gartner.

“The situation is different in Western Europe, China and to a lesser extent India, where consumers favour BEV’s lower overall running costs, quieter driving experience and green credentials.”

EV models to represent over 50% of car maker models by 2030

Governments’ decisions to reduce particulate matter emissions from vehicles and some country-level initiatives, such as implementing legislation to only allow the sale of zero-emission vehicles and seeking to enforce PHEV as a minimum, led to changes in automaker behaviours.

Some automakers are looking to eliminate tailpipe emissions from new light-duty vehicles by 2035 and others are aspiring to achieve sales of 40% to 50% of annual U.S. volumes of electric vehicles by 2030. In addition, the growing importance of EVs has led to new market entrants launching EV platforms.

“Ever-tightening emission regulations will lead automakers to pivot more than half of the vehicle models marketed to EVs by 2030,” said Davenport.

By 2027, BEV Prices to Reach Parity with ICE Vehicles of Similar Size and Configuration

Gartner analysts expect that by 2027, the average price of a BEV will reach parity with ICE vehicles of similar size and configuration, which will accelerate the global adoption of EVs. However, by 2030, power generation and network capacity have the potential to act as inhibiting factors to mass EV deployment regardless of price.

“Unless countries take actions to incentivize EV drivers to charge outside peak electricity consumption periods, the switch to EVs may put an additional strain on both the power generation capacity and the distribution infrastructure,” said Davenport.

“Using dual day and night or even half-hourly electricity tariffs can incentivize EV drivers to charge outside peak times, which would require a mass roll-out of smart metering,” added Davenport. “Likewise, the ability of utilities to control EV chargers directly via application programming interfaces (APIs) would enable EV charging to be momentarily curtailed at peak consumption times to ensure grid demands weren’t exceeded.”

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“Continuing to educate global businesses about the evolving and increased risk being introduced to their attack surface through managed and unmanaged assets is a key mission of ours,” said Nadir Izrael, Armis CTO and Co-Founder. “This intelligence is crucial to helping organisations defend against malicious cyberattacks. Without it, business, security and IT leaders are in the dark, vulnerable to blind spots that bad actors will seek to exploit.”

Armis’ research, analysed from the Armis Asset Intelligence Engine, focuses on connected assets with the most attack attempts, weaponised Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) and high-risk ratings to determine the riskiest assets.

Assets with the highest number of attack attempts

Armis found the top 10 asset types with the highest number of attack attempts were distributed across asset types: IT, OT, IoT, IoMT, Internet of Personal Things (IoPT) and Building Management Systems (BMS).

This demonstrates that attackers care more about their potential access to assets rather than the type, reinforcing the need for security teams to account for all physical and virtual assets as part of their security strategy.

Top 10 device types with the highest number of attack attempts:

Engineering workstations (OT)

Imaging workstations (IoMT)

Media players (IoT)

Personal computers (IT)

Virtual machines (IT)

Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) devices (BMS)

Servers (IT)

Media writers (IoMT)

Tablets (IoPT)

Mobile phones (IoPT)

“Malicious actors are intentionally targeting these assets because they are externally accessible, have an expansive and intricate attack surface and are known weaponised CVEs,” said Tom Gol, CTO of Research at Armis.

He pointed out that the potential impact of breaching these assets on businesses and their customers is also a critical factor when it comes to why these have the highest number of attack attempts.

"Engineering workstations can be connected to all controllers in a factory, imaging workstations will collect private patient data from hospitals and UPSs can serve as an access point to critical infrastructure entities, making all of these attractive targets for malicious actors with varying agendas, like deploying ransomware or causing destruction to society in the case of nation-state attacks. IT leaders need to prioritise asset intelligence cybersecurity and apply patches to mitigate this risk,” explained Gol.

Assets with unpatched, weaponised CVEs vulnerable to exploitation

Researchers identified a significant number of network-connected assets susceptible to unpatched, weaponised CVEs published before 1/1/2022.

Zooming in on the highest percentage of devices of each type that had these CVEs between August 2022 and July 2023, Armis identified the list reflected in Figure A. Unpatched, these assets introduce significant risk to businesses.

Assets most susceptible to unpatched, weaponised CVEs published before Jan 1 2022

Assets with a High-Risk Rating

Armis also examined asset types with the most common high-risk factors:

• Many physical devices on the list that take a long time to replace, such as servers and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), run end-of-life (EOL) or end-of-support (EOS) operating systems. EOL assets are nearing the end of functional life but are still in use, while EOS assets are no longer actively supported or patched for vulnerabilities and security issues by the manufacturer.
• Some assets, including personal computers, demonstrated SMBv1 usage. SMBv1 is a legacy, unencrypted and complicated protocol with vulnerabilities that have been targeted in the infamous Wannacry and NotPetya attacks. Security experts have advised organisations to stop using it completely. Armis found that 74% of organisations today still have at least one asset in their network vulnerable to EternalBlue – an SMBv1 vulnerability.
• Many assets identified in the list exhibited high vulnerability scores, have had threats detected, have been flagged for unencrypted traffic or still have the CDPwn vulnerabilities impacting network infrastructure and VoIPs.
• Half (50%) of pneumatic tube systems were found to have an unsafe software update mechanism.

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The AWK-4252A can operate concurrently on both the 2.4 and 5 GHz dual-band Turbo Roaming with an average handover time under 150 ms and is backwards-compatible with existing 802.11a/b/g/n deployments to future-proof wireless investments.

Reliability is top-of-mind for every industrial network application. Moxa designed the AWK-4252A to comply with the most demanding industrial standards and approvals covering operating temperature, power input voltage, surge, ESD, and vibration.

Its IP68-rated weatherproof metal housing withstands the rigours of harsh outdoor environments from -40° to 75° C, while its enhanced antenna port isolation protects against up to 30 kV ESD and 6 kV surges. Two redundant DC power inputs increase the reliability of the power supply.

Moxa considers security an integral part of network reliability. Based on the principle of secure-by-design, the AWK-4252A is certified for IEC 62443-4-2 by the IECEE.

Compliance with this standard not only ensures device-level security for industrial automation and control systems (IACS), but also verifies that these devices are suitable for building an IEC 62443-3-3 compliant security environment, resulting in lower development risk, time, and cost. It also supports the latest WPA3 encryption for an additional layer of WLAN security.

The AWK-4252A can be powered via PoE to facilitate flexible, cost-effective deployments. Network Address Translation (1-to-n NAT) optimises the machine integration flow by simplifying IP address assignment while avoiding IP conflicts between existing devices connecting to the OT network wirelessly.

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However, many of these consumer IoT devices prioritise features and affordability, often sidelining essential cybersecurity provisions. This oversight makes them susceptible to digital threats, jeopardising user privacy and data. The 2016 Mirai botnet attack, which exploited IoT gadgets, underscores the looming dangers of poorly secured IoT systems.

Government intervention

Thankfully, governments globally are recognising these risks and acting on the security concerns raised, empowering consumers with the knowledge to make safer choices. The US has recently introduced the Cyber Trust Mark, a discretionary labelling system that promotes the understanding of a smart device's security provisions before a purchase is made.

This initiative mirrors others that have emerged prior, like the EU's Cyber Resilience Act. Closer to home, Australia has also implemented a similar cybersecurity label scheme for IoT devices. Notably, Singapore took the lead in the APAC region with their Cybersecurity Labelling Scheme (CLS) presented by the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA).

Given the collaborative efforts of businesses and governments worldwide to fortify IoT devices and develop universal IoT security benchmarks, we sit down with Kelvin Lim, director of security engineering, Asia Pacific, at Synopsys Software Integrity Group to understand more about how the CLS IoT labelling scheme has been doing in Singapore so far, and the lessons other organisations can take away in the space of security.

Given the rise of similar regulations in various regions, how has Singapore's Cybersecurity Labelling Scheme (CLS) fared locally?

Kelvin Lim: The CLS has garnered positive feedback from both industry experts and manufacturers. A mix of international, regional, and local IoT product manufacturers are getting their products assessed in Singapore. As of 14 August, this year, there are over 200 products endorsed under the CLS initiative.

"This track record speaks volumes, and the subsequent introduction of another scheme that has since been rolled out specifically for medical devices — the Cybersecurity Labelling Scheme for Medical Devices (CLS(MD)) — underlines Singapore's proactive approach to ensuring a digitally secure and advanced nation."

