IoT News Roundup

AT&T, Amazon Web Services collaborate on Internet of Things solutions ••• QMC Selects eleven-X as wireless network partner for smart water meter market ••• Industrial Internet Consortium, Robot Revolution Initiative Council announce IIoT liaison ••• Twenty-three billion IoT devices to live in connected spaces, says Frost & Sullivan ••• Lantronix launches wireless embedded IoT gateways ••• Avnet releases upgraded TPM V2.0 Pmod for IIoT security ••• TruTag Technologies, Sumitomo Corp. of Americas form global strategic partnership ••• Sentenai offers automated data engineering for IoT applications.
Published: December 8, 2017

The following are news announcements made during the past week:

PRESS RELEASE:

AT&T, Amazon Web Services Collaborate on Internet of Things Solutions

AT&T1 and Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) are rolling out several innovative Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to enable businesses to better compete in a data-driven world. The solutions were announced at the annual AWS re:Invent 2017 Conference. The two companies are collaborating to make it effortless for enterprise customers to deploy IoT solutions so that businesses can improve operations and manage large numbers of devices worldwide.

“These new solutions bring enterprise customers best-in-breed solutions to manage IoT assets wherever they are,” said Mike Troiano, Vice President, Internet of Things Solutions, AT&T. “We’re pleased to build upon our longstanding relationship with AWS to deliver these new features to business customers through the IoT and cloud.”

AT&T and AWS are collaborating on a ground-breaking cellular LTE-M Button that operates on AT&T’s nationwide LTE-M network and utilizes the newly announced AWS IoT 1-Click service. Such activities as ordering office supplies or submitting service requests will be as simple as the push of a button.

“We have a great strategic relationship with AT&T, especially our aligned focus to make IoT solutions simple,” said Dirk Didascalou, Vice President of IoT, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “The AT&T LTE-M Button supported on the newly announced AWS IoT 1-Click service is a great example of how our customers can use AWS Lambda and AWS IoT with minimal configuration to achieve business results. We look forward to our continued work with AT&T to drive innovation and help customers with their IoT applications.”

Anticipated to be available in early 2018, the LTE-M Button is easy to configure and deploy without the need for Wi-Fi, and is designed for enterprises and developers to easily integrate their operations/workflows with AWS IoT, AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), and many other AWS solutions.

AT&T is offering a promotional price of $29.99 per LTE-M Button for the first 5,000 LTE-M Buttons sold, starting in the first quarter of 2018.2. AT&T is working with G+D Mobile Security to develop a solution that secures “device to cloud” connectivity using AWS certificates stored inside SIMs during production. Required for communicating with the AWS cloud, the keys are used to encrypt data sessions between the device and AWS services.

Device manufacturers will be able to utilize the keys and credentials embedded on the SIM to authenticate to AWS IoT. Device manufacturers can manage and update (over the air) the certificates. New certificates are downloaded remotely for highly secure and efficient management of devices in the field.

The AT&T and G+D Mobile Security SIM-based solution is designed to enable deployment of devices provisioned with this feature with minimal to no hardware or logistics changes.

AT&T will soon launch an AT&T IoT OBDII Kit that provides AWS customers with access to the AT&T Asset Management Operations Center (AMOC). AMOC provides AWS customers with a packaged solution to monitor equipment, vehicles and enterprise assets via AWS.

Earlier this year, we introduced a dedicated AT&T IoT Starter kit, powered by AWS. AT&T Asset Management Operations Center for AWS and the AT&T IoT OBDII Kit will be available via AT&T’s IoT Marketplace, a comprehensive online resource for businesses to purchase and provision IoT solutions. The AT&T IoT Starter Kit is available for sale on amazon.com. The LTE-M Button and Certificates on SIM are also expected to be available on the AT&T IoT Marketplace.

PRESS RELEASE:

QMC Selects eleven-X as Wireless Network Partner for Smart Water Meter Market

Eleven-X Inc., operator of Canada’s first and only coast-to-coast public low power network, is pleased to announce that QMC, Canada’s leader in submetering, has selected eleven-X to be their wireless network partner to reinvent the Smart Water Meter market. QMC will launch its Smart Water Metering solution in early 2018, which will be the first time a metering services company will use a public LoRaWAN network in Canada.

