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As the largest Internet of Things themed event in Southeast Asia, the IoT Asia 2015 conference and exhibition, which took place in Singapore last week (April 8-9), provided a good opportunity to assess what "IoT" means in this part of the world and gage the extent of understanding, applications and impact.
Interestingly, the joint organizer of the event (together with SingEX Exhibitions), the Singapore Industrial Automation Association (SIAA), was active a decade ago in promoting IoT's forerunner, M2M. While there was a level of interest generated, it was not extensive or sustained, likely because of a paucity of readily available soloutions, and M2M certainly did not seep into people's consciousness in the same way IoT has done in just a couple of years.
Still, it was those pioneering M2M efforts in the mid-2000s that enabled SIAA to notice and catch the IoT wave building in 2012 and co-organize the first IoT Asia event for 2014 and follow up with a larger conference (85 speakers) and exhibition (40 companies) this year.
A glance at this year's conference line-up indicates that IoT has spread its tentacles wide, at least in terms of the organizers' positioning of the concept for this event. Hence you had the Smart City Forum, the Wearable Technology Conference, IoT in Healthcare, IoT in Retail & Consumer, as well as IoT in Manufacturing and a number of IoT technology focused sessions.
And the conference speakers at IoT Asia 2015, as well as the exhibitors on the show floor, illustrate the necessary extent of the IoT ecosystem: device manufacturers, embedded systems suppliers, network infrastructure and telecommunications companies, software platform providers, and specialists in areas such as cyber security and analytics.
A sample listing of participants reinforces the notion that when it comes to IoT, many disparate companies are – or like to be – associated with this new new thing: Advantech, ARM, Beckhoff Automation, Bosch Software Innovations, Emerson Process Management, Infineon, Google, Palo Alto Networks, SAP, Salesforce, Telefonica, ThingWorx.
In Southeast Asia, it is safe to say that Singapore is ahead of the pack in terms of appreciating and understanding the potential of the Internet of Things. Last November, the government announced the intention for Singapore to become "the world's first Smart Nation", with the goal of improving the quality of life for individuals and generating business opportunities for enterprises.
The country already has world-class infrastructure in terms of broadband speeds and public wireless availability, and the Smart Nation initiative looks to build on this to enable greater pervasive connectivity, better situational awareness through data collection, and efficient sharing of collected sensor data, which can then be analysed to generate the relevant insights in order to formulate timely and appropriate plans and decisions that result in more responsive services.
So it was not surprising to see the government minister in charge of the Smart Nation Programme, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, making the keynote speech at IoT Asia 2015. He pointed out that the number of "things" connected to the internet is set to dwarf the numbers of connected PCs and smartphones, and that the cost of adding intelligence (i.e. computational ability) and connectivity to a thing is rapidly falling. Pervasive and smart connections will, he said, help boost the effectiveness of government initiatives and services in areas such as healthcare, transportation, and the environment.
Notably, given that the issue of security usually arises in any discussion of IoT proliferation, Singapore announced the launch a new Cyber Security Agency (CSA) not long after revealing the Smart Nation initiative. The CSA, which became operational on April 1, has the remit to oversee national cyber security issues and policies, with specific aims to strengthen cyber security in critical sectors such as energy and water, and to develop a robust cyber security ecosystem, to respond to and mitigate cyber attacks.
There was a lot to see, hear and discuss at IoT Asia 2015. So over the next few weeks, look out for further blog posts here for a deeper dive into the more interesting Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) aspects from this year's event.
Posted in IIoT and I4.0 Viewpoints