Xively: LogMeIn launches first Internet of Things public cloud

Posted on 14th May 2013 in Internet of Things

At last week’s 2nd Boston/New England IoT Meetup, LogMeIn officials hinted at a big announcement today.

No kidding! The news was that they’ve teamed with ARM, the mobile chip giant, to launch the “Xively  (Xively? Where, pray tell, do they come up with these names ??) Jumpstart Kit” to accelerate the launch of commercial projects on the IoT:

“…a rapid prototyping-to-production bundle that significantly reduces the cost, complexity and learning curve required to bring IoT-based connected products and solutions to market.”

The kit combines:

  • the first public cloud for the Internet of Things
  • ARM mbed™, “a platform for rapidly building connected devices using ARM-based microcontrollers.”

The combination of services will allow developers of any size to quickly move from prototypes to IoT commercial services.

According to LogMeIn CEO Michael Simon:

“The Internet of Things signifies the next major wave of the Internet, one that we believe could even eclipse both the web and mobile waves combined, and presents a massive opportunity for businesses that want to create a new generation of compelling connected products.  In order to make this happen, they need a simple, affordable way to experiment and innovate through a platform that will enable them to seamlessly move from prototype to commercial product, and then scale as demand grows. By working together with leading vendors like ARM, a company that’s been a driving force in the enablement of the IoT, we can deliver a powerful, easy way for companies to jumpstart their IoT-based connected products and turn them into reality.”

Analyst Glenn Allmendinger, CEO of Harbor Research, said the service is one of three factors that will accelerate growth of the IoT:

“We are seeing real traction in the Internet of Things market. Three forces are converging: connectivity, innovative new device designs and a new generation of technology tools that let manufacturers focus on their core product innovation instead of on building Internet of Things infrastructure from scratch. This can be a hundreds of billions of dollars opportunity.  Xively Cloud Services organizes a true end-to-end chain of tools, support, partners, and infrastructure for smart systems on the IoT.”

Xively is the latest evolution in what began as Usman Haque‘s pioneering Pachube platform.

 

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$6 billion market for wearable computers

Posted on 13th May 2013 in health, Internet of Things

One of the most fascinating branches of the Internet of Things is wearable computers, because they will have such an effect on our personal lives.

From the increasingly ubiquitous Fitbit, Fuelband, and Jawbone UP fitness monitors to potential lifesavers such as the Peeko onesie to ward off SIDS or slippers that detect a change in a senior’s gait in time to notify caregivers and avoid a fall, they are

Jawbone UP

likely to become woven into the fabric of daily living. Juniper Research predicts that sales of wearable devices may be near 70 million by 2017.

 

Bloomberg News did a wrap-up on the potentially $6 billion market today.

Companies already making apps for smartphones and tablets may find capitalizing on the new market will basically be found money:

“For many companies already making apps for smartphones and tablets, the cost of developing wearable apps would be incremental. Modifying an existing smartphone app to run on a device like a watch might only take ‘a couple of hours,’ said David Kincaid, founder of San Diego-based Mobile Software Design LLC, the maker of the FreeCaddie golfing app.”

 

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Want to help plan how Internet of Things will transform government? Join my new GovLoop group!

Posted on 13th May 2013 in cities, defense, environmental, government, health, Homeland Security, Internet of Things, transportation

Have no doubt about it: the Internet of Things will transform government, affecting public security, defense, environmental protection, transport, and health.  If you’d like to be part of the community planning how to help government capitalize on the IoT, please join my new GovLoop community on the topic!

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MQTT: important Internet of Things facilitator?

Posted on 9th May 2013 in automotive, Internet of Things, M2M, manufacturing

As I mentioned at the time, part of the news when IBM announced its new heavy-duty MessageSight appliance to handle the vast quantity of real-time data sharing between sensors on the Internet of Things was that MessageSight would use the MQTT protocol to communicate the data.

MQTT, or Message Queue Telemetry Transport (whew!), is an existing protocol for sharing telemetry-style data which OASIS recently proposed as a standard for M2M data sharing. According to IBM, its primary virtues are “low power consumption, high performance and reliability (which) allow real time updates that can be acted upon immediately,” — important because of the need to reduce sensors’ drain on their batteries. Other types of pervasive devices that might use the protocol include “mobile phones, embedded systems on vehicles, or laptops and full scale computers.”