In Canada, and many other parts of the world, Smart Metering solutions use proprietary networks and technologies that can be unreliable and, because they are built for only that single application rather than being publicly available for multiple applications, they can also be very expensive. QMC set out to solve this problem, launching a turnkey end-to-end solution utilizing the eleven-x public LoRaWAN network, the only coast-to-coast low power network enabling customers to deploy their solutions across Canada.

Key to the successful development and launch of QMC’s Smart Metering Solution is the eleven-X LoRaWAN Interface Design [LiD] module. The LiD module provides the ability for eleven-X partners and customers to retrofit un-networked devices and turn them into a Smart device connected to the eleven-X public LoRaWAN network. The LiD module is a hardware and software solution that includes significant enhancements for security and ease of use in addition to its connectivity capabilities. In this case, QMC and eleven-X worked together to utilize the LiD module to deliver a self-contained device that will provide ‘bolt-on’ LoRaWAN connectivity for a wide variety of metering solutions and interfaces.

“Eleven-X helped us go to market with complete confidence, by reducing the risk substantially. Working with eleven-X allowed us to quickly develop and deliver a robust metering solution, and their network provides the coast-to-coast coverage that we needed to be able to commercialize a solution like this,” said James Easton, CEO, QMC. “We were very impressed with the eleven-X LoRaWAN Interface Design module, and being able to rely on having a robust, stable and secure LoRaWAN network like the one that eleven-X provides gives us the ability to make customer commitments with complete trust. eleven-X has been a true partner in helping us reinvent Smart Metering. This successful deployment collaboration allows us to expand our Smart Metering Solution across Canada.”

“QMC is leading disruptive change with its Smart Metering Services solution, which is designed around the eleven-X LoRaWAN Interface Design module, and integrated with our LoRaWAN wireless connectivity services platform,” said Dan Mathers, President & CEO, eleven-X. “When QMC approached us to help them reinvent the Smart Meter Market, we saw a great opportunity to help by providing a complete solution to QMC that allowed them to convert un-networked water meters into Smart Meters and get automated meter readings from them.”

The eleven-X low power network enables the promise of Smart Cities, Smart Buildings and Campuses and Enterprise IoT applications. Supporting the use of low-cost battery powered sensors, the network addresses Internet of Things applications where requirements include wireless connectivity, devices that require long battery life, no maintenance and a low total cost of ownership.

PRESS RELEASE:

Industrial Internet Consortium, Robot Revolution Initiative Council Announce IIoT Liaison

The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), the world’s leading organization transforming business and society by accelerating the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and the Robot Revolution Initiative (RRI), a council dedicated to developing the robotics market, announced they have agreed to a liaison. Under the agreement, the IIC and RRI will work together to align efforts to maximize interoperability, portability, security and privacy for the industrial Internet.

Joint activities between the IIC and the RRI will include the creation of use cases and requirements for proposals for international standardization in the field of smart manufacturing; industrial security; and periodically hosting joint seminars.

“We are delighted about this new liaison for further collaboration with the Industrial Internet Consortium,” said Hideaki Omiya, Chair of Robot Revolution Initiative. “With the high quality and plenty of data which are accumulated though manufacturing, we believe Japan can greatly contribute to this collaboration in the field of smart manufacturing.”

“We look forward to working with RRI,” said Dr. Richard Soley, IIC Executive Director. “This collaboration expands opportunities for IIC members with industry players focused on robotics for IIoT.”

“By industrial internet and IoT, manufacturing business will significantly accelerate optimization along with the vertical and horizontal integration, and product lifecycle,” said Tomoaki Kubo, Secretary General of the Robot Revolution Initiative. “I believe a lot of results will be born in this field by meeting RRI’s manufacturing knowledge and the IIC’s advanced testbeds.”