Kelvin Lim

The CLS initiative will bolster Singapore's cybersecurity standards, positioning it as a preferred hub for smart device production. From consumers, intuitive labels will help even those without technical expertise to navigate their decision process when purchasing IoT devices.

How has this influenced the medical device industry?

Kelvin Lim: More medical device manufacturers will adopt the standard as it gains recognition and traction in Singapore. By extending the CLS to medical devices, Singapore has emphasised the importance of cybersecurity in healthcare technologies.

This will compel medical device manufacturers to prioritise the security of their devices, ensuring the safety and privacy of patients.

How has the introduction of these labelling schemes impacted consumer preference?

Kelvin Lim: Today’s consumers are judicious. Increasingly so, they are invested in how their personal data is being used and stored, and how businesses are handling their private information. Consequently, consumers are more likely to buy a smart product sporting the CLS label.

It serves as a reassuring quality seal that the smart products they purchase and use have gone through stringent checks and are perceived as more secure, compared to one without.

However, those unfamiliar with CLS might gravitate towards renowned brands or manufacturers with a global footprint.

These renowned brands have built trust in consumers over many years, and are automatically associated with offering secure devices, regardless if they have the CLS certification or are on par with the security benchmark in Singapore.

Since its inception, how has the mutual recognition with Germany’s labelling scheme fared, and did it bring any value since it was finalised in October last year?

Kelvin Lim: The joint effort between Singapore and Germany epitomises the significance of global alliances in fortifying IoT security. This mutual acknowledgement has been warmly received by the industry and manufacturers. Beyond saving resources and avoiding repetitive tests, this accord also grants entry to new markets.

The path ahead for IoT

The horizon looks bright for IoT labelling. Such labels serve as badges of trust, assuring consumers of a device's compliance with rigorous cybersecurity norms. They also prompt manufacturers to prioritise cybersecurity in their product development process.

As the IoT landscape continues to evolve, it is imperative that consumers, manufacturers, and government work together to build a secure and resilient IoT ecosystem. By understanding the emerging risks in IoT security and implementing robust application protection measures, we can harness the full potential of IoT.

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Next-generation Human Interfaces (HMIs), Industrial Personal Computers (IPCs), and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are essential to deploying modern factory architecture, and each market will see strong growth over the next ten years.

According to ABI Research, the automation hardware market is forecast to increase from a current value of US$38.7 billion in 2023 to US$64 billion in 2033, a CAGR of 5.1%.

The PLC market is the largest industrial automation hardware segment with sales projected to reach US$30 billion by 2033. "PLC market growth is driven by new manufacturing requirements, such as for smart connected products, EVs, and battery manufacturing. New production techniques and a "digital-first" mindset are also encouraging new automation solutions like software-based PLCs," explains James Prestwood, industrial and manufacturing industry analyst at ABI Research.

Software-based PLCs are an increasingly notable vector of transformation for the PLC market. This trend is best encapsulated by Siemens’s announcement of SIMATIC S7-1500V, a virtual PLC completely independent of hardware that is downloaded and integrated directly into a manufacturer’s IT environment.

Siemens, Mitsubishi Electric, Rockwell Automation, Emerson, and ABB are among the largest players in the industrial automation hardware market, representing around 42% of the total market share. However, the market is also characterised by other prevalent market players such as Omron, Phoenix Contact, Honeywell, Bosch Rexroth, and Beckhoff.

ABI Research identifies large PLCs (controllers with over 1024 Inputs/Outputs (I/Os) as having the most robust growth compared to other PLC classes (Micro, Small, and Medium), with a CAGR of 6.1% and revenues of US$5.6 billion by 2033.

"As manufacturers continue to adopt automation solutions with complex architectures, which increasingly demand powerful PLC assets, large PLC controllers are the ideal solution, rather than using multiple smaller PLCs to achieve similar results," Prestwood concludes.

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KEENON Robotics and Daesung Industrial have signed a business cooperation agreement marking a significant milestone in KEENON's expansion efforts within the Korean market, and further bringing cutting-edge service robots to businesses and transforming customer experiences.

Through this cooperation, more businesses in Korea will have even greater access to a range of advanced indoor delivery robots from KEENON. The KEENON DINERBOTs, along with the versatile BUTLERBOT, will be available through Daesung distribution channels.

These state-of-the-art robots are designed to enhance productivity and elevate customer experiences across various industries, especially the hospitality industry. DINERBOT is designed with food and beverage service in mind and features open trays, reliable navigation and a user-friendly interface, while BUTLERBOT features a secure, enclosed cabinet and can autonomously ride elevators.

By offering a range of DINERBOT robots as well as the BUTLERBOT W3, both companies are poised to meet the growing demand for intelligent automation solutions and intelligent indoor delivery solutions across sectors such as hospitality, retail, healthcare, and more.

Daesung will support the success of business partners by providing KEENON's excellent service robot solutions through close collaboration with customers and partners.

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Resource-constrained HDO security and IT teams continue to face operational difficulties in sufficiently securing critical systems from increasingly sophisticated attacks, as their vast and heterogeneous IoMT device fleets complicate management and, left unchecked, offer a broad attack surface.

Asimily's Total Cost of Ownership Analysis on Connected Device Cybersecurity Risk report highlights the unique cybersecurity challenges that healthcare delivery organisations (HDOs) face and the true costs of their IoT and IoMT security risks.

Key findings

Emerging cybersecurity trends and challenges: The report reveals the top cyberattack strategies impacting HDO medical devices right now: ransomware attacks that spread to devices and disrupt services, third-party-introduced malware that impacts device performance, and devices communicating with unknown IP addresses to enable remote breaches.

Cyberattacks on healthcare providers have become remarkably common: the average HDO experienced 43 attacks in the last 12 months. Unfortunately, many of those attacks are successful, with 44% of HDOs suffering a data breach caused by a third party within the last year alone.

The high cost of doing nothing: For HDOs, today’s high-failure status quo can be catastrophic. Cyberattacks cost HDOs an average of US$10,100,000 per incident. Worse, cyber incidents are directly responsible for a 20% increase in patient mortality. 64% of HDOs also reported suffering from operational delays, and 59% had longer patient stays due to cybersecurity incidents.

Those financial and operational burdens are pushing many HDOs to the brink: the average hospital operating margin sits at 1.4% in 2023. Currently, more than 600 rural U.S. hospitals risk closure, in an environment where a single cyberattack can put a smaller HDO out of business.

Poor device health leads to poor outcomes: HDO security and IT teams face a high-risk environment where the average medical device has 6.2 vulnerabilities. Adding to this challenge, more than 40% of medical devices are near end-of-life and poorly supported (or unsupported) by manufacturers.

Cybersecurity resources and staffing are limited: Even when device vulnerabilities are recognised, HDO security teams can fix only 5-20% of known vulnerabilities each month.

Cyber insurance is no longer enough: As ransomware attacks and breaches have skyrocketed in recent years, cyber liability insurers are introducing coverage limits and capped payouts, making it a less and less effective recourse for HDOs. At the same time, cyber insurance also fails to address the costly reputational damage an HDO suffers following a breach.

The report concludes that adopting a holistic risk-based approach is the most cost-efficient and long-term-effective path for HDOs to secure their critical systems and IoMT devices.

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These advancements promise a more secure and robust infrastructure, positioning the sector on the cusp of the fourth industrial revolution.

GlobalData’s FutureTech Series report, “Transformer in Utilities 2.0 – How Tech is Driving the Sector Innovation”, highlights more than 30 disruptive forces in power and utilities as emerging, accelerating, and maturing innovation areas based on their rate of growth in innovation.

Kiran Raj, the practice head of disruptive tech at GlobalData, says the emergence of digital twins has revolutionized transformer asset operations by offering insights, paving the way for real-time monitoring and proactive maintenance.

He added that by harnessing AI and machine learning, extensive data can be analysed to anticipate potential system disruptions, ensure consistent energy output, and extend equipment longevity.

Vaibhav Gundre, a project manager for disruptive tech at GlobalData, adds that the transformer asset landscape is being redefined through the surge in patents and innovative breakthroughs, which are accelerating technological advancement and fostering knowledge proliferation.

He further posits that these advancements highlight a significant shift from reactive strategies to predictive solutions, reflecting the dedication to not only address current grid necessities but also anticipate upcoming challenges.