According to GigaOm, “..it’s already in use for satellite transmissions and in medical and industrial settings where low-bandwidth communications are essential. ” In addition to IBM, it’s already supported by Kaazing, Red Hat, TIBCO, and Cisco.

According to The New York Times, MQTT advocates say it could be the M2M equivalent of the Web’s HTTP protocol.  Co-inventor Andy Stanford-Clark of IBM is one of my fav IoT experimenters (you’ve got to see his TedX talk about how he’s automated his home on the Isle of Wight — and didn’t stop there, making the whole island a laboratory for the IoT!). He and co-inventor Arlen Nipper wrote the first version of MQTT in 1998 for oil platform sensors.

As in several of my recent posts, the automotive industry was singled out by the NYT as one field where MQTT might be applied:

“Vijay Sankaran, director of application development for Ford, said improved message-handling technology will be vital to the company’s plans for automated diagnostics and new consumer services.

“Mr. Sankaran pointed to two examples. In the Focus Electric car, he said, Ford wants to get continual, detailed sensor data on the state and performance of the vehicle’s electric battery, then feed that information into product development.

“And drivers, Mr. Sankaran said, seek to do more things while in their cars. A stock trader, for example, might want to continue trading from the road. If the trader sent in an order to sell 30,000 shares of Apple, he said, that transaction must be reliably and securely communicated.

“’You need an advanced messaging engine for these kinds of services,’ Mr. Sankaran said.”

The Times article points out that for MQTT to achieve its full potential it must be adopted not only by IT companies such as IBM and Cisco, but also by “…industrial technology heavyweights including General Electric, Honeywell, Siemens and United Technologies.

These companies make many of the sensor-equipped big things in the so-called Internet of Things — like jet engines, power turbines and oil field equipment.”

MQTT looks like it will play a major role in allowing harvesting of data from sensor networks, but we’ll have to see how much of an IoT lingua franca it really becomes!

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Major changes for car industry due to Internet of Things

Posted on 8th May 2013 in automotive, environmental, Internet of Things

I just blogged on the Huffington Post about how the Internet of Things will mean major changes for the auto industry.

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London will have first Internet of Things airport!

Posted on 6th May 2013 in cities, Internet of Things, transportation

I’ve been arguing for airports as ideal laboratories for advanced, free wireless communications ever since a 2002 op-ed in the Boston Business Journal in which I chided Logan Airport for charging for wi-fi. It seems to me that airports, with such a high percentage of sophisticated users with advanced mobile devices combined with complex logistics, are perfect places to apply the latest innovations.

That’s why I was delighted to see that London City Airport, the city’s downtown, business-oriented one, will offer the first Internet of Things enabled services.

The services will be developed by Living PlanIt (“technology for sustainable cities”) and retail developer Milligan  (“..creates places where people like to shop”) in cooperation with the UK’s Technology Strategy Board.

According to Robin Daniels, Living PlanIt’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, the project’s goal is all-encompassing:

“Everything that’s uncomfortable, inconvenient or just a pain in the neck about traveling, we’re trying to turn into a more pleasurable experience,”

Among other services, the “The Living PlanIT Urban Operating System™” will:

  • track passengers through facial recognition and crowd-sourcing software plus GPS
  • automatically deliver food to people who pre-order food online or through their smartphone
  • let someone who pre-booked a taxi step right into it
  • track luggage in real-time (if someone misses their flight, their bag won’t be loaded).
  • retailers in the terminal  “will use a combination of cameras and sensors to monitor buyer behavior and to get a better sense of what types of displays work. They will also be able to offer shoppers customized offers based on previous purchases.”

The system will observe privacy concerns by making the services opt-in.  However, Evangeis Ouzounis, the head of the secure infrastructure and services unit at the European Network and Information Security Agency, worries about possible vulnerability to hackers:

“They might jam a smart device to make systems not available in the airport, or play with the bar code of flight tickets, so that you can have access to a space you shouldn’t have access to.”

I don’t know about you, but I find flying post 9/11 to be the most stressful activity imaginable. If there are adequate security and privacy protections in place, I’d gladly opt-in for IoT services!

