Industrial markets offer greatest potential for IoT technologies
Industrial, not consumer-focused applications such as wearables, will be the markets with most potential for Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, says Rahman Jamal, Global Technology and Marketing Director of technology solutions company National Instruments. Speaking at the recent NIDays technology conference in London, Jamal suggested that 75% of the engineering community will be impacted by industrial IoT in areas including renewable energy, smart factories and smart cities. He also spoke of a future 'real fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0' where 'true productivity will come from the collaboration of the Internet of Things, business analytics, the internet of services and the social media'.

Industrial applications and not consumer applications such as wearables will become the markets with the largest potential for IoT technologies, says Rahman Jamal, global technology and marketing director, National Instruments.

“I believe that 75% of engineers will be impacted by industrial IoT,” said Jamal.

Industrial IoT will include smart power grids, smart factories and smart cities.









“Industrial applications represent the markets with the highest potential for IoT products and services,” said Jamal, speaking at the NIDays technology conference in London last week.

According to Jamal, industrial IoT is emerging as the key area for the global markets in Asia as well as Europe.

“In Germany it is called Industry 4.0 but in Japan for example the same IoT applications are part of the Industry Value Chain Initiative,” said Jamal.

Even in South Korea, where Samsung has given early moves into IoT a distinctly consumer bias, Jamal sees a growing interest in applying IoT to industrial applications.

India has an industrial IoT initiative, called “Make in India”, to encourage the building of smart factories by global companies in the country.

Industrial IoT will differ from the consumer-focused IoT applications, such wearables, in specific aspects of the technology. It will require greater embedded processing capabilities, at what Jamal refers to as “smart edge architecture”.

It will also involve the implementation of industrial communications protocols such as fieldbus and Ethernet in addition to the wireless technologies typically associated with IoT.

It will involve real-time system responsiveness to maintain timing and synchronisation across a so-called time sensitive network (TSN).

The growing importance of industrial IoT to the electronics industry is that the likes of Intel and Cisco have joined Bosch, General Electric, IBM in the Industrial Internet Consortium.

“Eventually, true productivity will come from the collaboration of the internet of things, business analytics, the internet of services and the social media. And only when all these areas seamlessly work together can we talk of a real fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0,” said Jamal.