“Advances in robotics, artificial intelligence and analytics are accelerating wide-spread adoption of industrial IoT,” said Wael William Diab, Chair of IIC’s Liaison Working Group, IIC Steering Committee Member and Senior Director at Huawei. “We look forward to collaborating with RRI and are delighted to present at the RRI International Symposium.”

The IIC Liaison Working Group is the gateway for formal relationships with standards and open-source organizations, consortia, alliances, certification and testing bodies and government entities/agencies. The agreement with the RRI is one of a number of agreements made by the IICLiaison Working Group.

PRESS RELEASE:

Twenty-Three Billion IoT Devices to Live in Connected Spaces, Says Frost & Sullivan

Irdeto, the world leader in digital platform security, and global analyst firm, Frost & Sullivan,have published a new whitepaper outlining that more than half of the 45.4 billion IoT devices expected to be in use by 2023 will be implemented in connected spaces, including homes, buildings and cities. While IoT plays a significant role in shaping the future of connected spaces, the successful transformation of connected homes, buildings and cities is dependent upon simple, frictionless and dynamic security.

Security Essentials for IoT Deployments in Connected Spaces examines IoT cybersecurity challenges and vulnerabilities, cyberattacks associated with IoT technology, the impact of those attacks and key considerations for effective security strategies for IoT deployments.

Not only can cybersecurity incidents cause operational disruptions, breached devices can also be commandeered to launch botnet attacks on other devices and systems. Frost & Sullivan research indicates that more than 70% of enterprises today believe security is a top consideration for their business when making an IoT purchasing decision. These organizations expect security to emerge as the top consideration for more than 90% of customers by 2020.

“The introduction of IoT technologies into connected spaces can bring about many vulnerabilities that hackers exploit,” said Vikrant Gandhi, Industry Director, Frost & Sullivan. “IoT creates new security challenges that cannot be properly addressed by traditional IT security technologies and approaches. While the basic concepts of protection remain, memory and processor limitations, data velocity and device volumes present unique challenges to IoT security. Therefore, IoT must be secured by using efficient technologies that are purpose-built for these unique environments.”

Organizations today recognize the importance of connectivity to meet customer demand and maintain a competitive edge. However, compromised IoT devices can pose significant risks to consumers and businesses. A recent survey by Irdeto found that that 90% of consumers believe it is important that a connected device has security built into the product. In addition, 76% of consumers think that manufacturers of smart devices are responsible for implementing cybersecurity.

“As the number of connected devices grows, hackers are offered more vulnerabilities to exploit,” said Mark Hearn, Director of IoT Security, Irdeto. “With the cross-contamination of connected devices, threats easily cross boundaries of the connected home and the connected building, affecting transportation, threatening mobile devices and ultimately damaging the enterprise. To address this, organizations must implement a defense-in-depth approach to cybersecurity that integrates multiple layers of security into a system. This approach, combined with a predict-prevent-detect-respond security framework, is critical to mitigating attacks targeting IoT technologies.”

To protect against cyberattacks targeting IoT technologies, Cloakware for IoT Security is a battle-proven solution that protects customers’ IoT applications and connected devices from reverse engineering, tampering and circumvention, keeping hackers and cybercriminals out of their products. Irdeto’s multi-layered, ever-evolving security prevents hackers from accessing their systems and running malicious, damaging code. Irdeto’s technologies create a hardened perimeter of security around a company’s most valuable assets, ensuring that only the software specified runs on their systems and devices.

PRESS RELEASE:

Lantronix Launches Wireless Embedded IoT Gateways

Lantronix, Inc. (NASDAQ: LTRX), a global provider of secure data access and management solutions for the industrial Internet of Things (IoT), has announced the launch of its xPico 200 embedded IoT gateways. Measuring less than the size of a postage stamp, the compact xPico 200 embedded IoT gateways deliver robust Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, enterprise-grade security, and integrated manageability features that are ideal for industrial IoT applications.

