The following are news announcements made during the past week:
PRESS RELEASE:
Gentrack Group Launches Predictive Collaboration Platform for Airport Operations
Gentrack Group (NZX/ASX: GTK), a leader in essential software for airports and utilities, have launched Veovo – a new brand for its airport group. Veovo combines the Airport 20/20 operations solution with the recently acquired BlipTrack guest predictability and Concessionaire Analyzer+ revenue maximisation solutions. This powerful fusion underpins Veovo’s Predictive Collaboration Platform, delivering data-driven certainty to transform the airport ecosystem.
Airports are under pressure to deliver memorable and repeatable experiences for increasing guest numbers while navigating highly variable daily operations. The rise of connected automation presents new opportunities, but many of these innovations operate in silos and do not work alongside existing technologies. The result: airport operators need a new paradigm to proactively manage their operations, resources, systems, service providers and guests. Veovo is at the heart of that transformation.
“Airports need to innovate aggressively to cope with increased passenger numbers and dynamically adjust for the matrix of daily variables. At the same time, to engage passengers, many airports are looking to transform their role from transit terminus to guest destination. Like many other value chains, Airports are now able to access big data innovations which can help them optimise their entire operation,” said Chris Warrington, General Manager of Veovo. “Veovo unlocks insights across the airport ecosystem – predicting the best path forward and quickly connecting all stakeholders and resources to respond brilliantly – no matter the situation.”
Today, the Veovo platform is used by more than 110 airports and their stakeholders to plan, predict and perfect every interaction. As well as delivering value to other transport hubs, Veovo software is also proven to deliver brilliant theme park, resort, and retail guest experiences.
PRESS RELEASE:
Ericsson Unveils IoT Accelerator Marketplace for IoT Ecosystem
Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) is launching the IoT Accelerator Marketplace to help address the need for collaboration within the digital ecosystem community and benefit developers and service providers alike. For service providers, it is a catalog to find IoT apps from the global ecosystem to offer enterprise customers and provides shorter time to market for new offerings to their enterprise customers.
For application developers and application partners it is a window to an IoT ecosystem to connect with service providers through one single platform, exposing global cellular connectivity APIs. It also includes monetization and settlement capabilities to facilitate monetization and billing across the ecosystem.
Carrie MacGillivray, Group Vice President, Internet of Things & Mobility at Market Intelligence firm IDC, says: “Communications service providers are racing to scale and differentiate in the fast moving IoT market. It’s necessary for these service providers to have a robust developer ecosystem that helps them compete. For developers working across multiple service provider networks and platforms, the challenges of fragmentation are addressed by utilizing APIs that apply globally and are consistent across all mobile networks.”
Jeff Travers, Head of IoT at Ericsson, says: “The launch of IoT Accelerator Marketplace will unlock the potential for different players in the value chain to deliver value. It is another stepping stone to make 5G a reality by enabling massive adoption of massive IoT. This supports service providers as they seek to expose network connectivity IoT APIs and monetize these assets.”
Application developers can benefit from a new go-to-market exposing their offering globally through Ericsson. This will enable app developers to scale their business and at the same time develop applications based on cellular connectivity APIs with added value for enterprises such as fast and automated device and subscription onboarding, higher security, ubiquitous cellular coverage around the world and improved for indoor utilization, and superior handling of battery life.
IoT Accelerator Marketplace is being demoed by Ericsson at MWC 2018. Ericsson’s IoT Accelerator is a cloud based horizontal offering comprising of platform services and professional services, for service providers. It provides continuous incremental functionality offered as a Service to enable agile creation and deployment of solutions for the Internet of Things.
PRESS RELEASE:
Haltian Provides Lindström With Multi-Million-Euro IoT Solution
Finnish Internet of Things (IoT) device manufacturer Haltian supplies Lindström with over 100,000 IoT devices and a managed IoT data layer service. The multi-million euro deal for one of the largest public IoT installations in Europe to date, was made in late 2017. Smart technology will be rapidly implemented in all of Lindström’s towel dispensers.
It’s a challenge for businesses to keep up with the pace of today’s ever changing digital world. However, companies that make digitalization a priority and harness the latest technological advancements to operate, engage with customers and grow their businesses have a distinct advantage. As almost everything can be connected, the value that IoT solutions brings is the key consideration. These solutions become increasingly feasible as cost-efficient sensors become more available and examples of profitable IoT cases continue to emerge.
“IoT continues its rapid growth and it is expected to more than double in the next three years. Industrial asset management, inventory and warehouse management and supply chain management are the fastest growing IoT areas,” says Pasi Leipälä, CEO, Haltian.
Together with Haltian Thingsee and Wirepas Mesh, Lindström has created a new service offering called Flowability Smart Washroom Service. The solution offers two-way communication and location information and provides reliable wireless connectivity for Lindström Group customers across their facilities. With this smart solution, Lindström increases efficiency by cutting waste and channeling work in a smarter way, thereby decreasing costs.
