The following are news announcements made during the past week:
PRESS RELEASE:
Enforta, Actility Announce Deployment of IoT Network Spanning Russian Federation Territory
Enforta, the Russian telecom operator owned by ER Telecom Holding, and Actility, the industry leader in Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks announce that they have begun a collaboration to deploy a LoRaWAN wireless network delivering IoT services across Russia.
ER Telecom is the second largest and fastest-growing Russian telecom operator, already catering to the majority of Russia’s largest enterprises. The company has decided to develop an IoT business on the basis of LoRaWAN technology as one of the key directions of its strategic development, planning to provide IoT services for large corporations and state authorities.
The sheer size of Russia, spanning eleven time zones, presents some real challenges to national scale telecom operators, but also creates great opportunities for LoRaWAN technology, with its long range enabling extensive coverage to be deployed with the minimum of network infrastructure.
Andrey Kuzyaev, President of ER Telecom Holding, comments: “Russian enterprises are currently in the stage of digital transformation that will considerably improve the efficiency of business. The Internet of things is the foundation for the development of a digital economy having unlimited growth potential. By our estimates, based on the forecasts of the leading international analytical agencies, the volume of the Internet of Things market in Russia will reach almost 800 bln. Roubles by the year 2022. Taking into account all the opportunities that digital economy provides, we have decided to extend our business and enter adjoining markets and launch an IoT network with the federal coverage in 60 cities with our partner Actility”.
An important early focus of activity will be the oil and gas and mining industries, powerhouses of the Russian economy. Sensors connected via LoRaWAN allow the oil flow remote monitoring through remote pipelines in remote and sometimes hostile environments. In mining, LoRaWAN can be used to monitor vehicles and machinery and trigger pre-emptive maintenance to prevent faults and downtime, or track workers to ensure their safety during blasting operations.
Taking advantage of the tracking capabilities of LoRaWAN, early customers of the new network could be industrial and logistics companies, which could benefit from connected logistics to increase the efficiency of supply chain and operations. Special interest is shown by these companies in geolocation of goods, especially along the Trans-Siberian railroad.
“We’re very proud to be working alongside ER Telecom, a powerful and innovative player in this huge market for industrial IoT which offers such opportunities,” comments Actility CEO Mike Mulica. “With a strong existing customer base of ER Telecom in industry and the regions, we expect to see the applications of LoRaWAN being launched very quickly and successfully on the network being deployed by ER Telecom. This implementation also represents a unique first for us, with our ThingPark platform deployed fully in the territory of Russia, delivering SaaS solutions for customers whilst keeping all the data within Russian borders to comply with Russian legislation.”
ER Telecom Holding is a national operator providing information and telecommunication services in Russia established in 2001. The Holding owns such brands as Dom.ru, Dom.ru Interzet, Dom.ru Business, WestCall and Enforta.
The company provides Quadro Play services: broadband access to Internet, digital and analogue TV as well as telephony and mobile communications. Corporate customers get access to such services as cloud exchange, Wi-Fi Hot Spot, dedicated channels lease and cloud surveillance.
ER Telecom provides the services in 566 cities and settlements of Russia relying on its own telecom networks deployed from the ground on the basis of the unified standards using “fiber-to-home” and radio access technologies. The company is the second largest Internet provider in Russia by the number of customers and the second largest cable TV operator in Russia.
ER telecom is the laureate of many national prizes, including “Runet Prize” (2014) and “Big Data” prize (2016). As per RBC rating “Largest companies of Russia” (2015), the company has been ranked as number one for the rate of profit growth among all Russian telecom operators.
Actility is the industry leader in LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) large-scale infrastructure and the innovator behind the ThingPark IoT Solution platform. Actility’s ThingPark enables scalable LPWA networks and interoperable IoT applications and services. ThingPark Wireless is a core network management and supervision solution for LPWA connectivity designed from the beginning for carrier-grade solutions, and already deployed in over half the national LPWA network rollouts globally.
ThingPark OS is a central IoT management service to connect sensors to applications with bidirectional interaction. ThingPark X is a data analytics and control framework which exposes data from connected things to applications and connects with cloud platforms, and also offers off the shelf IoT industrial applications. ThingPark Market is a B2B ecommerce platform for buyers and sellers, aggregating, distributing and connecting IoT devices and applications to the ThingPark platform. Actility is a founding member of the LoRa Alliance.
