The following are news announcements made during the past week involving Internet of Things technologies:
PRESS RELEASE:
AT&T, Honeywell Team Up on Connected Aircraft and Freight Solutions
AT&T and Honeywell are collaborating to deliver Internet of Things (IoT) technology to aircraft and freight solutions in countries across the globe, in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, Africa and Australia. AT&T’s global connectivity and IoT solutions combined with Honeywell’s technology offerings are helping companies make decisions and solve problems faster, improve reliability and boost operational efficiency.
“We have enjoyed a business relationship with Honeywell for many years. Our IoT solutions are helping them to drive digital transformation in their transportation products,” said Joe Mosele, VP – IoT Solutions, Business Development at AT&T. “Honeywell understands the value of connecting assets across its enterprise. Not only is Honeywell using data insights collected from its products to improve its own operations, but it’s also giving that technology to its customers to make informed decisions about their businesses.” AT&T’s IoT solutions are connecting the following:
Connected Freight – Scalable IoT solution tracks and monitors critical shipments while they are in transit. Sensor tags attached to assets, pallets or individual packages not only provide location information, but also measure for shock and tilt, humidity, temperature and pressure changes. Logistics providers access a dashboard to receive status alerts and can react quickly to incidents that occur during shipment to prevent damage and loss.
Connected Aircraft –The AT&T global network connects aircraft services while on the ground. Honeywell’s GoDirect™ family provides operators, flight crews and maintenance teams with critical information to manage their services and network. These improve fleet management, flight safety, passenger experience, maintenance, flight operations, aircraft turnaround time and costs.
AT&T’s Control Center with the AT&T global network helps Honeywell better scale its aircraft and freight solutions in the U.S. and abroad. Honeywell and its customers can manage IoT connected assets remotely in a highly secure environment and automate data usage to control costs.
“Our IoT collaboration with AT&T is adding value to the transportation and logistics products we provide our customers across the globe,” said Sameer Agrawal, general manager of IIoT Solutions for Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions. “It gives logistics providers near real-time data insights about their shipments in-transit. And we can unleash a wide array of connected products and services for aircraft operators.”
Honeywell also utilizes AT&T services across a vast portfolio of solutions, including mobile, wireline, managed network services, teleconferencing, AT&T NetBond, AT&T Consulting, and traditional voice and data services. AT&T brings everything together edge-to-edge – from end points to connectivity to the cloud – wrapped in security.
Honeywell is a software-industrial company whose technologies help everything from aircraft, cars, homes and buildings, manufacturing plants, supply chains, and workers become more connected to make our world smarter, safer, and more sustainable. For more information on Honeywell, go to honeywell.com.
PRESS RELEASE:
Vodafone Offers Irish Businesses Access to Its Global IoT Network
Vodafone Ireland, in partnership with Asavie, a leader in secure Enterprise Mobility and IoT Connectivity, have announced the launch of Vodafone IoT Express. IoT Express is a new offering designed to enable Irish businesses avail of highly scalable and secure SIM-based IoT connectivity on cellular networks, including Vodafone’s latest Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) network.
Vodafone IoT Express unlocks Enterprise-grade IoT tools for everyone and is compatible with as little as one sim. It is suitable for both large businesses starting a new trial or a smaller company beginning to develop their IoT capabilities with small investment. Now, for the first time, Irish companies will have full access to Vodafone’s powerful IoT management tools – delivered across the Asavie PassBridge© software-defined network connectivity platform – which can be fully connected in as little as a week.
The Vodafone self-service platform enables IoT projects to be managed centrally, giving visibility and control of IoT devices anywhere within Vodafone’s global footprint. For example, the management tools can alert a business to unusual activity, produce reports on performance and data usage, activate new subscriptions, and much more — all in real time.
Debbie Power, Vodafone Ireland, IoT Country Manager, said, “At Vodafone Ireland we are committed to ensuring our customers can conveniently access the vast array of benefits provided by IoT connectivity. This new offering makes it easier than ever for companies of all sizes to quickly rollout their innovative IoT projects, benefit from the advances in deployment and gain the intelligence needed to drive their business decisions. Vodafone IoT Express delivers a secure and scalable on-demand IoT service to all customers in a very cost effective way.”