5G makes its mark

5G technology is reshaping the transformer sector with real-time monitoring and swift data transmission. In February 2022, Jiangxi Mingzheng patented a 5G-enabled transformer safety system for remote fault detection, comprising a base, radiator unit, rotating top, and two infrared cameras attached to a ring.

Advancements in AI are streamlining the diagnostics of the transformer sector. In January 2022, Onepredict filed a patent for an AI-driven method to predict transformer states. The process considers transformer data, assesses if the oil has been filtered, and utilises different prediction models accordingly to determine the transformer’s condition.

Robotics is modernising transformer maintenance and inspection. In December 2021, Hitachi Energy patented a submersible robot to inspect liquid-cooled transformers. Using cameras, it captures and wirelessly transmits internal images to a base station for analysis.

“The fusion of 5G with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) highlights the power sector’s commitment to uninterrupted connectivity, laying the groundwork for remote operational capabilities and insights-driven decision processes."

Vaibhav Gundre

"Concurrently, the incorporation of robotics and drones is reshaping how inspections are approached, enhancing safety, speed, and depth of evaluations. This technological synergy holds the potential for significant advancement in both efficiency and safety benchmarks within the sector,” he concluded.

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Against this backdrop, the global hearables market is set to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.7% from 2023 to 2030 to reach sales of US$131 billion in 2030.

GlobalData’s report, “Hearables in Medical Devices – Thematic Intelligence,” reveals that Apple, Bose, and Nuheara have added hearing aid-like sound amplification systems to their consumer-grade devices, positioning them as alternatives to hearing aids. Vendors will likely continue to add sound amplification systems to their hearables to target consumers with mild hearing disabilities.

Tina Deng, a principal medical devices analyst at GlobalData, cites the most obvious use of hearables as aiding individuals with hearing impairments. In the US, the FDA eased hearing aid regulations in 2022, allowing for the sale of over-the-counter hearing aids for adults ages 18 years older with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss. giving rise to a billion-dollar market.

"This not only increases the public’s access to hearing aids but also enables more vendors to step into the billion-dollar hearing aids market. It can be expected that the future generation of AirPods will have more hearing-aid-like features,” she added.

Hearables equipped with sensors and connectivity can be used for biometric monitoring. For example, they can determine body temperature via a wearer’s ear canal, which is considered more accurate than wrist temperature.

Hearables can collect data such as a user’s heart rate and activity level, and then transmit this information to healthcare professionals when needed. This enables doctors to monitor patients’ health conditions in real-time, make informed decisions, and provide timely interventions.

Some hearables include biofeedback sensors that can measure physiological indicators of stress and anxiety, such as heart rate variability. Users can then receive real-time feedback and practice relaxation techniques.

Hearables that are equipped with accelerometers and gyroscopes can detect sudden movements or falls. These devices can automatically alert caregivers or emergency services if a fall is detected, which is particularly useful for elderly individuals who are at risk of falls.

“While hearables hold promise for these healthcare applications, they should be developed and used in compliance with relevant regulations and standards to ensure safety, accuracy, and privacy."

Tina Deng

"As technology continues to advance, the potential uses of hearables in healthcare may expand even further, contributing to improved patient outcomes and more personalized healthcare experiences,” she added.

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Under its ‘emerging technology testbed’ initiative, the City of Melbourne worked with Nokia to leverage an existing network of installed cameras as Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to monitor one of the compactors.

The Nokia Scene Analytics solution employs an AI-powered algorithm to filter and collate data from the cameras, while also combining other data sources, such as operational data on the compactor itself, to create real-time alerts and produce reports.

Initial tests show

Initial trial results demonstrate that Scene Analytics can support the City’s objectives for better, safer citizen experiences while simultaneously lowering maintenance and downtime costs for waste management services.

Lord Mayor Sally Capp, City of Melbourne, says the solution is a great example of using new technology to help remove illegal waste more quickly, make our city cleaner and protect the environment.

"This innovative project will help to avoid hazards and make our streets even cleaner by allowing our waste services to better understand behaviour trends related to the illegal and dangerous dumping of waste,” she continued. 

How the technology works

The trial allowed for real-time monitoring and detection of activity in the vicinity of the compactor using a virtual tripwire. Object detection and object counting was used to identify and count items to show how the compactor was impacted by items incorrectly placed within it, while also identifying potentially dangerous items.

Anomaly detection identified unusual movements, such as illegal waste dumping during the night, while face and license plate blurring maintained individual privacy during the trial.

Using these reports, the City of Melbourne can better understand the correlation between illegal waste-dumping activities and compactor downtime, to keep maintenance teams better informed and minimize issues.

It also allows them to swiftly address waste dumping activities before they become a hazard, viewing locations in real-time to observe any obstructions to service vehicle access, and adapting their schedule to reduce unnecessary visits and minimize their carbon footprint.

By understanding patterns of compactor usage and waste dumping activities, the city of Melbourne is also able to patrol the area more effectively, while developing an ongoing campaign to better inform and educate the community.

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“The video surveillance market is experiencing a transformation as more cloud video surveillance systems emerge, diversifying a market that capital expenditure costs have historically dominated,” says Lizzie Stokes, IoT networks & services analyst at ABI Research.

“Enterprise companies, lines of business, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are looking to take advantage of surveillance insights and are searching for new storage and analytics service models to ease implementation, drive faster time to market, lower costs, and improve ROI.”

Lizzie Stokes

According to ABI Research, high upfront on-premises installation and integration costs traditionally drove video surveillance market service revenue. Professional services revenue dominated the market, facilitated by System Integrators (SIs) who often design and install customers’ surveillance systems.

Market trends

However, two prominent market trends have led video surveillance users to divert investments away from new camera deployments to cloud data services.

Stokes explains that as video resolutions have improved, data loads have become heavier and more costly to store. At the same time, regulation is driving more firms to save their video footage.

Stokes says these market dynamics have created a demand for scalable and cost-effective cloud data storage solutions.

The other trend she observes has to do with video surveillance users increasingly viewing video data as untapped business intelligence.

"Video surveillance cameras are already tracking employee behaviour, observing customer actions, and monitoring goods as they journey through the supply chain and the factory floor. Many video surveillance users—enterprises and SMEs—are searching for streamlined cloud video analytics services to mine raw video data for operational insights,” she adds.

Video Surveillance-as-a-Service (VSaaS) companies are responding to these market trends, offering cloud data storage, cloud video analytics, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications that produce vertical-specific insights.

New customer demand will eventually diversify the market’s revenue structures, with more customers paying for video surveillance services through recurring fees. Traditional video surveillance companies providing on-premises and cloud offerings include Honeywell, Milestone Systems, and Bosch. Newer companies featuring cloud video surveillance services include Verkada, Eagle Eye Networks, and Wasabi Technologies.

“VSaaS vendors are redefining how video surveillance can be offered and deployed,” Stokes concludes. “As video analytics applications expand and video data in the market explodes, new video surveillance companies have the opportunity to disrupt the market’s traditional revenue structure.”

Early stages

Sunny Chua, Wasabi Technologies' general manager for Singapore, acknowledges that the transition to the cloud for video surveillance is still in the early stages but certainly picking up speed. He points to the 5G deployment across the region as facilitating the use of intelligent video surveillance devices as well as advanced analytics at the edge.

"The ability for these smart cameras to relay information back in real-time is contributing to innovative use cases in digitally advanced markets like Singapore, such as live footage used complementarily with 3D mapping technology to provide live insights on crowd management and weapon detection via virtual patrols," he elaborated.

Another area where he sees an opportunity for VSaaS is smart cities where spending in the region is expected to more than double between 2023 and 2028 to reach US$42 billion.

"Intelligent video surveillance is an especially important part of the puzzle in smart city development - enabling everything from smart traffic management to furthering sustainability ambitions by providing predictive insights on facilities utilisation in buildings," added Chua.

He believes these ongoing digital developments will ultimately drive workflow modernisation and transformation. "This makes Asia a ripe ground for VSaaS providers that can offer domain-specific services for the deep and reliable automation that a digital era demands while expediting the transition and minimising risks," he concluded.

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Determinants that contributed to the market growth include electrification and hybridization of vehicles, collaborations, and partnerships among market players, followed by increasing disposable income of consumers leading to automobile demand.

