IoT highlights at IoT Evolution Expo
Written by: Tack Tamagawa
Published: February 13, 2017
IoT Evolution Expo East 2017
Logistics & Agenda
I attended the IoT Evolution Expo East 2017 at Fort Lauderdale, Florida this week. According to the website, there were about 4,000 plus attendees from 750 plus IoT related companies:
IoT Evolution Expo — Attendee Demographics
This year, the super sponsor of the event was Telit, a well-known maker of cellular/GNSS/wireless modules that has recently expanded their solution to include end-to-end IoT enablement. Telit had a self-sponsored event as well: Telit IoT Innovation at the 1st day of the IoT Evolution Expo.
Day 1 of IoT Evolution Expo — IoT Telit Innovation
Telit invited some of the reference companies. Yokogawa Electric Co. was one of several companies that announced a partnership with Telit at the event.
Yokogawa Electric Co.— Mits Sagae
Day 2 of IoT Evolution Expo — Ken Briodagh, Editorial Director
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Day 2 started with series of keynote sessions and breakout sessions.
Many of the speakers shared their IoT project experiences with their customers from private, public and government sectors across different industries.
Some breakout sessions targeted specific topics like categories of antenna types, eSIMs and Voice IoT Enablements.
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Featured Keynotes / Speaker sessions
IoT Development Plans: Why You Need to Accelerate the Move to LTE
Manish Watwani, Telit
5G promises even better speeds and coverage than the current 4G.
5G expected to spread around 2020. There are another side of 5G standards support low-power consumption especially targeted for large volume IoT use cases. LTE-M and NBIoT expected to be ready by this year in United States, the wireless carrier and device manufacturers are getting ready. The expectation is that the LTE-M and NBIoT devices cost will be much lower due to simplified certification process, simpler module (chip) and smaller battery.
If you need an IoT solution for worldwide (outside of United States), 3G is still the best option for the next few years, as LTE/5G will not have coverages or use different bands in the different regions.
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You Want an IoT Strategy, Now What? A Practical Decision Making Framework for Designing a Flexible Enterprise IoT Deployment
Jeff Newman,CalAmp
Talked about the issues of scalability and flexibility with the current off-the-shelf fleet management application from the transportation and logistics industries — need for standardized interfaces for monitoring order-related vehicle and cargo data, customer-specific connection facilities for logistics systems and innovative data integration for truck and trailer telematics, and decision making at the grid-edge. Jeff stressed the importance of “security”.
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Smart Insurance: How Jooycar Makes Driving Safer, Easier, and Less Expensive
Nathan Lustig, Jooycar
“Connecting” is the first step. The important thing is to improve the user experience and creating new revenue model. Jooycar provides a real-time data access from the vehicle to the vehicle drivers and the insurance company. Making safer for the both driver and insurance companies, so that the insurance costs less due to calculated risk take.
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Enabling Voice Driven Smart Home Experiences with Amazon Alexa
J. Michael Palermo, Amazon
Alexa, the voice service that powers Amazon Echo, Dot, Tap and Fire TV, provides a set of built-in abilities, or skills, that enable customers to interact with smart home devices in a more intuitive way using voice.
Alexa becoming a centerpiece of upcoming “VUI (Voice User Interface)” era. More than 750 devices supporting Alexa VUI and through easy to implement “skill” APIs, it is expanding rapidly. All you need is an idea for smarthome.
Q: How about Non-English language support? (especially Japanease)
A: Not sure about the plan of supporting Non-English language. It is left for developer on each country to take on.
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Keynote Presentation by Industrial Internet Consortium
Dr. Richard Soley, Object Management Group & Industrial Internet Consortium
- Industry is not ready for the next evolution, Industry 4.0
- Improvement of sensor (device) and energy (power consumption) introduces lower-cost, connected, and cloud utilizing big data.
- Industry requires even higher level of “security” than consumer products.
Keynote Presentation by Ingenu — Five Surprises Awaiting IoT Device Makers
John Horn, Ingenu
If connectivity providers neglect their duty to provide true technology, then these innovators are hamstrung in how much simpler they can make our lives because they’ll be busy overcoming the connectivity’s shortcomings.
Ingenu, a smart meter device provider in United States, introduce another LPWA technology, RPWA, using globally unlicensed band 2.4Ghz. One LPWA tower can cover more area than Sigfox, Cellular, and LoRa.
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Keynote Presentation by Cisco — Starting a Successful IoT Journey
Maciej Kranz, Cisco
Get past the hype and learn about industry’s first proven step-by-step plan on how to identify and implement successful IoT projects. Practical lessons learned from dozens of projects will highlight eight key ingredients for success and four fast pay-back scenarios for organizations in any market sector.
Many use cases for different industries, improving ROI, better understanding of what happening at site, shorter time for delivery. Recommend good partnership/alliance for complex IoT use cases.
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Telecom and IOT: Evolving at the Core
Mark Heckler, Pivotal Software, Inc.
Vladimir Beloborodov, Mera Software Services
Syed Zaeem Hosain, Aeris
Tom Phelan, Unified Office
Scott Scheuber (Moderator), US Cellular
Mark Heckler‘s VUX demo showing a possibility of controlling the sensors/some sort of monitoring devices by voice.
I also use Alexa at home for play music, ask weather, get Uber, etc. I find it is easier when I don’t have smartphone or not at the front of laptop. I have to say I am not completely sold by the current voice control capability of Alexa, maybe in the future, they can capture the tone and intonation of the voice for the better understanding of the underlying context.
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Expo Booth — more than 60 companies
Expo Booths
Numerex －Safty and Security System / Bayshore — Remote control & Automated Stop with Alert / Yokogawa — IoT Enablement with partnership (MS etc) / GEOTAB — Fleet management
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During this event, I’ve personally connected with more than 70 people from different industries in different countries. People from SW/HW IoT Platform, telecom carriers (Verizon, Spring, US Cellular), device/modem manufacturer (BEC, Inhand Networks, flex, SEQUANS, CEL-FI, NimbleLink, GateTel), LPWA (Senet, OrbiWise) , VPN (Sub U Systems), Software (Sansay, Azul Systems) Media/Networking (TMC Net, Wireless Infrastructure Associations, Channel Vision, Sunroute networks, J Arnold & Associates), Japanese companies (Mitsui, NTT resonant) and more.
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I met Michael Kadonoff, CEO of Canadian startup, Braingrid (IoT Evolution Expo Business Impact Awards Receiver), provides scalable precision agriculture solutions. Their device includes all necessary sensors and swappable wireless communication modules (cellular and LPWA) to monitor the different type of high value plants such as cannabis.
Sentroller by Brain Grid
Micael Kadonoff, CEO of Brain Grid
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Conclusion
Overall, I had a great time expanding my network and getting speaker perspectives on the IoT market in the United State and other regions.
Some, like Telit are trying to create an IoT eco-system, enabling a “one-stop-IoT solution” experience for customers by expanding coverages from the bottom (device) to the top (platform). Smaller players are focusing more on their core technology area and expanding the IoT eco-system enabling through the partnership/alliances. Many players are doing a bit of both.
As IoT era emerges, there are plenty opportunities to go around. It seems all players have made their first moves, but we are far from deciding the winners or the losers yet. Who will take the empty seats in the upcoming IoT era?
See you at the next IoT event!
Tack T., Soracom, Inc.
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SORACOM offers secure, scalable cellular service specifically tailored to the needs of connected devices (low-cost, pay-as-you-go global service with cloud-native features to reduce data and power consumption).