Ralph Shaw, CEO, Asavie said, “Vodafone IoT Express is an example of how Asavie is working with a global leading mobile network operator to allow enterprises of all sizes to immediately deploy and scale their IoT projects. By securely managing network connections from the edge to the Cloud and eliminating the typical delays in deployment and revenue generation, enterprises can immediately benefit from the IoT economy. We’re proud of our ten-year relationship with Vodafone and look forward to building on our joint successes.”
PRESS RELEASE:
AT&T, Aira Announce IoT System for Those With Blindness, Vision Impairment
AT&T and Aira extend their agreement as Aira made AT&T its global data provider as it begins to take the service to Australia, Canada and the U.K. This comes at a meaningful time. Today marks the 7th Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking, and learning about digital access and inclusion for people with disabilities. What better way to do that than with technology that empowers blind and low vision individuals?
“We chose GAAD to make this announcement because bringing accessibility to everyone forms the very core of Aira’s mission,” said Suman Kanuganti, CEO of Aira. “Working with AT&T to make our service available around the globe is the next step in using this technology to improve daily lives.” The World Health Organization estimates 253 million people live with impaired vision. For over a year, AT&T and Aira have worked together in the U.S. to help many of the blind and those with low vi sion complete daily tasks more easily.
Connected Aira glasses have also assisted with new challenges like starting college, running the Boston Marathon, and even experiencing the solar eclipse. Now, people around the world who are blind or have low vision can use smart glasses to access public transportation, navigate busy streets, shop in stores or recognize people, without another person to physically accompany them. It opens up a world of possibilities.
The AT&T global network connects Aira’s smart glasses, worn by blind and low vision users known as “Explorers,” to trained, professional agents. Agents use a built-for-purpose dashboard that provides details such as the Explorer’s location and profile, in combination with a secure, near real-time stream of video. At just the tap of a button, this information is provided to Explorers so they can perform almost any task.
“The combination of Aira’s groundbreaking assistive technology and our highly secure global wireless connectivity helps the user ‘see’ the world around them,” said Chris Penrose, President of IoT, AT&T. “That world just got bigger. This global expansion can bring the Aira platform to millions of individuals who can benefit from this service.”
Aira worked with the AT&T Foundry for Connected Health to improve the delivery of its groundbreaking platform.
Aira will begin to market its service in Australia and Canada this month and in the U.K. later this year. Learn more about the Aira service and how to subscribe at the AT&T Marketplace.
PRESS RELEASE:
Samsung Demos IoT Asset-Management Solutions for Smart Factories
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. showcased its latest IoT solutions at IoT World 2018 in Santa Clara, California, demonstrating how smart factories, intelligent buildings and asset managers using Samsung ARTIK IoT solutions can achieve meaningful return of investment through improved operational productivity, faster deployment with increased security and profitability. The real-world deployment scenarios revealed at IoT World 2018 illustrate Samsung ARTIK’s ability to help deliver market-ready solutions and services that accelerate momentum for IoT by supporting smart industries’ operational deployments with more secure protection, speed and intelligence.
“Better asset management, monitoring and security are some of the most critical requirements to accelerate growth in the fourth industrial revolution,” said James Stansberry, senior vice president and general manager of ARTIK IoT at Samsung Electronics. “IoT has the ability to transform today’s businesses into more intelligent and efficient operations, yet it can also require extremely complex solutions to implement. ARTIK untangles the common complexities of IoT deployments with a full range of turn-key partner IoT solutions that provide flexibility and efficiency, so organizations can remain focused on how they can best provide tangible returns to their customers’ bottom line.”