PRESS RELEASE:
Dell Technologies Unveils IoT Strategy, Division and Solutions to Accelerate Customer Adoption
Dell Technologies has unveiled its Internet of Things (IoT) vision and strategy, a new IoT division as well as new IoT specific products, labs, partner program and consumption models. This announcement underscores Dell Technologies commitment to helping customers realize their digital future by safely navigating the complex and often fragmented IoT landscape.
As more and more customers look to digitally transform their business, a new model of computing is emerging. For the last 15 years the IT industry has seen the rise of Cloud Computing, a highly centralized model for delivering IT services. But in an age where every type of device, from phones to cars to oil rigs to robots to heart monitors are alive and intelligent, there is a requirement for a “distributed core” focused on real time processing of information. These devices simply cannot wait for a response from centralized cloud infrastructure that may be ‘seconds’ away.
“IoT is fundamentally changing how we live, how organizations operate and how the world works” said Michael Dell, chairman and chief executive officer of Dell Technologies. “Dell Technologies is leading the way for our customers with a new distributed computing architecture that brings IoT and artificial intelligence together in one, interdependent ecosystem from the edge to the core to the cloud. The implications for our global society will be nothing short of profound.”
Customers have expressed a growing need for one company to pull together complete IoT solutions that can be deployed within their organizations. Dell Technologies’ comprehensive approach to IoT is based on leading technology and services and a carefully curated partner ecosystem designed to realize value for customers today and prepare them for the future.
The company’s new IoT Division will be led by VMware CTO Ray O’Farrell, and is chartered with orchestrating the development of IoT products and services across the Dell Technologies family. The IoT Solutions Division will combine internally developed technologies with offerings from the vast Dell Technologies ecosystem to deliver complete solutions for the customer.
“Dell Technologies has long seen the opportunity within the rapidly growing world of IoT, given its rich history in the edge computing market” explained Ray O’Farrell, VMware EVP & CTO, and general manager for Dell Technologies IoT division. “Our new IoT Division will leverage the strength across all of Dell Technologies family of businesses to ensure we deliver the right solution – in combination with our vast partner ecosystem – to meet customer needs and help them deploy integrated IoT systems with greater ease.”
Over the next three years, Dell Technologies is investing $1B in new IoT products, solutions, labs, partner program and ecosystem. Dell Technologies already provides Edge Gateways, which can be secured and managed by VMware Pulse IoT Control Center. Dell EMC PowerEdge C-Series servers have been enhanced for batch training and machine learning as a part of the distributed core. Dell EMC Isilon and Elastic Cloud Storage provide file and object storage for massive amounts of data and enable analytics through HDFS.
Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) and Pivotal Container Service (PKS) provide an ideal platform for developing new cloud-based analytics applications. Virtustream’s PCF Service provides a managed Pivotal Cloud Foundry Service simplifying the deployment and operation of mission-critical cloud architected workloads in Virtustream Enterprise Cloud, while Virtustream Storage Cloud is available for off-premises cloud object storage. Finally, Dell Boomi rapidly connects relevant data to enhance cloud-based analytics and deep learning.
New product development initiatives include:
• Dell EMC ‘Project Nautilus’: Software that enables the ingestion and querying of data streams from IoT gateways in real time. Data can subsequently be archived to file or object storage for deeper advanced analytics;
• ‘Project Fire’: a hyper converged platform part of the VMware Pulse family of IoT solutions that includes simplified management, local compute, storage and IoT applications such as real-time analytics. ‘Project Fire’ enables businesses to roll-out IoT use cases faster and have consistent infrastructure software from edge to core to cloud;
• RSA ‘Project IRIS’: Currently under development in RSA Labs, Iris extends the Security Analytics capability to provide threat visibility and monitoring right out to the edge;
• Disruptive technologies like processor accelerators will increase the velocity of analytics closer to the edge. Collaboration with industry leaders like VMware, Intel and NVIDIA and the Dell Technologies Capital investment in Graphcore reflect opportunities to optimize servers for AI, machine learning and deep learning performance.
• Project ‘Worldwide Herd’: for performing analytics on geographically dispersed data – increasingly important to enable deep learning on datasets that cannot be moved for reasons of size, privacy and regulatory concern.
Customers can also now visit one of the newly designed Dell Technologies IoT Labs. New IoT services initiatives include:
• IoT Vision Workshop – identifies and prioritizes high-value business use cases for IoT data – essentially how and where to deploy IoT analytics that drive business.