“Today’s advanced IoT applications require more than just simple connectivity,” stated Shahram Mehraban, Lantronix vice president of marketing. “With the commercial launch of our xPico 200 product family, Lantronix is providing a robust compact solution that combines best-in-class wired and wireless connectivity, industrial grade design and intelligent networking that enables resource-constrained product development teams to reduce total cost of ownership and time to market for their industrial IoT solutions.”

“With its state-of-the-art fast roaming capabilities and integrated manageability, the xPico 200 embedded gateways deliver reliable functionality and performance that will enable us to efficiently develop very cost competitive connected products,” said Paul Blashewski, president of Prescient Wireless.

Combining the Lantronix intelligent networking communications engine with Cypress Semiconductor’s industry-leading wireless SoC, the xPico 200 gateways deliver best-in-class managed industrial Wi-Fi connectivity that enables industrial OEMs to simplify and accelerate development of their smart connected solutions. Currently, the xPico 200 gateways are being designed into industrial, medical, retail, smart building and transportation verticals.

“Lantronix has developed an industry-leading secure embedded solution that enables OEMs to utilize the Cypress CYW43907 802.11n Wi-Fi MCU to provide network reliability and flexibility to do more,” said Andrew Hunter, senior director of marketing at Cypress Semiconductor. “The xPico 200 series represents another milestone in our collaboration with Lantronix and addresses the growing need for industrial IoT solutions that deliver robust connectivity, processing capabilities and manageability.”

The xPico 240 is available through the worldwide network of authorized Lantronix distributors and resellers. xPico 250 evaluation kits will be available this month with product availability in early 2018. For more information about the xPico 200 product family, go to www.lantronix.com/xpico-200 or contact a local Lantronix sales office.

PRESS RELEASE:

Avnet Releases Upgraded TPM V2.0 Pmod for IIoT Security

Avnet (NYSE: AVT), a leading global technology distributor, has released the next generation Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Security Peripheral Module (Pmod) enabling advanced hardware root of trust platform integrity, remote attestation and cryptographic services for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)–enabled devices for applications including factory automation, smart cities, smart grid and health care. Representatives from Avnet will be on hand at the Xilinx Security Working Group December 4-5 in Paris and December 7-8 in Munich to demonstrate how the new TPM V2.0 Security Pmod can help designers leverage the robust protection functionality of the OPTIGATPM 2.0 security solution from Infineon Technologies AG, which is fully compliant with the Trusted Computing Group’s TPM 2.0 standard.

Based on the OPTIGA TPM SLB9670 2.0 security solution, the Avnet-designed TPM V2.0 Security Pmod is a cost-effective and production-ready component that features an enhanced Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) to the Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC from Xilinx, which is included on Avnet’s UltraZed System-on-Module (SOM).

“Cybersecurity is a make-or-break attribute of today’s IIoT solutions,” said Tom Curran, technical marketing manager, Avnet. “Combining the latest version of Infineon’s OPTIGA TPM and the multi-layered security features of the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC, Avnet provides designers with the security needed for edge-to-cloud connections in a cost-effective, simple-to-implement package.” The TPM V2.0 Security Peripheral Module is now available from Avnet for $29.94.

PRESS RELEASE:

TruTag Technologies, Sumitomo Corp. of Americas Form Global Strategic Partnership

TruTag Technologies, a leading security and technology solution provider, has announced a strategic partnership with Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, and an investment in TruTag by Sumitomo’s corporate venture capital fund, Presidio Ventures.

Sumitomo Corporation of Americas is the largest subsidiary of Sumitomo Corporation, one of the world’s leading integrated trading companies engaged in diverse businesses with an annual gross profit of over 800 Billion Yen and presence in 66 countries.

TruTag Technologies and Sumitomo will collaborate to bring TruTag’s technology platform to diverse markets and industries where Sumitomo has deep business experience and relationships across the world. The partnership will adapt TruTag’s technology platform for product identity, traceability, and supply chain management of various Sumitomo divisions worldwide. TruTag is the world leader for precision fabrication of nano-porous silica, advanced mobile hyperspectral imaging, and data management to provide a complete product identity and supply chain security solution to improve the safety, traceability, and authenticity of branded products across broad industries.