Hipaax, a provider for mobile workforce management solutions, improves factory operations for increased production line efficiency with an integrated solution that combines ARTIK cloud services with Shoreline IoT’s iCast Asset Monitoring Solution. Gateway-linked sensors share real-time information with cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Hipaxx TaskWatch to keep managers fully in sync with operations on the production floor. When a problem is spotted on the line, TaskWatch creates tasks for employees and ensures they are followed through using Samsung Gear smartwatches.
Shoreline IoT’s iCast solution – developed with the ARTIK 053 module and ARTIK cloud services – offers real-time asset monitoring and predictive maintenance of brownfield assets. It uses ARTIK open APIs to enable seamless integration of 3rd party applications like Hipaax’s TaskWatch for digital factories. Integration of iCast hardware and software with ARTIK cloud services enables industrial and building customers to upgrade their legacy systems within a few minutes without disrupting plant operations or requiring additional assistance from specialized technicians.
“With the Samsung ARTIK platform, our manufacturing clients see immediate returns on their deployments through improved operational efficiencies,” said Bharat Saini, founder and CTO, Hipaax. “The ARTIK platform and cloud services made it easier to integrate and quickly deliver this solution to our customers. Set up and implementation only takes a matter of a few weeks and we can modify the task logic in real-time. It’s a game changer for manufacturing, facilities management and logistics.”
Intellisite Corporation, an industrial and smart cities edge-to-cloud IoT solutions provider, is leveraging the ARTIK 710 system-on-module to arm new customers with remote asset monitoring systems. This offers Intellisite customers an affordable solution which can provide extensive information on product use, energy consumption, and location tracking as a prevention against theft. It also arms their customers with a better view into predictive maintenance and management of maintenance resources, which includes ability to remotely disable systems no longer in use. With this solution, companies have greater insight and control over their products, regardless of their location.
“One recent customer had millions of dollars in wasted capital assets in their sales channels,” said Mario Campos, president, Intellisite Corporation. “Using ARTIK hardware, we delivered an affordable solution to give back control over those assets, with the ability to monitor and manage products in the field in real-time. Not only is the solution paying for itself with improved asset productivity, they have improved customer trust with enhanced services, developed greater negotiating power for sales with channel partners, and established a strong competitive advantage.”
Lighting systems company, JouleIQ, uses ARTIK’s end-to-end IoT solution to deliver more intelligent building and lighting solutions for facilities seeking better lighting, energy management, and seamless integration with existing infrastructure. ARTIK helped JouleIQ address key challenges by simplifying installation and management, easing integration and adding an additional layer of security. This allows them to ease the process for facilities to onboard and commission products on site, link them to other products and services and reconfigure them remotely, on the fly. Using ARTIK 020, 030 and 530 system-on-modules as building blocks for JouleIQ’s products, together with ARTIK cloud services and security, JouleIQ developed their state-of-the-art solution in record time.
PRESS RELEASE:
Wireless Broadband Alliance Establishes Requirements for IoT Roaming
The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) has published its latest white paper, entitled: ‘IoT Interoperability: Dynamic Roaming’. The paper investigates how existing Wi-Fi roaming capabilities could help the IoT market with the evolution of IoT Device roaming, ensuring devices can seamlessly ‘talk’ to each other.
The aim of the study is to provide a framework for IoT roaming, demonstrating the value and opportunities to enhance the functionality for existing technologies with the use of the WBA’s Wireless Roaming Intermediary eXchange (WRIX) specification, in areas such as authentication, financial and data clearing, invoicing, security and automation.
Over the past 10 years, the WBA has built on the cellular ecosystem success story, enabling the building blocks that are scalable and allow operators in turn to build revenue streams in the Wi-Fi world. The ecosystem now leverages more frictionless business opportunities and IoT players may benefit from such similar opportunities and avoid inefficient “islands of connectivity”.
While roaming is being accomplished on different types of networks such as cellular and Wi-Fi, the diversity of devices and the exponential growth in the market – over [i]20 billion IoT devices forecast by 2020 – means there is a distinct need for interoperability to allow the cross network roaming of devices. The ‘IoT Interoperability: Dynamic Roaming’ white paper addresses the need to find a dynamic way for devices to search for a computable network and automatically roam at scale without intervention. It focuses on the common requirements to enable IoT devices to connect to a non-home access network, successfully authenticate, enable accounting and facilitate subsequent billing while taking into consideration potential security and scalability concerns.