• IoT Technology Advisory – develops the overall IoT architecture and roadmap for implementation.
In addition, with the core focus on technology and services, Dell Technologies’ strategy is to grow the IoT footprint via a strong partner program and ecosystem.
• Dell’s award-winning IoT Solutions Partner Program is a carefully curated, multi-tiered program comprising more than 90 partners from enterprises like Intel, Microsoft and SAP to start-ups like Action Point, IMS Evolve, FogHorn and Zingbox.
• The program will now support partners across all Dell Technologies businesses, allowing for easier collaboration and implementation of blueprints.
• An example of the partner ecosystem at work is the recent announcement that VMware and SAP are collaborating to create an integrated solution for IoT analytics and vertical applications. The solution utilizes VMware Pulse IoT Center, SAP Cloud Platform and SAP Leonardo and is designed to help customers roll out IoT use cases faster and scale more easily.
Dell Technologies continues the commitment to openness and standardization in IoT by participation in efforts such as EdgeX Foundry, the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and the OpenFog Consortium. Seeded by Dell source code, EdgeX Foundry is a vendor-neutral open source project building a common interoperability framework to facilitate an ecosystem for edge computing. Since launching in April 2017, EdgeX Foundry has grown to more than 60 member organizations. Recently the project announced its first major milestone with the ‘Barcelona’ code release, as well as an alliance with the IIC to collaborate on testbeds.
IoT is creating new revenue models for customers and, in turn, Dell Technologies is offering new financing options to support those customers. In particular, Dell Technologies provides cloud-like payment options through Dell Financial Services flexible consumption models. These payment solutions are available across the Dell Technologies family of business and allow customers flexibility in technology acquisition and consumption.
Dell Technologies Capital, the venture arm of Dell Technologies, is partnering closely with the new IoT division, providing industry insight and relationships to support its strategic agenda. Through its investments in promising startups and founders, Dell Technologies Capital provides a valuable link to the external innovation ecosystem, effectively accelerating the development and deployment of new IoT, AI and ML technologies and solutions. Dell Technologies Capital will be showcasing some of these startups and investments at the company’s New York IQT event, including:
• Edico Genome, creator of world’s first processor designed to analyze next-generation sequencing data
• FogHorn Systems, a leading developer of edge-device intelligence software for IoT solutions
• Graphcore, a developer of next-generation processors optimized to accelerate AI-solutions
• Moogsoft, a market leader in applying Artificial Intelligence to IT Ops (AIOps)
• Zingbox, a developer of IoT security solutions to enable the Internet of Trusted Things
PRESS RELEASE:
RoweBots’ Unison RTOS Now Supports Modbus Communication Protocol
RoweBots, an embedded systems software company, has announced new Modbus communication protocol interface capabilities with its Unison RTOS, a real-time operating system that offers a complete component set for the development of IoT and M2M Communication Embedded Applications.
“By enabling the Modbus communication protocol interface on Unison RTOS, developers can now leverage one of the most widely used communication protocols at a very low cost,” said Kim Rowe, CEO and founder of Rowebots. “Unison RTOS offers connectivity for a broad set of communication protocols, and we’re pleased to now include Modbus on that list.”
As a versatile, small, widely understood and widely used communication protocol, Modbus works immediately with Unison RTOS with an integration fee. Modbus transmits data over serial lines between electronic devices, easing the process for receiving data from sensors and other small devices leveraging Unison RTOS. It also enables communication over Ethernet and boasts compatibility on common hardware interfaces, making setting up or adding to a network of data acquisition straight forward and low cost. This benefits developers needing to acquire data from multiple devices.
Rowebots’ Unison RTOS is designed to the well-known POSIX standard and is optimized for size, modularity and adaptability to system-on-chip solutions, microcontroller units, microprocessor units, digital signal processing systems, field-programmable gate arrays and digital signal controllers. Unison helps developers take products beyond the prototype level and add value with the opportunity for later expansion and enhancement of the product line.
PRESS RELEASE:
Lorien Health Services Preps for IoT, Delivers Patient-Centered Care With Aruba Network
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), has announced that Lorien Health Services, a Maryland-based, family-owned and operated healthcare organization, has replaced its legacy wireless network with a Mobile First Network from Aruba. The new network will serve Lorien’s fourteen locations and help the company fulfill its goal of leveraging the latest in healthcare technology to maximize its residents’ quality of life.