APAC to dominate the market growth of the Automotive Sensors Market: When it comes to the fastest growing region APAC is going to dominate the global market with a contribution of 33% to the growth of the global market during the forecast period. The region's growth is driven by industrialization followed by significant investments in road infrastructure development, driving the automotive market's expansion.

According to Technavio analysts, APAC consumers are increasingly seeking advanced features like parking assistance, adaptive cruise control, and collision avoidance, relying on sensors for the proper functioning of automobiles.

When it comes to the region-wise classification Japan and South Korea, with automakers like Suzuki and Toyota, play a significant role in the automotive industry. Large-scale production facilities and adherence to global quality standards contribute to the increased usage of automotive sensors, fostering market growth during the forecast period. Our report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current global market scenario, the latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment.

Key Companies: Some of the market leaders in these segments include names like Amphenol, Aptiv, Auto DITEX BG, Dorman Products, EFI (formerly Electricfil), Faurecia, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Niterra, NXP Semiconductors, PRENCO Progress and Engineering, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Schaeffler, Sensata Technologies, Spectra Premium Industries, TDK, Tenneco, Texas Instruments, etc.

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ABI Research says AGV seaport deployments worldwide will have a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of over 26% from 2022 to 2030 and exceed 370,000 global deployments by 2027.

“Automation improves port operations' reliability, consistency, and workplace security. Also, from an environmental perspective, automation can lead to efficient operations and faster services. Automated ports are also far safer than conventional ports,” explains Adhish Luitel, supply chain management & logistics senior analyst at ABI Research.

He notes that the number of human-related disruptions falls as performance becomes more predictable with automation and data capture solutions.

In addition to AGVs in seaports, adopting solutions in other modalities of the global supply chain, such as rail, air, and road, has also seen growth. Automaton solution providers, including VisionNav Robotics, Konecranes, HERE Technologies, and VDL Automated Vehicles, have provided various automation and digital tools that enhance operational efficiency and visibility across different modalities.

Rail camera systems in rail infrastructure are a particularly growing sector. Over 29,000 inspection robots were deployed in rail infrastructure globally in 2022.  This number is set to grow to over 43,000 by 2030 with a CAGR of around 5%, falling in line with the rising rail freight volume.

Over 14 billion tons were transported in 2022 via rail freight. This number is set to grow to over 16 billion by 2030.

“Automation in various modalities, despite its benefits, can also bring costs of which supply chain managers might need to be wary. Although automation can streamline workflows and make tasks easier in the long run, they come at the expense of initial potential productivity losses that come with equipping workers with the right skillsets to operate and maintain these solutions."

Adhish Luitel

"So, there is a change management aspect of which managers and authorities must be more mindful,” Luitel concludes.

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Omdia’s research further reveals that over 900 million connected cars will be on the road at the start of the next decade, eclipsing the installed base of popular consumer devices such as payTV set-top boxes and tablets. These vehicles will include a plethora of screens in the front and rear of the cabin which are growing each year to enable video and gaming services.

As seen with their approach across other product categories, platform owners Google and Apple are looking to become key gatekeepers within the car environment with their respective in-car software solutions.

Amazon is bringing its immensely popular Fire TV entertainment solution in-vehicles for media consumption too. In response, Car OEMs are developing their own software solutions to keep drivers within their own ecosystems, allowing them to retain control of the whole consumer experience across both the vehicle and the software.

Over the next few years, all new car sales will include connectivity as a standard feature enabling services and subscriptions in the car cabin as the industry pivots its focus to repeated revenues in a new business model. Monetization strategies are already being put in place through add-on subscriptions ranging from cloud gaming services to heated seats and even the cars themselves.

Omdia principal analyst David Tett noted the ongoing uncertainty as to consumers’ willingness to pay extra for in-car services particularly as they correlate it with value for money given average journeys range between 15-30 minutes.

"Although it has been difficult to monetize, native car-based services are expected to provide such opportunities over the coming years. This potential has meant many stakeholders consider automotive as a key area for future growth," he concluded.

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By combining the advantages of blockchain and IoT, these dApps introduce innovative solutions that significantly improve security, transparency, and operational efficiency across various industries. These emerging trends are anticipated to stimulate the expansion of the market.

In addition, the integration of blockchain and IoT is revolutionising data sharing, transactional trust, and process automation, leading to the emergence of innovative business models and lucrative growth opportunities.

Key industry insights & findings from the report:

• The software & platform component segment accounted for the largest market share of 51.6% in 2022 owing to the increasing adoption of blockchain IoT solutions
• The smart contracts application segment accounted for the largest revenue share of 30.7% in 2022
• The self-execution and automation capabilities of smart contracts in the market are expected to drive the segment growth
• The transportation & logistics vertical segment accounted for the largest revenue share of 21.8% in 2022 due to its properties in creating transparent and immutable records of transactions
• The SMEs segment accounted for the largest revenue share of 60.2% in 2022 due to the increased implementation of the technology to help SMEs meet regulatory compliance requirements

Blockchain IoT market growth & trends

The growing awareness about the vast potential of this technology in numerous areas, such as supply chain management, asset tracking, smart cities, healthcare, and energy management, is also expected to augment the market growth.

Several companies focus on launching new products and partnering with key players to cater to the larger customer base and strengthen their foothold in the industry. For instance, in March 2022, IoTex, a modular Web3 infrastructure platform, partnered with Google Cloud.

The collaboration leads to the global expansion of MachineFi, a decentralised finance (DeFi) platform designed specifically for the IoT ecosystem. The Google Cloud-based infrastructure will help the company to make MachineFi's services and apps more secure, scalable, and reliable. Such partnerships by key players are expected to propel the market growth.

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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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Drivers of growth

With few alterations to the market structure, factory automation has developed gradually. However, due to technological disruptions, macro trends including reshoring, a worldwide shortage of trained workers, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives, the rate of change is quickening.

Over the course of the projection period, it is predicted that the factory automation market will grow significantly because of the increased need for automation for reliable and high-quality production.

Additionally, industry participants are focusing on improving the manufacturing process efficiency to produce goods that are both affordable and of high quality, which has a big impact on the size of the factory automation market.

Factors influencing factory automation

The demand for factory automation solutions is driven by the development of 5G wireless technology and the adoption of Industry 4.0 in several industries, including fibre & textiles, infrastructure, plastics, pharmaceuticals, and others.

Industrial IoT, digital twin, and digitization The rise of teach-less robots, soft programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and digital twins are predicted to be the three major trends in the factory automation sector. This factor is expected to drive the Factory Automation Market.

Factories with fully functional automation systems will unquestionably outperform businesses with fewer or no robotics. Theoretically, those with the most advanced automation systems may generate more than three times as much as their rivals.

Systems that automate tasks can also operate for longer periods of time. Even if factories with fully developed automation systems must produce more complex items, this helps to boost the volume of output.

Additionally, since machines are programmed to operate with extreme precision and exceptional efficiency, automation systems guarantee that there is little room for human error throughout manufacturing. It is also known that one robot can produce at a rate comparable to three to five workers. This factor is expected to drive the Factory Automation Market.

Modern automation makes it possible for factories to run considerably more cheaply. Nowadays, a few individuals and a few robots produce goods instead of hundreds of workers on an assembly line.

Gaining a profit and a return on investment (ROI) will be simpler for businesses. Payroll, benefits, insurance, and sick leave costs can all be decreased by using more robots and fewer workers. This factor is expected to drive the Factory Automation Market.

The automation systems in factories can now be upgraded continuously to work in a more environmentally responsible manner. Modern systems are known to have a smaller environmental impact.

Modern machinery is more accurate and controlled, uses less power, and produces less waste heat. Machines can also be mounted on walls, which are typically underused in traditional factories and can be placed in tight corners to save even more floor space.

Additionally, it permits businesses to add more machines inside the plant. Additionally, robotics' accuracy reduces the amount of scrap produced during production. This factor is expected to drive the Factory Automation Market.

Not only will manufacturing be more affordable because of robots, but it will also be much safer. The days of factory workers accidentally hurting themselves while the product was being made are long gone. Humans are still required, but only to manage and supervise production, apply the finishing touches, and check and guarantee the quality of the final items. This factor is expected to drive the Factory Automation Market.