Applications include edible on-product identity solutions for food and medicine; and secure labels and documents for businesses and governments. In addition, TruTag’s advanced spectral and spatial imaging products are expanding into agricultural management, smart farming, machine vision, biomedical imaging and point-of-care diagnostics.

As part of the broader global Sumitomo Corporation family of companies with leadership in diverse industries, Sumitomo Corporation of Americas is well-positioned to successfully drive significant opportunities for TruTag’s technology platform to impact wide ranging markets and industries, improving efficiency of supply chain management, brand protection and consumer safety.

“We are looking forward to collaborating with Sumitomo Corporation of Americas to build a globally-focused and comprehensive product identity partnership that will have a tremendous impact on Sumitomo’s existing markets as well as drive successful expansion of TruTag’s technology platform into exciting new industries. We are excited to work with a company of Sumitomo’s caliber and to mutually provide an industry-leading product identity platform across diverse markets with significant real-world impact to brand protection, product traceability, and consumer safety,” said Michael Bartholomeusz, Chief Executive Officer of TruTag Technologies.

Sumitomo Corporation of Americas is excited to partner with TruTag and their impressive technology platform,” said Tom Wada, General Manager of Sumitomo Corporation of Americas’ Silicon Valley office. “We are confident that our deep-rooted relationships and existing partnerships across numerous industries will provide TruTag tremendous expansion, while deeply enhancing security and traceability throughout the supply chain of these networks.”

PRESS RELEASE:

Sentenai Offers Automated Data Engineering for IoT Applications

Sentenai, an emerging sensor data technology company, has announced the availability of its flagship product, the Sentenai Sensor Data Cloud. By going beyond the initial harnessing of machine-based data and understanding the information that data provides, organizations can streamline their operational processes and develop predictive maintenance solutions that decrease unplanned downtime. With its Sensor Data Cloud, Sentenai is empowering businesses and their data scientists to build on sensor-based applications by allowing them to access historical data in the tools they already use, without requiring any data engineering work.

Enterprise IoT devices, or the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), is gaining momentum at an exponential rate. Industrial sensor devices are fundamentally transforming the way organizations do business with other companies, with recent data indicating enterprise IoT spending could hit $1.477 trillion by 2020 with more than 7 billion enterprise IoT devices in use.

“The term IoT has become a part of the general vernacular, but the IIoT is the new frontier, and the foundation of modern industrial growth,” said Rohit Gupta, co-founder and CEO at Sentenai. “Industrial machine data is being produced by nearly every application and device in an organization, and it contains definitive, time-stamped records of activities such as sensor readings, maintenance statuses, condition and state information, alarm flags and user activities. Sentenai was created to help organizations capitalize on the power of their machine data, gaining access to real-time, industrial intelligence that can improve service levels, reduce costs, mitigate security risks, maintain compliance and drive better business decisions.”

The Sentenai Sensor Data Cloud provides the following key capabilities:

• Secure and scalable storage of sensor data. The cloud service provides a fast, flexible way to store a multitude of streams of sensor data for later data science and machine learning use, and its sensor-focused time series database preserves original data without sacrificing scalability, reliability or query performance.

• On-demand ETL pipeline for data science. By providing a powerful query engine that allows data scientists to perform ETL on-demand — without writing code or waiting hours for results — the Sensor Data Cloud simplifies the process of data preparation, automatically filtering noise from streams of sensor data, reshaping complex data to fit specific machine learning models, filling in missing data and normalizing data for sensor fusion.

• Seamless workflow integration. Designed specifically for data scientists, the Sentenai Sensor Data Cloud can be implemented within existing workflows, including sophisticated open source data science toolkits such as Pandas, Tensor Flow, pyTorch, and scikit-learn.

At the core of Sentenai technology is revolutionary data engineering AI designed to continuously optimize database storage and indexing, thereby enabling users to rapidly mine historical data for complex patterns like operational anomalies and failure modes.

The Sentenai Sensor Data Cloud is available now to any organization committed to understanding the value within their machine data.