The arrival of IoT (Internet of Things) era will bring unprecedented opportunities across industries and create new business models, which may have profound impact on global economics. Eyeing on the huge potentials of the emerging trend, Intel is making efforts to work with the eco-system in delivering comprehensive IoT solutions focusing to provide services that speak value for customers.
At the "Intel IoT Asia" event held in Taipei recently, Intel invited important partners and Intel executives to introduce and demonstrate the latest development trends and various solutions for IoT. The event has attracted full house of participants reflecting the heated attention from local industry.
At the panel discussion session, which was moderated by Philip Cronin, Director of Regional Sales Organization at Intel Asia Pacific, several guest speakers gathered together to talk about the benefits, challenges and opportunities as the industry is moving towards IoT era. These speakers included Chaney Ho, President of Advantech, Wen-yen K. Lin, Chairperson of Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) & President of Tatung, Kuen-Rong Lo, Director, Internet of Things Laboratory, Telecommunication Laboratories, Chunghwa Telecom, Dr. KC Chen, Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean of College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, National Taiwan University, Neil Hickey, Managing Director, Digital and the Mobility Practice Lead in Greater China, Accenture, and Jeffery Paul, VP of Software and Service Sales Organization, Sales and Marketing Group, Intel.
Opportunities everywhere
"It's time for the IoT market to take off. IoT applications will soon become reality, reshaping the industry landscape and people's lives", Philip Cronin said during the opening remarks. "However, as interest and excitement for the IoT continues to grow, developers face significant challenges in security, interoperability, and deployment complexity."
"It's exciting to see the emergence of IoT market, with opportunities everywhere in the future", Chaney Ho of Advantech echoed. "With strong foundations in PC industry, it is crucial for Taiwan, as we are in an urgent need to drive industry transformation. IoT offers the best opportunity for us to grasp post-PC era market. Furthermore, IoT involves various aspects from chipsets, middleware, application, to services, and its applications are across different vertical markets. Every company should be able to find a position in the market."
Ho emphasized that innovation is the key to drive IoT market. With the diverse demands, no one can really dominate the market; therefore, companies of the whole value chain may have the opportunity.
Advantech's IoT products include sensing, interconnect, and intelligent computing, and can offer solutions for different vertical applications. Ho believed that smart city and smart manufacturing, also known as the Industry 4.0, have the greatest potentials. "As Asia being the manufacturing center of the world, we can adopt IoT technology to significantly change the traditional models of production and services. In addition, Advantech has developed robot controller products, which can be used to improve productivity effectively", he said.
Smart energy, cloud services
Wen-yen K. Lin of Tatung also pointed out, "As technology gets ready, we are now at the important stage of IoT development. It's just like the dawn of IoT."
As for Tatung's IoT market strategy, the company will first focus on smart energy area. Its subsidiary, Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), has newly developed an intelligent gateway by integrating Intel Quark SoC and I/O board to provide a smart connection between energy management system and other commercial building devices.
According to Wen-yen K. Lin, as energy has become an important issue all over the world, this new solution will help achieve significant energy and cost saving. More importantly, the concept of smart building can further be applied to other vertical markets, such as home, factory, and school, as to enable the smart community, smart city, and eventually the smart country.
Kuen-Rong Lo of Chunghwa Telecom introduced the IoT services that company offers, including ITS intelligent transport service, iEN intelligent energy, smart home, and intelligent health.
"As a leading network operator in Taiwan, Chunghwa Telecom is keen to incorporate IT technology to create innovative services for customers", Lo said. "We are also the very first member of Cloud Computing Association in Taiwan, making lots of efforts to drive cloud application. Our plan is to build an IoT platform to further integrate different technologies in the future."
All-Round innovations
From the viewpoint of academic research, Dr. KC Chen of National Taiwan University said, "While the paradigm shift accelerated, the way that hi-tech industry achieved success 20 years ago is no longer the same. The goal of driving IoT is to bring hi-tech to the society and public, therefore, innovation and research will play an important role."
Facing the future challenges, Chen believed that new ways for education, research, and industrial cooperation are required to generate new impacts. In particular universities, being the cradle of talent cultivation, should reinforce their connections with the industry to get bigger benefits. He also commended the great results that the innovation research center, which was jointly set up by Intel and Taiwan University, has achieved in M2M area.
Dr. Chen also mentioned about the vision of "Intelligence of Taiwan" that Taiwan government came up few years ago, aiming to build Taiwan as a technology island. The abbreviation of Intelligence of Taiwan, IoT, is the exactly same as Internet of Things. Taiwan should make use of the opportunity, transforming our strength in IT technology to embrace for the IoT era. "This should be the common goal for everyone in the industry", he said.
From a leading consulting company, Neil Hickey of Accenture indicated that IoT is extremely hot in the market recently. "The impact that IoT brings to enterprises not only in the improvement of business efficiency, but also the new business models, and even the new game rules and competitors", he said. "For example, the unmanned car that Goolge develops is the competition that tradition car makers would never expect."
He pointed out that, facing the strong dynamics and great potentials of IoT market, companies should take bold actions to win the market. Anyone missing this new wave of paradigm shift will lag far behind the competition in the future.
Hickey echoed other people's opinions, saying, "Partnering will be one of key factors to the success of IoT. In addition, building platform solutions, accelerating the development and deployment of IoT, and transforming the traditional business model from product-centered to service-centered are all the new concepts that companies should have."
Because of the reshape of value chain and the emergence of new types of services and business models, companies should expect that sales channel in the future will also change. When deploying IoT market, companies should seriously consider if they have the right people and right skill sets to keep up with the demands of IoT market.
On the other hand, according to Hickey, data capture is a key element of IoT. However, until now, we don't have clear regulations to define the data access between connected devices. As the market progresses, he expected that the issue of legal authorization of data capture will become increasingly important in the future.
"IoT is about the interconnections among data, device, and cloud, and software plays an important key", Jeffery Paul of Intel said. "With products covering embedded platform, security software, API and tools, Intel has kept strengthening our software portfolios in recent years to build up comprehensive solutions to meet customers' requirements."
In the end, Philip Cronin wrapped up the session, saying, "The industry is now starting the IoT journey. Though there are challenges ahead, we should work together to really solve customers' problems through strong partnership. By doing so, we will be able to realize the vision of IoT and create long-term prosperity for the industry."
Philip Cronin, Director of Regional Sales Organization at Intel Asia Pacific
At the "Intel IoT Asia" event held in Taipei recently, Intel invited important partners and Intel executives to introduce and demonstrate the latest development trends and various solutions for IoT.
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