Market segmentation

The factory automation market is segmented by component (sensors, controllers, switches and relays, industrial robots, drives, others), control and safety system (distributed control system (DCS), supervisory control and data acquisition system (SCADA), manufacturing execution system (MES), systems instrumented system (SIS), programmable logic controller (PLC), human-machine interface (HMI)), and by industry verticals (automotive manufacturing, food and beverage, oil and gas processing, mining, others).

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From wearable health trackers that continuously monitor vital signs and activity levels, to smart implants that transmit patient data to healthcare professionals, the IoT medical devices landscape promises personalised and proactive healthcare.

However, with these advancements come challenges related to data privacy, security, and regulatory compliance, which must be effectively addressed to ensure these transformative technologies' safe and widespread adoption.

Kow Ping, executive director and co-founder of Well Being Digital (WBD101), opines that the medical market is traditionally very conservative, with major brands like Philips and GE and Mindray having dominated it for years.

Commenting on the growing inclusion of health applications in IOT devices, Ping says IoT devices have been playing a key role in early detection applications, by key brands, such as Apple, Samsung and Huawei.

"At WBD101, we support technology for our customers, creating IOT devices for Tele-rehabilitation, and Telemedicine. We see this segment as an underserved market, especially with many countries’ ageing at-home policies," commented Ping.

Future trends

The IoT medical devices market in terms of revenue was estimated to be worth US$41.5 billion in 2023 and is poised to reach US$166.5 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 32.1% from 2023 to 2028 according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets.

The market for IoT medical devices is driven by factors such as the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, the need for efficient and cost-effective healthcare solutions, the rising adoption of telemedicine and remote patient monitoring, and advancements in sensor technology, connectivity, and data analytics.

However, interoperability & transparency issues, the high setup and operational costs, and data privacy concerns in IoT medical devices market are expected to restrain market growth to a certain extent.

Commenting on the industry's challenges, Ping adds that diagnostic tools require long and arduous regulatory approvals and it’s a tough market for IoT devices.

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Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) launched Seniors Lab, a pilot digital programme for integrated senior care, in partnership with Sree Narayana Mission (SNM) in Singapore, to help seniors live and age with confidence.

Seniors Lab seeks to enhance the well-being and inclusivity of Singapore’s ageing population by innovating care delivery systems. Designed to address challenges in rising healthcare costs, the programme leverages Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to create an integrated care delivery system that will lower the cost of care delivery, while helping seniors of SNM lead safer, more comfortable, and independent lives.

By integrating IoT-enabled sensors installed in the seniors’ homes, Seniors Lab digitally detects and reports movement, activity levels, falls, social isolation indicators and other medically relevant parameters, while ensuring privacy. These sensors can be integrated with wearables and devices, as well as healthcare ecosystems and concierge service providers, to further ensure a holistic approach to senior care.

The Seniors Lab programme builds on the success of the SHINESeniors programme, a research initiative of the SMU-TCS iCity Lab, a joint venture between Singapore Management University (SMU) and TCS.

Aspirations of the Seniors Lab

The new programme has introduced a range of new and extended features, including emergency linkages and concierge services, such as ambulance services and companions, attendants, shopping and groceries, and bill payments.

It also allows for the tracking of medically relevant parameters, adding another dimension to comprehensive senior care, enabling them to live more independently.

K Shanmugam, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law commented: "Singapore’s resident population is ageing rapidly. In 2022, our residents aged 65 years and above made up 16.6% of the total resident population, which makes Singapore one of the most rapidly ageing societies in Asia. Our environment must evolve to adapt to the growing needs of our elderly."

"I am glad and welcome more similar corporate-charity collaborations like TCS and SNM for Seniors Lab, to raise greater awareness and provide creative living solutions for our seniors to remain active, healthy and live life with purpose and dignity, and for society to benefit from their collective wisdom and experience."

Ameet Nivsarkar, Country Head for TCS Singapore, says the partnership with SNM and the launch of Seniors Lab addresses the underserved needs of the silver generation.

"Losing a sense of autonomy and loneliness at an old age can be a very difficult experience for many," he continued. He added that these efforts and others like them aim to help drive inclusivity and social interaction in Singapore.

"We strive to create a healthier ageing landscape by leveraging technology to empower our seniors in ageing independently, which complements the Healthier SG initiative," said S Devendran, CEO of SNM Singapore.

"We hope to achieve this through ‘Living with Confidence’, a sensor-based IoT technology and data analytics, which allows remote monitoring and timely alerts through a mobile application. Our seniors can take comfort in knowing that they are not alone and get to age in place confidently. This creates a safe and healthy ageing landscape for seniors of today and tomorrow." S Devendran

The Seniors Lab promotes active engagement and participation among seniors, enabling them to shape their ageing journey with dignity and fulfilment. These initiatives are offered through partnerships with Non-Profit Organisations and healthcare providers, with the collective aim of enabling seniors to thrive as active and engaged members of their communities.

TCS aims to extend the Seniors Lab programme to other parts of the world.

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China's domestic brands are leading the market in the development and implementation of advanced assisted driving systems, capitalising on their early-entry advantages in the electric and intelligent vehicle sector.

These brands have an edge over other joint ventures in the planning and execution of smart assisted driving systems. Notably, the new emerging brands in automobile manufacturing hold a significant lead in the roll-out of high-level assisted driving systems.

Among the top 10 brands selling vehicles equipped with L2+ assisted driving, nine are domestic, representing 93.6% of the total L2+ installations. Among these, new emerging brands account for 70.6% of the total market.

As the technical roadmap for achieving L2+ assisted driving functions becomes clearer, Canalys expects most domestic brands with L2+ to increasingly capture the CNY150,000 (US$20,925) market.

There are five main autonomous driving SoC supply chain players：

Startups: Horizon, Black Sesame, Mobileye, Core Intelligence, Post-Mo Intelligence

Domestic consumer electronics chipset provider: Huawei

Overseas consumer electronics chipset providers: Nvidia, Qualcomm

Traditional automotive chip suppliers: Texas Instruments, Sari Self-developed

Automakers: Tesla, Leap Motor (owned by Dahua)

On the supply chain side in the market of electric vehicles equipped with standard L2+ assisted driving functions in Mainland China, Nvidia led the pack with a 44.2% market share, followed by Horizon with 15.1% in Q1 2023.

Nvidia has taken the lead in high-computing-power fields, capturing the high-end market in line with the “dumbbell” structure of the Chinese market, characterised by the dominance of both high-end and entry-level models.

Meanwhile, Chinese chip startups are differentiating themselves through their open collaboration models and are expected to further increase their market share.

The Chinese chip startups, while continually improving the computing power of their chips (with Horizon Journey 5 reaching 128 TOPS and Black Sesame A1000 Pro reaching 106 TOPS), have differentiated themselves from other models followed by Qualcomm, Nvidia as chip and solution providers, and Mobileye as a full-stack solution provider.

Instead, these startups participate in a more open collaboration style that involves vehicle manufacturers in product and platform development. This helps car manufacturers in personalising development, meeting the diverse needs of a “thousand vehicles, thousand faces” model, thereby continuously expanding to secure orders from vehicle manufacturers.

With further penetration of proprietary products into the mainstream market, these brands anticipate an increase in their market share.

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A new ABI Research report forecasts this market will rapidly expand by 2030 at a CAGR of 162%, offering nearly US$60 billion in revenue for supply chain stakeholders.

“Capturing the enterprise commercial opportunity is essential as stakeholders continue to struggle beneath a significant cost crisis driven by the consumer segment. Building data sets, deploying infrastructure, training, and running large language models like Claude, LLaMa, Titan, or GPT-3.5 has a sizeable cost burden that will be challenging to reduce,” explains Reece Hayden, Senior Analyst at ABI Research.

He added that popular public applications like ChatGPT cost at least US$500,000 per day to operate. That cost will only rise as usage increases.

"So far, stakeholders have relied on external funding to support free access through venture capital investment or internal subsidies. This cannot continue forever, and stakeholders must identify strategies to start generating revenue in the consumer and enterprise segments,” he continued.

Given their high customer acquisition cost, stakeholders are primarily stuck in ‘freemium revenue models that are largely unsustainable in the consumer segment. “These models are also mostly unfit for purpose in the enterprise market,” Hayden points out. “Although moving on from this model will be challenging, the good thing is that plenty of monetisation opportunities have applicability across the supply chain.”