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Woot! You can finally buy my books directly from my site!

Posted on 3rd May 2013 in Uncategorized

I just found a WordPress plug-in (Buy This Book — thank you!) that allows a direct link to Amazon, iBooks, etc. so that you can now buy both my books, SmartStuff: an introduction to the Internet of Things, and Data Dynamite: how liberating data will transform our world, directly from this site.

Buy away!

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Meeting Usman Haque: a shared vision for the IoT

Posted on 3rd May 2013 in cities, government, Internet of Things

We had our second successful Boston/New England IoT Meetup last night, with some great speakers (more about them later). Thanks to my co-organizer, Chris Rezendes of INEX Advisors, for putting together a great program!

For me, the high point was getting to meet one of the IoT’s real pioneers: Usman Haque, who created Pachube, now Cosm, Ltd. By creating this

Usman Haque

easy-to-use, affordable platform to connect devices and apps to securely store and exchange data, he made it possible for solo IoT innovators and start-up companies to offer viable IoT services without major investments in infrastructure. Bravo!

Haque told me that he is now concentrating on “urban projects” for Cosm. While he wouldn’t be more specific at this point, he did say that he’s working with New York City Digital on some new services.

Since the time when I worked with former US CIO Vivek Kundra when he was pioneering urban data access as the CTO for the District of Columbia, I’ve been a huge fan of the work going on in cities such as New York, Washington, San Francisco, Vancouver, and right here in the Hub, with the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics. It seems to me that the way these cities are not only creating their own digital services, but also making their data freely available to citizen-hackers using open standards and engaging in both collaboration and friendly competition building upon each other’s innovations is in many ways ahead of what the private sector is doing (I wrote upon this phenomenon at length in my book Data Dynamite).

Our chat revealed that we share a vision for the future of “smart cities”: while companies such as IBM are doing some important work, what makes great cities isn’t just making things such as transportation function more efficiently. What really makes great cities is the way they bring together innovators who bump into each other, talk, and cross-fertilize each other’s ideas. This bottoms-up fermentation, facilitated by sharing mechanisms such as Cosm, leads to real progress and innovation. Let 1,000 apps bloom!

Thanks, Usman, for both the inspiration and the tools to make great cities.

PS: His girlfriend, Natalie Jeremijenko, is doing some pretty cool environmental stuff — my other passion, especially when it is base on “citizen science”

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survey: M2M natural evolution of “consumerization of IT”

Posted on 1st May 2013 in government, Internet of Things, management, transportation

A new survey of worldwide IT decision makers (ITDMs as the acronym goes…) by Harris Interactive for SAP includes some pretty convincing reminders that the Internet of Things (in this case the emphasis is on M2M) is as much about empowering people as it is about things.

“..most ITDMs in all six countries view M2M as the natural evolution of the ‘consumerization of IT,’ with India and China at 92 percent and 90 percent respectively. The majority of Brazilian, German, UK and US ITDMs agreed, with a combined average of 81 percent.”

A lot of mobile devices are changing everything!

A quote from Sanjay Poonen, president of SAP’s Technology Solutions and Mobile Division, neatly ties the technology and human elements together:

“Today, M2M technology is primarily being used to collect vast amounts of machine data. The ‘Internet of Things’ goes one step further by integrating data from machines, ERP, CRM systems, social media and more, in real time, allowing humans to intelligently interact with devices, devices with devices and devices back to humans – the ultimate social media collaboration of man and machine.” (I spared you the self-serving conclusion: that SAP is uniquely qualified to bring all this together..LOL.).