The Flowability Smart Washroom Service will be installed in shopping centers, hospitals and other public spaces to mention a few. A sensor retrofitted to the towel dispenser measures towel usage in real time. The sensor sends notifications to a site maintenance team when it is necessary to change towel rolls, which helps in planning work more efficiently and in decreasing costs.
“Washroom cleanliness affects the choice of shopping venue and even increases the value of purchases. With Haltian’s solution we save both money and time and keep our customers happy. All of these make it possible to improve the customer experience,” says Satu Haikarainen, Director, Service Concept, at Lindström.
The solution developed by Haltian and Lindström is based on Haltian’s new Thingsee IoT Devices platform. The platform allows new IoT solutions to reach commercial maturity faster and easier by offering customizable IoT devices with managed data layer services. The platform is completed with plug & play IoT devices, solutions customization services and lifecycle services – providing customers a smooth journey from ideas to commercial operations.
“Retrofitting wireless sensors to existing company assets and processes is a fast-growing business. We have now more than 25 active pilots running globally in industries varying from manufacturing to asset tracking and facility management. Our growing device and service portfolio provides a good starting point for building new IoT solutions. We can easily customize the whole platform, starting from simple device application development to a fully customized new sensor device,” comments Leipälä.
PRESS RELEASE:
People Power IoT Technology Enables Energy Providers to Offer Smart-Home Initiatives
Internet of Things (IoT) software company providing white-label solutions for home security, energy and care services, People Power has announced the company’s Pro Energy 2.0 offering designed to help energy service providers deliver greatly improved demand response (DR) initiatives, energy-centric connected home solutions, and the management of large scale consumer IoT deployments.
Leading the industry in AI development for IoT, People Power has created patent pending, energy-centric services for the smart home that meet the needs of both energy providers and consumers. Each new service is configured with AI-enabled microservices to deliver modular functionality for optimal intelligence and performance. By learning key activities and patterns in the home, configurations of microservices help any service understand when to optimize energy consumption to maximize comfort, convenience and energy savings. A new service can be purchased and added dynamically into a customer’s smart home account. Energy service providers benefit from the flexibility to quickly and easily create microservices that continuously innovate and differentiate.
People Power Pro Energy 2.0 enables sophisticated DR services with customizable microservices to address consumer opportunities at scale. Able to deliver intelligence to an array of devices for targeted energy programs with thermostats, lighting, load controllers, plugs, switches and more, Pro Energy 2.0 makes energy efficiency and IoT initiatives easily managed with People Power’s improved command center, Maestro 2.0. Maestro expands in functionality to enable simple control of AI-based consumer services at the admin level. In addition to the rich feature set of the previous version, Maestro 2.0 also includes a new Demand Response Management System (DRMS).
With simplified user engagements in mind, Pro Energy 2.0 delivers new mobile customer dialogue functionality with intelligent SMS conversations for increased program ease-of-use. Pro Energy 2.0 incorporates three new services important to energy service providers and their customers:
Enterprise Program Management Service is responsible for orchestrating multiple synchronized DR events and time-of-use pricing schedules across an aggregated user base. The service acts as a VEN/VTN and understands negotiations in individual households to load-shift energy around a community to broadly balance comfort and energy savings.
DR Home Management Service is responsible for implementing DR activities in the individual home and acts as a VEN. It manages all energy assets in the residence, learns comfort preferences, communicates with occupants and negotiates with the utility service for optimal comfort.
Enterprise Weather Management Service connects to weather conditions and forecast data to determine when to trigger manual DR events as a VTN. It connects directly to the Maestro command center, allowing administrators to define geocode, temperature, humidity and heat index thresholds that trigger DR events.
An industry first, People Power Pro Energy 2.0 makes available to energy providers a growing lineup of AI-based, energy-centric microservices that deliver modular features for improved energy efficiency and home automation:
Leaky Home Microservice intelligently identifies residences that fail to retain desired heating and cooling efficiency and are most likely to benefit from energy audits – addressing an important concern for both energy providers and consumers.
Home Lighting Microservice tracks the time of sunset and sunrise, and the user’s utility time-of-use rates to intelligently dim or brighten home lighting. Add a motion sensor and home lighting can be switched off after learned periods of inactivity. Working in the background to deter burglary, this microservice can learn the resident’s movement patterns and automatically mimic them while occupants are away from home.
Also announced with Pro Energy 2.0, People Power introduces Data Cube, a real-time cloud based data service that enables analytics, what-if scenario planning and limitless report creation. With Data Cube, service providers enjoy full access to end-user, opted-in data to assist knowledge discovery not for just a couple of weeks, but forever. Helping service providers and their partners in the creation of machine learning models for greater system intelligence, Data Cube can be injected into IoT programs to improve behaviors of digital microservices.
