At the Sapphire conference of software giant SAP in May, there was a demonstration of a sensor-equipped power tool being used to drill a hole in a thin panel of concrete. When the job was finished, the drill communicated with the company's financial software. It reported the cost of the job and application was ready to spit out an invoice.Anyone who has barely caught the meaning of the phrase "Internet of Things" might want to pause a minute. While much of the accounting market is still grappling with the impact of the cloud and social media, the next bigs things in technology are already moving rapidly.
These include artificial intelligence, Bots, machine learning, which all tie together in making IoT, part of a new industrial revolution. IoT is very simply machines and devices equipped with sensors that enable data to be communicted via the Internet.
"The revolution is already underway," said Microsoft's Jasmeet Bhatia said during a session at Epicor's recent Insights conference. "The technology is really main stream. It is everywhere."
Bhatia carries the title cloud solution architect/IoT, big data and advanced analytics strategy advisor.
For anyone who thought of IoT as kitchen appliances that talk to each other and can be controlled remotely by a homeowner, the more important applications that are catching fire are in manufacturing.
Bhatia asked his audience of about 50 manufacturing attendees how many were from companies that use some IoT technology, only a handful raised their hands. Asked how many believed they will be utilizing it within two years, virtually every hand went up.
Bhatia rattled off a list of applications. In Japan, a Kobe beef farm is using sensors to track the body temperature of cattle, along with other critical information. One hospital has devices to monitor patients, communicating pulse, oxygen and mood back to doctors. A display used by Bhatia showed a sample case in which the patient is tweeting in aggravation about traffic while the monitoring showed its impact on his vital signs, including a chart displaying his heart-rate in real time.
For anyone who wonders about the big data component of Bhatia title, that also ties into the use of sensors to report data. For those outside of the computer industry and the terms that are tossed around with ease, big data represents the growing deluge of data generated by computerized devices which can be turned into an understanding of what the data can reveal beyond anything people can do by themselves if the data can be analyzed.
At the same conference, Steve Edginton, Epicor's senior director of development, gave an earlier keynote "display" of the use of a sensor-equipped machine—actually a schematic of a generalized machine.
Edginton noted that monitoring fuel use was one of the important tasks "When the fuel goes below a certain level, a light goes green to red, it will send message into cloud," he said.
For a company with a contracted fuel supplier, that message will trigger a service call to the supplier and generate all of the paperwork needed to complete the order and purchase.
Sensors can measure machine temperature, and vibration and noise levels. They can supply data that will enable computers to predict machines failure, which Bhattia noted can be used to take equipment offline for maintenance.
Bhattia also used the session to promote Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform. The Azure IoT Hub, he said, can support from a handful of devices or up to 10 million with no problem. He also noted that a system could easily generate 10 million messages a day as sensors report in.
One barrier to more rapid expansion is the wide range of existing devices, which are not compatible. "There is no one standard for communication," Bhattia said
Agreeing the IoT market is in the "Betamax versus VHS stage", Himanshu Palsule, Epicor's chief technology officer, said he expects the standards issue to be settlement within a year.