Stakeholders can look to implement advertising models like those used by search engines, revenue share models which have proven successful in adjacent areas like cloud marketplaces or even look to productise open-sourced LLMs with closed-source enterprise functions. But it is vital that stakeholders carefully align their capabilities with a revenue model as some may not be fit for purpose.

The most successful revenue generation strategies over the foreseeable future will look to support enterprise adoption directly. Most enterprises lack Machine Learning (ML) skills/tools, operational expertise, and strategic legal/governance frameworks to support generative AI development and implementation effectively.

For this reason, Hayden recommends, “Supply chain stakeholders should look to provide consultancy services or build low/no-code platforms that support development, deployment, fine-tuning, optimisation, operational change management, and day two operations.”

Business consultants like Bain, McKinsey, and BCG have joined system integrator incumbents through partnerships with foundation model owners like OpenAI. Moving forward, the enterprise service part of the supply chain could be worth more than US$15 billion by 2030.

Other factors are at play in this market, most notably the increasing focus on data privacy, which will trigger increasing interest in data service providers. Enforcement of copyright regulation for training data and enterprise demand for fine-tuning will create sustained interest in companies able to curate enterprise datasets or generate synthetic databases.

“Recent fundraising rounds indicate more significant interest in ML data companies. For example, Mostly AI, a synthetic data generator, has just raised US$25 million, while Snorkel AI recently raised US$85 million at a valuation of US$1 billion," Hayden says.

“The supply chain has plenty of opportunities to offset their cost burden with revenue models, and some are already looking to do so,” concludes Hayden.

“Beyond simply identifying new revenue models, stakeholders should look to build strong partnerships across the supply chain, build products/services that target B2B deployment and scale, and develop a leading position in responsible AI development.”

Reece Hayden

The post GenAI holdouts in supply chain's US$60 billion opportunity appeared first on FutureIoT.

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.

The post Where IoT spending will go from 2023 to 2027 appeared first on FutureIoT.

While EV charging points in service will grow from 14.2 million in 2023, to 45 million in 2027 globally, the analysis identified a significant gap between public and home charger adoption, with over twice as many home chargers as public chargers being in service by 2027.

The report identified improving shared data on charging point distribution, as well as agreeing on partnerships to accelerate rollouts in key areas as vital to redressing the gap.

New business models needed

The study found that present initiatives from governments are not sufficient to accelerate EV adoption, with new innovation and business models within EV charging needed.

Research co-author Nick Maynard explained: “It is clear that regulator initiatives, such as requiring charging points to be added to new buildings, are insufficient by themselves to roll out charging infrastructure on a wide enough scale to drive environmental benefits."

"EV charging networks must work together with both city authorities and each other to identify how best to plug gaps in charging infrastructure, or EV adoption will continue to be limited.”

Nick Maynard

Fragmentation in charging networks creates confusion

The research found that, despite initiatives such as the opening up of Tesla’s Supercharger network in North America, fragmentation in charging networks is still limiting EV adoption globally. The number of different charging rates, payment systems and access requirements is harming consumer enthusiasm, which is limiting the growth of the overall space. EV charging networks must simplify networks and develop interoperability to make the ownership experience simpler, with regulator action needed to harmonise systems.

The post EV charging points to grow 220% over next 5 years appeared first on FutureIoT.

ABI Research forecasts that automated storage & retrieval system (AS/RS) revenues are expected to surpass US$15 billion globally by 2030, and warehouse management system (WMS) revenues are expected to exceed US$10 billion by the same period.

"Global supply chain challenges over the last three years have highlighted the need for digitalisation and a deeper restructuring of inventory management. Labour constraints, geopolitical trade shifts, and inventory gluts continue to pressure warehouse operations, and the most impacted organisations continue to be those with lower focus on digital transformations," states Ryan Wiggin, supply chain management & logistics industry analyst at ABI Research.

The present and future competitive landscape

AS/RS vendors, including AutoStore, Ocado, and Swisslog, as well as autonomous mobile robot (AMR) vendors such as inVia Robotics, Locus Robotics, and Vecna Robotics, are leading the structural automation charge.

Established and emerging WMS vendors such as Blue Yonder, Manhattan Associates, and Snapfulfil continue to add new functionalities to orchestrate and optimise both manual and automated workflows.

In addition to the growth in automation and management systems, high investment in hardware and devices is expected to increase worker productivity, as manual worker involvement remains necessary alongside the adoption of automated equipment. Global shipments of handheld devices for warehouse workers will grow at a CAGR of 20% to 2030, led by market leaders such as Zebra and Honeywell.

The new warehouse building is expected to drop by as much as 35% in 2023 compared to 2022. It is creating an even greater incentive to invest in the automation of current facilities to ease operational constraints.

Disruption to new developments will be short-lived, with steady growth in warehouse construction expected to 2030, led by a much greater CAGR in global e-commerce fulfilment centre development at 18%.

"Successful deployments by Tier One organisations continue to spur the adoption of technologies within small-medium enterprises. Solutions providers must continue to offer accessible adoption through as-a-service models and scalable structures, and exploring partnerships with complementary technology will be key to deploying market-leading end-to-end solutions," concludes Wiggin.

The post IT-OT investments to resolve exposed weaknesses in supply chains 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).

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

The post Cradlepoint outlines 5G SASE Strategy for cellular and hybrid WAN security appeared first on FutureIoT.

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.”

The post Collaboration to integrate Sigfox 0G technology on LoRa platforms appeared first on FutureIoT.

Industries such as manufacturing, industrial control system (ICS) engineering and integration have been particularly affected, emphasising the urgent need for enhanced cybersecurity preparedness.

The investigation uncovered a series of targeted attacks with the objective of establishing a permanent channel for data exfiltration. These campaigns exhibited significant resemblances to previously researched attacks, such as ExCone and DexCone, suggesting the involvement of APT31, also known as Judgment Panda and Zirconium.

There was also the use of advanced implants designed for remote access, showcasing the threat actors' extensive knowledge and expertise in bypassing security measures. These implants enabled the establishment of persistent channels for data exfiltration, including from highly secure systems.

The threat actors were extensively using DLL Hijacking techniques again (that is abusing legitimate 3rd party executables, that are vulnerable to loading malicious dynamic linked libraries into their memory) to try and avoid detection while running multiple implants used during 3 attack stages.

Cloud-based data storage services like Dropbox and Yandex Disk, as well as temporary file-sharing platforms, have been used to exfiltrate data and deliver subsequent malware. They also deployed command and control (C2) infrastructure on Yandex Cloud as well as on regular virtual private servers (VPS) to maintain control over compromised networks.

Within these attacks, new variants of the FourteenHi malware were implemented. Discovered in 2021 during the ExCone campaign targeting government entities, this malware family has since evolved, with new variants surfacing in 2022 to target specifically the infrastructure of industrial organisations.

Also discovered is a novel malware implant, dubbed MeatBall – a backdoor implant that possesses extensive remote access capabilities.

"We cannot underestimate the significant risks posed to industrial sectors by the targeted attacks they face," comments Kirill Kruglov, a senior security researcher at Kaspersky ICS CERT.

"As organisations continue to digitise their operations and rely on interconnected systems, the potential consequences of successful attacks on critical infrastructure are undeniable."

Kirill Kruglov

"This analysis emphasises the critical importance of implementing resilient cybersecurity measures to protect industrial infrastructure against existing and future threats," he added.

Recommendations

Conducting regular security assessments of OT systems to identify and eliminate possible cyber security issues.

Establishing continuous vulnerability assessment and triage as a basement for effective vulnerability management process. Dedicated solutions like Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity may become an efficient assistant and a source of unique actionable information, not fully available to the public.

Performing timely updates for the critical components of the enterprise’s OT network; applying security fixes and patches or implementing compensating measures as soon as it is technically possible is crucial for preventing a significant incident that might cost millions due to the interruption of the production process.

Using EDR solutions for timely detection of sophisticated threats, investigation, and effective remediation of incidents.

Improving the response to new and advanced malicious techniques by building and strengthening your teams’ incident prevention, detection, and response skills. Dedicated OT security training for IT security teams and OT personnel is one of the key measures helping to achieve this.

The post Advanced TTPs against the industrial sector utilise cloud infrastructure appeared first on FutureIoT.

