FutureM 2015 Boston.

Came to FutureM15 for IoT. And not disappointed by David Rose, Eric Snow of PTC, and panel on smart cities. Look for them on Twitter under #futureM15 and #IoT. Interesting to see latest in marketing... and relation to IoT. Background FutureM schedule .

Hayzlett - be bold (perhaps bolder than polite company would require).
Berners-Lee - times they are a changin'.

And okay - this piece is not from futureM - but similar viewpoint.

The Pivot to IoT. Rainmakers, Recipes, Fungibility, Sensors.

Saw this announcement about Pivotal, Benjamin Black and foray into IoT. The competitive landscape gets set out in the article with PTC, IBM, Cisco, Citrix, GE and others. Scroll down to the paragraph with "sensors aren't fungible" for the central issue in IoT, the nature of sensors and their natural environment, in a nutshell.

Interesting concept fungibility. And while one is on the topic of sensors and IoT... here is Oak Ridge Sensorpedia. And here is a sensorpedia recipe. Blogged before about great IBM IoT recipes... $3B investment in new division is quite an IBM announcement. Will this make IBM the rainmakers?

IoT, PTC, LiveWorx, Analytika.

Notices are starting to circulate about PTC LiveWorx 2015. Attended Axeda Connection and PTC LiveWorx last year. Been watching Internet of Things (IoT) in pursuance of making Cimetrics' offerings like Analytika more conformal. Year started with meeting some people from ThingWorx at M2M Miami. Watched as ThingWorx and Axeda started melding into PTC. Attended local events regarding the PTC Smart Connected Products programme.

Good friend of ours, from the energy efficiency and buildings modeling space, joined PTC. Went into high gear regarding analytics, and Cimetrics is now in the ThingWorx partner program. 

The Analytika piece for PTC is mostly about consuming and delivering data for mashups. But there are data connector pathways too. Connections had been a topic we were looking at with Axeda before the acquisition by PTC. Seems everyone is trying to understand how it all fits together. Here is an image from the connectIOT project:

And Cimetrics is still actively pursuing IoT pathways.

Postscapes IoT Awards 2014.

Had mentioned search for best IoT Blog. Postscapes just announced 2014 awards for lots of different categories of IoT. And here are the Postscapes awards for 2013. PTC Thingworx seemed very happy with taking about a third of the awards.

Best Internet of Things IoT Blogs.

Went looking for a list (even if just opinion) of the best blogs for Internet of Things, IoT. Had criteria that it be reasonably outward looking, agnostic and current. Did not exactly find what sought. But some related things...

Best IoT Twitter accounts from Link Labs. Postscapes seems to come up often. Some general trend watchers have some good IoT materials like PSFK. There are some personal opinions, which sometimes lead back to trend watchers and consultants like McKinsey. Big companies, of course, come up on search for best IoT blogs - Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Cisco, Bosch, PTC, and so on. Some smaller entities come out too like Stephenson (local in Massachusetts), Adafruit (prototyping supplier).

MassTLC IoT at PTC - Smart Connected Products Transforming Competition - HBR.

IoT has had much discussion lately. Went to a great MassTLC sponsored seminar at PTC on November 4. How Smart, Connected Products are Transforming Competition. Went hand in hand with article in Harvard Business Review. Lay of land for Smart Connected Products. Ten questions businesses should ask themselves. Very appropriate.  Looking at steps

1. 1. Monitoring.
2. 2. Control.
3. 3. Optimization.
4. 4. Autonomy.

Could not help but think about the roots of IoT in tracking/viewing things. The order should perhaps still be

1. 1. Monitoring.
2. 2. Optimization (based purely on what is monitored and outside of any actual IoT programme).
3. 3. Autonomy.
4. 4. Control - Control is last because one should understand the situation before taking action.

And in many cases there are limits (safety, regulatory, privacy, moral, etc.) on what can be controlled. Most of the value is in monitoring and optimization. Some situations never get to control.

 

There were questions during discussions about..

When will industries standardize? What are we waiting for?

1. Leadership from Apple, Amazon, Google and so forth were cited for consumer.
2. Leadership by the main players are often cited in commercial industry. But there is a commercial incentive for non-standard approaches (differentiators) in many situations.
3. Cooperation and collaborative openness. There are examples of collaborative standardization. There are ecosystems which makes it easy to exchange, normalize, coordinate, aggregate and analyze data.

Examples of collaborative standardization:

• BACnet in buildings.
• Sunspec in renewables.
• MTConnect in factory systems.
• OPC (XML DA) in automation.

And the following too - if an ONLY if the mapping/schema is well known... the universally accepted schema is the heart of the matter

• Modbus in industrial. The depth and of Modbus (all the way to sensors), and the breadth of its install base, should not be ignored.
• SNMP in IT.
• RESTful exchange in commerce.
• Any XML in any domain.
• MQ (message queuing) in any domain.

SQL is often hauled out as an exchange method. There is no universal public schema for any database system. Such a schema would be orthogonal to the performance needs of a database.
 
And as a final word. Smart connected things without goals and analytics are fruitless. And goals need not be set in stone, as they are generally informed by analytics. Tactical drives the strategic and vice versa. They are two sides of the same coin. Planning is essential but plans are useless.

 

Internet of Things - IoT - Tools Coming Together - PTC, Thingworx, Axeda.

Blogged before about IoT tools. Ecosystem is growing. Conferences growing. Push by players coming together. PTC, Thingworx, Axeda.
PTC , Thingworx and Axeda.