Preparing for the future

  • August 25, 2022
  • Steve Rogerson

Steve Rogerson looks at how next month’s IMC IoT Days Fall conference can help lay the foundations for an exciting decade.

I think I have been lucky. In the well over sixty years since I was born, the technology world has transformed in unbelievable ways. The pace of change at times has been breath-taking. And it is showing no signs of slowing down.

Today, it is the likes of artificial intelligence (AI) and, of course, the IoT that are at the forefront of developments, especially the combination of the two that is seeing increasing intelligence in edge devices. That alone will produce applications that are beyond the imagination of most of us.

Given that, I should not have been surprised to read the open line of the introductory blurb for the keynote speech of the IMC’s IoT Days Fall online event from September 21 to 22. The focus is on IoT use cases and the keynote will be given by Romil Bahl, CEO of KORE. That opening sentence reads: “The next decade is going to be one of the most transformative periods of technology development and utilisation the world has ever seen.”

After what has gone before, if that is true, we will all need to hold onto our seats. Bahl said the stage was perfectly set to see a convergence of emerging technologies that would affect myriad industries. However, he warned that if the IoT ecosystem was not crafted with the proper building blocks then even the best of ideas could fail.

That leads on nicely to the first of the conference panels that asks what is needed for a successful IoT project. This session will look specifically at those things that increase RoI and reduce time to deployment. We will get to hear about use cases and success stories from various applications.

Robin Duke-Woolley, CEO of Beecham Research, will be moderating the panel that will include Losant director Brian Cerchio, Vodafone vice president Erik Kling and Quectel senior vice president Dominikus Hierl. I am particularly keen to hear the spotlight presentations from John D’Angelo, CEO of RevX Systems, and Jim Engleson, director at Fibocom.

What has and is changing are the number of connectivity options facing manufacturers and designers. These have expanded to allow for customised performance in terms of bandwidth, latency, coverage and cost. This will be the subject of the second panel that will be led by Axel Sikora, chairman of the world’s largest embedded event – Embedded World in Nuremberg, an event at which I am a regular attendee, and not just for the German beer.

The panel will look at how new forms of connectivity are affecting the embedded design process, and discuss how the embedded and IoT marketplaces are moving closer together. He will be joined on the panel by Dejan Rasuo, a director at Tata Communications.

One of the most pressing concerns with any IoT deployment is security, and that will be the focus for the second day of the event, which will open with a panel on best practices for security and privacy from the device, through the network, and into the cloud. Real-world problems will be discussed by Drew Johnson from Aeris and Enrico Milanese from Telit.

The threat landscape in IoT is broad with many opportunities for breaches, attacks or takeovers. Because of the complexity and size of IoT deployments, comprehensive management of security can feel unobtainable, but Chris Francosky, chief information officer at KORE, will explain how it can be simplified. In his presentation, you’ll learn about the current state of cyber security and how to secure pivotal areas.

The security also has to be implemented from end to end, from the device through the network up to the cloud. This will be tackled in the final session by Khuong Hoang Nguyen Quan, senior product manager from BICS, who will also cover how connectivity data can help users create value and address specific use cases.

If we are going to achieve the vision of the next decade being the most transformative yet, then Bahl is right, we are going to need those building blocks from connectivity to security. So tune in next month and find out how to prepare the ground for an exciting future. You can register here.