Lorien Health Services had been using off-the-shelf wireless networking products but quickly found that the lack of performance, reliability and enterprise-class features hampered caregivers’ ability to serve patients and residents. Many of the healthcare applications Lorien uses require web-based cloud access which became impossible with its existing wireless network.
The unreliable Wi-Fi connectivity also plagued Lorien’s nurse call system, dropping their connections frequently, so that when residents hit their call buttons, nurses were not always alerted. In addition, the existing network was an obstacle to Lorien’s adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) since they couldn’t easily and reliably connect new IoT devices and systems such as EKG monitors and HVAC systems.
Working with partner, Carousel Industries, Lorien began searching for an enterprise WLAN solution that could improve its Wi-Fi speed, performance and reliability, deliver 24/7 mobile access, and allow the organization’s IT staff to easily manage the network. Lorien evaluated solutions from several vendors including Aerohive before selecting Aruba’s mobile first platform.
Using approximately four hundred Aruba 802.11ac 300 Series 802.11ac Access Points, along with Aruba Mobility Controllers and AirWave Network Management, Lorien quadrupled the speed of their Wi-Fi and dramatically improved density – even in older buildings where they’d had signaling issues and connectivity failures previously. More importantly, the new network allows Lorien to give nurses and caregivers round-the-clock access to the devices and applications they need to deliver top-notch patient and resident care.
“Our caregivers have more important things to worry about than the Wi-Fi network,” said Michael Bowman, Network Engineer at Lorien Health Services. “With our new Aruba WLAN, we finally have a reliable, always-on network, so our staff’s time is spent helping patients and residents, not trying to get connected to the network. Our IT staff can also focus on other tasks now that they don’t have to spend time troubleshooting network issues.”
With the new Aruba network in place, Lorien can now deliver high-speed, pervasive Wi-Fi for residents, caregivers and guests. The organization is using mobile carts equipped with laptops so caregivers can quickly access internal and external, cloud-based clinical applications including the EMR and EHR clinical applications that enable patient demographics and admissions transfers and discharges, Point of Care, and RefillRX for easy prescription fulfillment. In addition, caregivers can access Lorien’s CareTracker app to turn any iPad into a phone, allowing them to place calls between rooms, floors or even different Lorien facilities.
Furthermore, with the new wireless network, Lorien has been able to expand its IoT initiative, connecting security cameras, HVAC and thermostat systems for more automated usage, and wireless devices to monitor aspects of patient care such as EKG status and hygiene.
For the future, Lorien plans to upgrade its Aruba controllers to accommodate its continued growth, and plans to deploy Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager for device authentication. With its Aruba mobile first network in place, the organization is confident that it can address future needs quickly and easily.
Said Bowman, “Our Aruba network has already improved our staff’s productivity, reduced IT headaches and most importantly, increased resident and patient satisfaction. We feel comfortable leveraging whatever new healthcare technologies come our way now that we have a solid networking foundation in place.”
PRESS RELEASE:
Industrial Internet Consortium, EdgeX Foundry Announce Liaison
The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), an organization dedicated to accelerating adoption of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and EdgeX Foundry, an open-source project building a common interoperability framework to facilitate an ecosystem for IoT edge computing, have announced that they have agreed to a liaison. Under the terms of the agreement, the organizations will work together to align their efforts to maximize interoperability, portability, security and privacy for the industrial Internet.
Joint activities between the IIC and EdgeX Foundry will include identifying and sharing best practices, collaborating on test beds and experimental projects, working toward interoperability by harmonizing architecture and other elements, collaborating on common elements and periodically hosting joint seminars. “We are excited about working with EdgeX Foundry,” said James Clardy, EdgeX Foundry’s IIC liaison, in a prepared statement. “And we look forward to leveraging the experiences of the IIC to help further accelerate the adoption of the industrial Internet.”
“EdgeX Foundry’s primary goal is to simplify and accelerate Industrial IoT by delivering a unified edge computing platform supported by an ecosystem of solutions providers,” said Philip DesAutels, The Linux Foundation‘s senior director of IoT, in the prepared statement. “Formalizing this liaison relationship with the IIC is fundamental to unlocking business value at scale. Together, we will provide better best practices that will drive the unification of the industrial IoT.”
The agreement is among many made by the IIC Liaison Working Group, which provides a gateway for formal relationships with standards and open-source organizations, consortia, alliances, certification and testing bodies, and government entities and agencies. For a list of current liaisons, click here.