Other important findings include:

  • “pluralities from all six countries surveyed said that smart cities would be the coolest (now there’s a technical term…)  possible outcome of M2M: China (35 percent), Brazil (35 percent), Germany (30 percent), India (27 percent), US (25 percent) and UK (21 percent).” Come on, US
    “ITDMs”: only 25% of you agree??
  • “…an average of 70 percent of the ITDMs in all six countries surveyed agree that companies that fail to implement M2M technologies will fall behind their competitors.”
  • Companies  will gain more insight into their business: China (96 percent), India (88 percent), Brazil (86 percent), Germany (79 percent), US (74 percent) and UK (61 percent)
  • Businesses will be able to respond to real world events: China (92 percent), India (86 percent), Brazil (82 percent), Germany (82 percent), US (78 percent) and UK (73 percent)

“Those surveyed also view the following as presenting the biggest opportunities for M2M in the workplace:

  • Increased efficiency was the No. 1 response in Brazil (54 percent), UK (53 percent) and US (49 percent)
  • Increased productivity for employees was the top selection in China (69 percent), significantly higher than any other countries surveyed
  • Increased employee collaboration was the No. 1 opportunity in Germany (63 percent)
  • Increased mobility among the workforce was the biggest opportunity in India (65 percent).”

I cast my lot with the Germans: while efficiency and productivity will definitely improve, I think the real hidden bonus of M2M in the workplace will be how collaboration will increase when everyone can share the same near-real-time data!

At the same time, the respondents said there were significant obstacles to full use of M2M. As Poonen summarized:

“The benefits of M2M are undeniable but there are barriers toward the adoption of M2M solutions, such as the lack of complete multi-industry offerings, management, security and big data issues, and deficiency of suitable global connectivity solutions that are needed by multinational enterprises.”

This survey is yet more evidence, as if we needed it, that the Internet of Things is finally rising in corporate awareness — or at least among those “ITDMs!” Now the question is how many of their employers will begin to craft IoT action plans.

 

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IBM’s MessageSight — mastering IoT’s huge data volumes

Posted on 30th April 2013 in automotive, Internet of Things, mobile

The good thing about the Internet of Things is that it will give us unprecedented amounts of real-time data: IMS Research predicts the “… more than 22 billion web-connected devices by 2020… will generate more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data every day.”

The bad thing about the Internet of Things is that it will give us unprecedented amounts of real-time data: how can we possibly process it, let alone reduce it to manageable, intelligible (remember the “Wisdom Pyramid?” — just accumulating data isn’t the goal: it’s turning it into actionable wisdom) information?

Now IBM has introduced a critical tool to help deal with that volume of data: the MessageSight appliance.

It uses another important new breakthrough, the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), the proposed lightweight open standard for M2M communication (more about that in a future post).

MessageSight is designed specifically to handle the explosion in mobile computing devices. It can support one million concurrent sensors or smart devices and can scale up to thirteen million messages per second.  Wow!

“’When we launched our Smarter Planet strategy nearly five years ago, our strategic belief was that the world was going to be profoundly changed as it became more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. IBM MessageSight is a major technological step forward in continuing that strategy,’ said Marie Wieck, general manager, WebSphere, IBM.  ‘Until now, no technology has been able to handle this volume of messages and devices. What’s even more exciting is that this only scratches the surface of what’s to come as we continue down this path of a Smarter Planet.’”

IBM cites a possible application in the auto industry:

“For instance, an automotive manufacturer can use IBM MessageSight to help manage the features and services of its automobiles. With thousands of sensors in each car, a dealer can now be notified when a ‘check engine’ light turns on in a specific car. Based on the information transmitted by the engine sensor, the dealer could then notify the owner that there is a critical problem and they should get their car serviced immediately.”

MessageSight is part of IBM’s MobileFirst package of mobile enterprise software, services, cloud and analytics capabilities. The company claims:

“IBM’s MobileFirst platform is the first in the industry to speed the process of building apps by enabling companies to seamlessly integrate analytics and capture the complete on-device experience of how customers are using apps, including insight into gestures, dwell time and navigation.”

Among its features, MobileFirst now offers geo-location services:  “geo-location triggers can be used to extend applications to take contextual action based on a user’s location to provide personalized service.” It also offers cloud services for mobile.

“According to IDC, the market for mobile enterprise infrastructure software and services was $14.5 billion in 2012, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 16.3%. IDC expects this market to reach $30.9 billion in 2016.”

I’ve long believed that IBM is THE leader in the Internet of Things, particularly given the tangible results its Smarter Cities programs have achieved (BTW, regarding my post yesterday about government getting up-to-speed on the IoT, the Obama Administration would do well to look at Smarter Cities as an operating manual…). MessageSight should cement that lead in the technology field!

 

 

 

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