PRESS RELEASE:
Kerlink to Launch Low-Power IoT Reference Design
Kerlink (ALKLK – FR0013156007), a specialist and global leader in solutions dedicated to the Internet of Things (IoT), will release its latest Low Power IoT Reference Design during Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany, Feb. 27-March 1.
Kerlink’s Low Power IoT Reference Design is a turnkey combination of electronics blueprint, performance benchmarks, recommended bill of material and best practices guidelines for designing antennas, batteries and connectors integration. It also provides a benchmark device and test bed for directly testing and comparing prototypes, and simplifies and accelerates the design, development and production of devices based on LoRa technology, while speeding time to market and reducing development costs.
This new reference design is part of Kerlink’s strategy to help OEMs, electronics device makers, device designers and service providers launch new connected products for the IoT using LoRa technology. The company’s Advanced Services Business Unit is broadening Kerlink’s portfolio to offer value added solutions and services, on top of its existing IoT network infrastructure and operations offerings.
“Kerlink is one of the world’s largest suppliers of gateways, stations and other equipment for LoRaWANTM IoT networks,” said Stéphane Dejean, the company’s chief marketing officer. “These reference design leverage that expertise for LoRa technology device designers and OEMs that want to put the IoT to work for their companies and their customers quickly and simply.”
Tekelek, a leading developer and manufacturer of telemetry products and solutions for gas-tank monitoring, and Maddalena, a leader in smart water metering, have used an early version of the reference design to create new devices for customers.
“Both companies have reported significantly reduced time to market with their new LoRaWANTM devices and lower design and prototyping costs, while achieving complete compliance with the latest state-of-the-art specifications,” Dejean said.
Kerlink is launching the new reference design at Embedded World with Alpha-Omega Technology GmbH, a German company that specializes in international IoT hardware sales and consulting with a focus on wireless sensor networks using the LoRaWANTM protocol.
Kerlink will present its solutions and show demonstration during Embedded World on the booth shared with Alpha Omega located 3A-240.
PRESS RELEASE:
Vodafone, Mango Partner on Digital Fitting Rooms
Vodafone has announced that it is working with Mango, the global high street fashion retailer, on a new programme to rollout digital fitting rooms to the company’s top stores worldwide. The digital fitting room has been designed around a new Internet of Things (IoT) digital mirror designed by Mango, developed by Vodafone in collaboration with Jogotech, which will allow the shopper to scan the clothes tags in the fitting room and then contact shop floor staff directly from the mirror, through a digital watch, to request different sizes or colours. The mirror will also suggest additional clothes to complement the original choice.
Mango’s aim is to extend the digital fitting room to its top stores, from Barcelona to New York and will help to blend the online and real world shopping experiences for the Mango customers. This is the first phase of a digital transformation project for Mango to create new ways for customers to engage and relate to the brand.
Vodafone Director of Internet of Things Stefano Gastaut commented: “This project helps put more power at the shopper’s fingertips and will bring Mango closer to its fashion conscious shoppers and offer them more options and experiences than a conventional fitting room.”
Mango’s Chief Client Officer Guillermo Corominas added: “This is a really exciting project for Mango. We see the future of retailing as a blend of the online and the offline. These new fitting rooms are another step in the digital transformation of our stores to create a whole new experience for our customers.”
PRESS RELEASE:
Interagency Report Summarizes International Efforts to Standardize IoT Cybersecurity
The Interagency International Cybersecurity Standardization Working Group (IICS WG) was established in December 2015 by the National Security Council’s Cyber Interagency Policy Committee. The purpose of the IICS WG is to coordinate on major issues in international cybersecurity standardization and thereby enhance U.S. federal agency participation in international cybersecurity standardization.
The IICS WG has developed this report, Draft NIST Interagency Report (NISTIR) 8200, Interagency Report on Status of International Cybersecurity Standardization for the Internet of Things (IoT). The intended audience is both the government and the public. The purpose is to inform and enable policymakers, managers, and standards participants as they seek timely development of and use of cybersecurity standards in IoT components, systems, and services.
This draft report provides a functional description for IoT (Section 4); describes several IoT applications that are representative examples of IoT (Section 5); summarizes the cybersecurity core areas and provides examples of relevant standards (Section 6); describes IoT cybersecurity objectives, risks, and threats (Section 7); provides an analysis of the standards landscape for IoT cybersecurity (Sections 8 and 9); and maps IoT relevant cybersecurity standards to cybersecurity core areas (Appendix D).
This draft report is based upon the information available to the participating agencies. Comments are now being solicited to augment that information, especially on the information about the state of cybersecurity standardization for IoT that is found in Sections 8, 9, 10, and Annex D.
Your feedback on this draft publication is important. It will help to shape the final publication so that it best meets the needs of the public and private sectors. The comment period closes April 18, 2018; comments should be submitted to [email protected], and submitters are encouraged to use a comment template available on the Draft NISTIR 8200 homepage. Comments will be posted online as they are received.