The study outlines how WRIX – the use of a modularized set of specifications to facilitate roaming between operators – can be used across the IoT Market for lessons learned, best practices and standards when developing each technology’s roaming specifications. Using the WRIX specification as a guideline for roaming, organisations can prepare their networks to facilitate simple, seamless and secure IoT connectivity for their users. The report highlights several areas where WRIX can be used or enhanced to address the immediate challenge of massive scalability.
These include adding RADSEC capabilities to the WRIX framework to enhance the security of IoT applications and enable automatic security for new deployment scenarios; using the WRIX framework as best practice to address the issue of identity and authentication between security domains; expanding the current WRIX definitions and specifications to include LoRa Alliance and MulteFire Alliance roaming support, to allow other IoT use cases to be supported; and for IoT technology that was built from the ground up, and therefore, involves a specific assessment on interwork possibilities, the WBA outlines collaboration opportunities.
“Cross-network device roaming is becoming increasingly important to fulfil the vast scalability requirements of the IoT. Yet deploying IoT roaming services is no easy feat, and the process will take several years,” said Tiago Rodrigues, General Manager of the WBA. “The industry must work together, which is why the WBA is advocating the use of WRIX to provide industry-wide standards for service providers. Having identified several areas where the framework can be enhanced, the WBA is now working to evolve WRIX to increase its capabilities, longevity, and industry value to support IoT roaming use cases.”
The new framework will be trialled by the WBA and its members, using the experience acquired with previous end-to-end interoperability trials such as Next Generation Hotspot (NGH). The WBA is also in discussions with industry alliances including the LoRa Alliance, the MulteFire Alliance, and eduroam regarding the development of a roaming framework for specific IoT technologies similar to the WRIX approach for Wi-Fi Roaming.
PRESS RELEASE:
NetComm Wireless Announces IoT Partnership With Ericsson
NetComm Wireless Limited (ASX: NTC), a leading global developer of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices, has joined the Ericsson IoT Accelerator platform to facilitate the adoption of Massive IoT. NetComm Wireless’ industrial grade 4G LTE Machine-to-Machine (M2M) devices integrate Lightweight M2M (LwM2M) and now interoperate with the Ericsson IoT platform to streamline device onboarding worldwide.
Operators and other major players in the global IoT ecosystem can go-to-market faster with minimum risk using Ericsson’s cloud-based IoT Accelerator platform to access LwM2M devices that enable mass-scale IoT deployments in areas such as automotive, logistics and manufacturing.
“We’re in full progress of expanding the IoT Ecosystem of device and application partners interoperable with the IoT Accelerator platform, and we see this collaboration with NetComm Wireless and the portfolio of IIoT devices that they bring as a great contribution to that ecosystem, unleashing opportunities on the Internet of Things for operators leveraging cellular connectivity”, said Steffen Conradsen, Head of Device & Application Partner Ecosystem, IoT at Ericsson.
“The new collaboration will help to address the fragmentation challenges that the IoT ecosystem has faced from the outset and we’re pleased to join Ericsson in enabling the uptake of IoT by operators and enterprises more seamlessly,” said Timo Brouwer, Chief Operating Officer, NetComm Wireless. “Operators and other ecosystem players now have global access to tools that eliminate the high development costs and proprietary restrictions that stand in the way of large-scale IoT deployments,” he said.
LwM2M is an open device management protocol that enables the transfer of small amounts of data between devices and their management platforms. Introduced to simplify remote management, NetComm Wireless’ LwM2M devices make it commercially viable to connect and manage remote sensors, pumps and other assets that need to run at a low cost.
NetComm Wireless’ LwM2M devices are certified for deployment in Europe, the USA, Canada, the UAE, South East Asia, Japan and Australia.