ABI Research forecasts automated storage & retrieval system (AS/RS) revenues are expected to surpass US$15 billion globally by 2030, and warehouse management system (WMS) revenues are expected to exceed US$10 billion by the same period.

“Global supply chain challenges over the last three years have highlighted the need for digitalisation and a deeper restructuring of inventory management. Labour constraints, geopolitical trade shifts, and inventory gluts continue to pressure warehouse operations, and the most impacted organisations continue to be those with lower focus on digital transformations,” states Ryan Wiggin, supply chain management & logistics industry analyst at ABI Research.

Competitive landscape

AS/RS vendors, including AutoStore, Ocado, and Swisslog, as well as autonomous mobile robot (AMR) vendors such as inVia Robotics, Locus Robotics, and Vecna Robotics, are leading the structural automation charge.

Established and emerging WMS vendors such as Blue Yonder, Manhattan Associates, and Snapfulfil continue to add new functionalities to orchestrate and optimise both manual and automated workflows.

The growth in automation and management systems and high investment in hardware and devices are expected to increase worker productivity, as manual worker involvement remains necessary alongside the adoption of automated equipment.

Global shipments of handheld devices for warehouse workers will grow at a CAGR of 20% to 2030, led by market leaders such as Zebra and Honeywell.

The new warehouse building is expected to drop by as much as 35% in 2023 compared to 2022. It is creating an even greater incentive to invest in the automation of current facilities to ease operational constraints.

Disruption to new developments will be short-lived, with steady growth in warehouse construction expected to 2030, led by a much greater CAGR in global e-commerce fulfilment centre development at 18%.

“Successful deployments by Tier One organisations continue to spur the adoption of technologies within small-medium enterprises. Solutions providers must continue to offer accessible adoption through as-a-service models and scalable structures, and exploring partnerships with complementary technology will be key to deploying market-leading end-to-end solutions,” concludes Wiggin.

The post Warehouse automation is essential to resilience appeared first on FutureIoT.

IoT connectivity plays a crucial role in the efficient functioning of smart homes, smart cities, and various industry verticals, including healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation. ResearchandMarkets forecasts the IoT connectivity market to reach US$720.37 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 20.6% between 2023 and 2028.

With the continued deployment of IoT devices and sensors, bandwidth will become a major challenge for organisations. IDC estimates that total data generated by IoT will reach 175 zettabytes (ZB) by 2025, potentially straining networks that serve consumers, businesses and governments, and now machines.

Soracom launched three new services designed to help IoT deployments take advantage of the power and promise of generative AI (GenAI). The three services can work together or separately to analyse IoT device data on the fly or connect devices to the powerful AI/ML capabilities now available through leading hyperscale platforms.

Soracom Relay lets customers use any existing RTSP/RTP-compatible camera to acquire and securely transmit audio and video data to Soracom’s Harvest Files for storage or to a cloud destination, such as AWS S3 or Amazon Kinesis Video Streams, for computer vision and video analytics.

Soracom Query lets customers use SQL queries from BI tools or CLI to mine IoT device data with no need to set up their own servers or storage. This managed data warehouse capability with automatic data loading makes it easy to run complex analytical queries on large IoT datasets and feed the results to machine learning (ML) projects.

Soracom Harvest Data Intelligence enhances Soracom’s existing serverless data storage and visualization capability with the ability to apply GenAI to analyse time series data and identify trends, patterns, outliers, and abnormalities. It can also use the data provided to perform further analysis.

For example, a municipality can use Soracom Relay to monitor road traffic while Harvest Data Intelligence analyses the data stored and Soracom Query can guide decisions on the best times to schedule road repairs, or to predict how changes in traffic patterns will impact existing infrastructure.

Soracom has also established an IoT x GenAI Lab with Matsuo Institute, which conducts research and development projects in AI sharing the vision of Matsuo Lab, University of Tokyo. The IoT x GenAI Lab will explore the potential to gain new insights from diverse IoT data using Gen AI, develop new products, and provide professional services specialising in the area of Generative AI, including IoT and Large Language Models (LLMs).

The post GenAI comes to the aid of IoT connectivity appeared first on FutureIoT.

The top 5 smart cities ranked by Juniper Research are:

1. Shanghai
2. Seoul
3. Shenzhen
4. Sydney
5. Beijing

Juniper Research’s ranking of 50 world cities is based on an evaluation of many different smart city aspects, covering transportation and infrastructure, energy and lighting, city management and technology, and urban connectivity.

The research analysed Shanghai as leading due to its strong data platform, comprehensive deployment of 5G, and use of innovative technologies, including digital twins. This comprehensive approach reflects a well-considered and progressive smart city design, which can be seen as an example for other cities to emulate.

Research co-author Nick Maynard says creating an effective smart city strategy means more than just looking at a technical design – it means developing a comprehensive approach that actively solves challenges that citizens face in their lives.

"Congestion is a major challenge, and we will see more focus on smart mobility, adapting urban environments for better traffic flow, as environmental concerns become increasingly prominent.” Nick Maynard

Asian smart city spend growing by 120%

Hardware and software spending on smart city deployments in Asia is forecast to reach $42 billion by 2028, from $19 billion in 2023.

Spend is growing much faster in the rest of Asia Pacific, at 303% over the next 5 years, compared to Indian Subcontinent at 231% and Far East & China at 76%, over the same period.

Growth in the Far East & China is slowing, with smart city projects being more mature in countries like China, Japan and South Korea. However, emerging markets such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam will boast much stronger growth, as smart city initiatives get underway, and cities build the comprehensive data systems needed for success.   

The post Shanghai leads Asia's smart city race appeared first on FutureIoT.

The report noted that alongside strong growth in biometric devices, rising in revenue from US$7 billion in 2022, consumer electronics (smartphone, tablet, wearable) biometric capability will markedly increase in future years. Fingerprint sensor revenues will remain at a steady US$1.5 billion annually, with attach rates for face, voice, vein, ECG, and gesture biometrics increasing rapidly.

There are two angles to look at regarding the biometrics market. “First, we have dedicated devices, predominantly in the government and security space, as well as in enterprise, healthcare, and BFSI institutions. These are often specialised by application, for instance, a biometric enrolment kit for citizens’ identities, or eGate systems which use biometric verification to clear those crossing a border,” explains Lucas Stewart, research analyst at ABI Research. “Second, we can look at smartphones and tablets as a vessel for biometric authentication.”

ABI Research notes a strong uptick in the biometric capabilities of said devices, with low-end models increasingly equipped with biometric technologies and the overall smartphone user base seeing growing biometric penetration.

Stuart posits that given convenience and user experience, we see a trend of biometric verification often going through a personal device where possible, that is using your smartphone or other to capture or verify your own biometric data, where apps and web pages increasingly incorporate biometric means of authentication as a password replacement or way to verify oneself.

“Alongside the usability factor, this trend is underpinned by a clear need for mobility. In terms of standalone biometric devices, the need for mobility in these larger scale kits manifests with movement toward more handheld and portable devices,” Stuart continues.

Biometric locks are a key area of opportunity and something we will see more and more of as smart home concepts progress. Regarding other key growth areas, the border control market should also be closely monitored.

Stewart reiterates that there is a significant opportunity here with the need for more efficient and secure international border crossing becoming clear post-COVID as traveller volumes continue to rise.

ABI Research forecasts biometric locks as the most rapidly growing device type within the wider market, rising from 9.3 million shipments in 2022 to 35.5 million in 2027. Similarly exhibiting strong growth are eGates, at 12.8% CAGR from 2022 through 2027. These key figures sit alongside additional detail and granularity for multiple device types, by submarket and biometric modality.

The post ABI Research forecasts strong demand for biometric hardware appeared first on FutureIoT.

Keysight Technologies says its PathWave Design 2024 gives design engineers new software automation, design data and intellectual property (IP) management, team collaboration, and development lifecycle transformation capabilities.

PathWave Design 2024 EDA features

Software automation

Keysight's new Python API for EDA (electronic design automation) workflows establishes an open ecosystem to connect and control best-in-class simulators, platforms, data exchange, and report generation to meet specific development project needs.

The Python API enables Keysight's EDA software tools to interoperate with third-party partner tools in custom-tailored automation workflows. It supports more efficient design verification and provides greater confidence for attaining first-pass success.

Keysight also speeds up the development of automated workflows by offering professional consulting and customization services for PathWave Design 2024 customers.

