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Advantech to build IIoT/AIoT ecosystem with new concept

Ninelu Tu, Taipei; Willis Ke, DIGITIMES Asia 0

Taiwan's leading IPC supplier Advantech will strive to promote a new concept of IoT-cloud solution provider (IoT-CSP) in the next three years, aiming to build a healthier IoT ecosystem and better actualize industrial IoT (IIoT) and artificial intelligence-based IoT (AIoT) applications, according to company chairman KC Liu.

The AIoT market will reach a scale of US$450 billion by 2025, and integrated solutions and services will grow the fastest to account for over 50% of the market, Liu said, citing statistics from research organizations.

Liu said Advantech has developed over 200 industrial apps for use by manufacturing enterprises in 2018-2020 after rolling out WISE-PaaS (platform as a service) solutions for clients in 2015-2018, and will enter its third stage of development, focusing on creating an environment for supporting cross-platform IoT applications.

Liu said AIoT or IIoT applications will have a chance to flourish only after innovative cross-platform IoT solutions can be developed in a highly integrated ecosystem. He stressed that both applications can hardly take root without the ecosystem.

Liu continued that while domain-focused solution integrators (DFSI) have played a crucial role in the first two development stages for IoT solutions, IoT-CSP will be badly needed in materializing IIoT and AIoT applications.

Currently, up to 90% of solutions offered by current CSPs are for the IT sector, having little to do with the IoT segment, Liu said, stressing that what Advantech will do is to help CSPs extend their business tentacles into the OT (operation technology) domain, enabling numerous small-and-medium enterprise clients to easily access diverse cloud service platforms for IIoT or AIoT applications.

Liu also noted that Advantech will gather more software developers and cloud service providers to join the ecosystem needed to support the migration from IT to OT application.

Advantech chairman KC Liu  Photo: Michael Lee, Digitimes, January 2021

Advantech chairman KC Liu
Photo: Digitimes file photo