The Python API addresses customer requirements to use the tools in a larger ecosystem environment and control Keysight EDA software programmatically. It includes documentation and examples on how to tackle common automation challenges making Keysight tools a component of larger enterprise workflows.

Using the Python API for EDA workflows, engineers can streamline processes to reduce repetitive, tedious work and avoid mistakes due to human error. An example use-case is the repeated electromagnetic (EM) extraction of a printed circuit board or package for high-speed digital signals, performing channel simulation on the resulting EM model, and invoking digital standard compliance tests, in one automated process.

IP and design data management

Keysight has integrated the former Cliosoft products into the PathWave Design 2024 software suite. Keysight remains committed to broad support of its IP and data management products for all major EDA tools with data originating from third-party vendors' tools and continued support for the full Cliosoft ecosystem.

Keysight Design Data Management (formerly Cliosoft SOS) empowers engineers with robust features and benefits such as optimal file archiving, advanced revision control, disk storage optimization, tight EDA vendor integration, and seamless software configuration connectivity.

With Keysight IP Management (formerly Cliosoft HUB) IP and system designers can streamline their IP processes and maximize productivity. It empowers engineers to seamlessly organise, catalogue, and track valuable IPs, ensuring easy access and efficient reuse across design projects. It provides unparalleled traceability, enabling engineers and managers to monitor the entire lifecycle of their IPs and make informed decisions.

Simulation acceleration

Using Keysight's Design Cloud for parallel simulation dramatically improves designer productivity, reducing simulation time by up to 80% for circuit simulation and EM simulation and enabling faster design cycles with better simulation coverage to reduce design risk.

Keysight's Design Cloud uses parallel computing across hardware deployments ranging from on-premises clusters to private, public, and hybrid clouds, and through a turnkey cloud solution.

PathWave Design 2024 enables a new Design Cloud use-case for parallel simulation supporting electrothermal (ETH) simulation for radio frequency (RF) power amplifier design. ETH parallelization increases the accuracy of typical RF circuit simulations with dynamic large-signal stimulus, which is important for 5G and 6G applications. Parallel simulation enables coverage of more temperature corners in a shorter simulation time.

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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.

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The move away from personal transport, paralleled by the intensifying thrust on integrated, multimodal, and sustainable transport networks, is providing a fillip to the shared mobility market.

Such seismic shifts are being underpinned by evolving customer expectations and a raft of enabling technologies. Accordingly, total GMV from the shared mobility market is set to exceed $1 trillion in 2023, catalysed by the ride-hailing segment.

Rising maturity in terms of shared mobility services means that operators can now move closer to achieving consistent profitability. The fulcrum of this shift will be technology, with start-ups and technology companies at the forefront of this transition.

Transformation in the shared mobility market will be led by accelerated electric vehicle (EV) penetration in car sharing and ride-hailing fleets and reinforced by deepening partnerships between OEMs and shared mobility operators.

Simultaneously, dynamic changes in mobility patterns and demands will emphasize the need for traditional public transport operators to synergize with new mobility service providers.

Drivers of market development

From car-free cities, integrated multimodal transport systems and favourable car sharing policies to preferential parking fees, supporting infrastructure development and EV integration in shared fleets, cities are playing a key role in proactively driving shared mobility usage.

The switch to electrified or alternative fuels in shared mobility fleets will represent a high impact trend in 2023 that will align with sustainability agendas being championed by cities.

Autonomous shared mobility is disrupting the traditional automotive ecosystem, compelling component manufacturers and automotive companies to strategically recalibrate and strengthen their technological capabilities.

Based on its varied applications and stage of development, Frost & Sullivan expects the market for autonomous shuttles to develop faster than that of robo-taxis.

The autonomous shuttles segment will develop rapidly, penetrate new verticals, and deploy a range of third-party solutions. Lessons from the pilot testing phase will be leveraged to design economical, next-generation shuttles capable of Level 4 autonomy in real-world settings.

From a competitive standpoint, there will be increasing consolidation in fragmented segments like micro mobility sharing as participants strive to achieve economies of scale. Consolidation will also result from a shrinking pool of participants: a flurry of exits is anticipated as companies leave the market to focus on more profitable areas.

Connectivity, machine learning and artificial intelligence-based technologies will emerge as powerful tools to help operators realize seamless and effective fleet data management, workflow automation, and enhanced security.

Such technologies will also be crucial to addressing the looming threat of bans on kick scooters over safety concerns. With cities mandating safety standards for kick scooters, technology-enabled changes will be implemented in the manufacturing stage even as supporting infrastructure is built to ensure more permanent changes in driving behaviour.

Demand Responsive Transit (DRT) has become the fulcrum of public transport, with over 100 B2G DRT projects being launched globally in 2022. The rising implementation of DRT in rural areas mirrors the need to meet transport needs in underserved rural areas. The momentum of DRT is set to carry over in 2023 as well.

Strategic partnerships and business model diversification will be crucial

As a new ecosystem develops, strategic partnerships and service diversification will be crucial. Stakeholder collaboration—between automotive and technology industry participants, city authorities and government policy makers, and shared mobility service providers with OEMs and public transport administrators will incubate new business models.

Participants in the shared mobility space should strengthen their core technological competencies to capture emerging growth opportunities. Identifying technology partners with complementary expertise will enable shared mobility operators to boost fleet efficiencies and profitability. Meanwhile, data sharing between public transport and private mobility operators could create integrated solutions that spur the uptake of mobility as a service (MaaS).

Amidst technology disruption, automotive and technology industries should deepen their partnership and design new business models that maximise on the opportunities offered by shared mobility. Simultaneously, fleet operators should work towards making transportation smarter, safer, and more sustainable.

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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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To overcome this challenge, London Stansted Airport selected Samotics’ SAM4 Health solution to increase reliability and meet industry uptime standards. Until now, 80% of baggage handling downtime at London Stansted Airport was due to mechanical faults leading to the failure of conveyors.

SAM4 Health addresses this by delivering continuous insights into the health and performance of critical assets. This empowers maintenance teams to take proactive measures against developing faults and prevent unexpected breakdowns.

The system’s superior detection performance across both electrical and mechanical faults will enable London Stansted Airport to identify and prevent over 90% of potential faults up to five months in advance.

Paul Marshall, a reliability engineer at London Stansted Airport said: “By leveraging Samotics' SAM4 system, which has already been proven at a leading international airport, we can increase the reliability of our baggage handling system to significantly reduce delays and impact on travellers.”

Samotics’ SAM4 technology enables the remote capture of performance data by using a technique called electrical signature analysis (ESA). ESA analyses the current and voltage signals of electric-driven motor systems using sensors installed in the motor control cabinet, rather than on the asset itself. This means that SAM4 is quick to install and does not incur an upfront downtime, enabling rapid deployment at minimal cost.

Jasper Hoogeweegen, CEO at Samotics claimed its technology helps airports address a fundamental challenge by identifying and resolving developing faults before they happen.

"With accurate health and performance data, operational teams can schedule maintenance at their convenience rather than reacting to an unforeseen fault."

Jasper Hoogeweegen

"With less downtime, passengers and airlines benefit from reduced delays and a smoother travelling experience. We look forward to supporting London Stansted Airport to harness the potential of proactive maintenance,” he continued

Samotics’ SAM4 Health solution will be rolled out to dozens of baggage handling systems located across arrival and departure halls.

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“While embedded security is not new for IoT, which have leveraged secure elements and integrated circuits for some time to offer secure storage of certificates and keys, it is the integration of high-performant hardware that is breaking through,” says Michela Menting, senior research director of trusted device solutions at ABI Research.

“Securing application execution, for example, through the use of trusted execution environment (TEE) technology, is in greater demand than ever for IoT devices; and not just for mission-critical or functional safety use cases, but also for general purpose use cases.”

Michela Menting

This is largely due to better technological developments from the semiconductor vendors themselves, with the adaptation of TEEs to microcontrollers. A greater competitive ecosystem is emerging, with incredible advances by companies like ARM for security in Cortex-M cores, but also from open-source movements such as RISC-V. 

While TEE shipments for SoCs continue to dominate at almost US$1 billion in 2023 (notably selling into the smartphone market), the growth rate remains at a stable 14% year-on-year, while shipments for TEE-enabled Microcontrollers are expected to triple in that same period. 

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