Internet of Things

The power behind decisions

july 2014

Internet of things

"The sink doesn’t have a clue what it’s talking about. I agree with the fridge"

INSIDE

The schoolboy whose idea was sold to Yahoo! for $30m Exclusive interview with Nick D’Aloisio | Pages 8-9

Distributed within the SUNDAY Telegraph, produced and published by Lyonsdown which takes sole responsibility for the contents

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

Business Technology July 2014

2 | Internet of things

Opening shots Shane Richmond

T

he first time your fridge texts you a reminder to pick up some milk on the way home you might feel affronted that an appliance is bossing you about – or perhaps you will be pleased to have saved a rush to the shop in the morning.

The internet-connected fridge has been a classic example of the internet of things (IoT) for more than a decade, and it has also become something of a joke. Recently it has been joined by internet-connected washing machines, so at least if you get fed up with text messages saying that the laundry is done you can always give your washing machine the fridge’s number instead.

There are examples with more obvious benefits.

A manufacturer of industrial parts could improve its supply chain by tracking raw materials coming in and individual parts going out. Then those parts, fitted to a car, say, could continue to send data to the manufacturer to measure performance, signal when a replacement is necessary and be tracked through the recycling process.

Once it is cheap and simple to connect everyday objects to the internet we will see previously complicated processes simplified. Bus stops and railway stations have long had indicators that say when the next service is due; soon we will know how many seats are free. We’re used to wearable fitness trackers that help us measure our activity, but in future hip replacements could contain sensors to monitor performance and smart pills

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Make sure your systems protect your data as well as the privacy of your employees will contain sensors that monitor vital signs after we have swallowed them.

The rate of change will be breathtaking – far outstripping any technological change that we have ever seen. By 2020, according to Cisco, there will be 50 billion internet-connected devices. To put that in perspective, it’s likely that there will be fewer than eight billion people on the planet by then. That’s more than six internet-connected devices for every human being, and that ratio will increase.

This flood of sensors and trackers will connect our homes, of course, and not just the fridges and the washing machines but our thermostats, smoke alarms, door locks, burglar alarms, boilers and pretty much anything else you can think of.

The change in business will be just as extensive.

Think about your business and the areas that are opaque or full of friction. Could sensors provide more information on key processes? Would Twitter: @ tracking help to simplify your activities? Can shanerichmond

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New players need to be aware of IoT security risks Companies are increasingly developing products to gain a foothold in the internet of things (IoT) market, according to studies. But with these opportunities come security risks that firms need to be aware of.

Earlier this year, security outfit Proofpoint successfully hacked into a fridge, subsequently issuing a warning that every device that is connected to the internet – from smart thermostats and microwaves to gaming consoles – could be subject to attacks.

Ross Anderson (right), head of cryptography at Cambridge University, says: “You have seen all sorts of new stuff being invented, like Fitbits and watches going digital. This is the way that technology is going. The big picture is it is going to make industry much more like the software sector, because it creates the same kind of network effect. That means you have the good, the bad and the ugly. The good is you get platforms for innovation. The guys who founded

YouTube managed to make it a billion-dollar company in a year simply because there were already hundreds of millions of people who had PCs connected to broadband. All you needed to do was develop a website that would enable you to stream videos.

“The bad things that can happen are that you can get monopolies; the ugly things that can happen are that you can get

everything from malware to surveillance getting into more areas of your life. Devices people interact with use touch, gesture or voice interfaces, which means they have microphones and cameras in them. People are building things without any thought to security. If a company does not have someone on board that understands this stuff, then they have no chance.”

Cisco predicts 50bn devices by 2020

IoT devices help you to serve your customers better? But remember, this is the internet of things: people, even staff, tend to object to being tracked but objects neither know nor care.

While you plan it is important to keep in mind two things. First, security. If you can track things and extract data from them then, in certain circumstances, so can hackers. That could be as serious as someone disabling a self-driving vehicle or as subtle as an unscrupulous rival monitoring your shipments. You need to make sure that your systems protect your data, as well as respecting the privacy of your employees.

Second, you need systems in place to handle the data that you are gathering. Companies already ignore much of the information they create every day. There’s no point setting up an IoT workflow without a plan to store and analyse the data.

Just don’t expect anyone to be impressed if your only plan is to connect the canteen fridge to the internet.

By Joanne Frearson

The Internet of things (IoT) enables devices to communicate to each other without human interaction. Integrated networks of sensors and embedded systems are being incorporated into all types of devices, from household appliances to transport networks and medical devices, to make our daily lives more efficient.

Cisco is predicting there will be 25 billion devices connected to the internet by 2015 and 50 billion by 2020. In the UK, the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) is helping companies get ahead in IoT through investing in projects as well as creating a standard of best practices called HyperCat. Nick Appleyard, head of digital at the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), says: “We have been investing over the past two to three years in this area and we have up to £8.5million worth of commitment in the technology area of IoT and a lot more into the application spaces which feed into that. A lot of the businesses we are talking to are saying that they need it in order to run their business.”

An area in which they have seen a lot of interest for IoT is transport. Appleyard says:

“By having grid information about what the trains, buses, cars and planes are doing you can run a better transport system. How are you going to get all that information? You get it by instrumenting things – by putting sensors on them, by putting communication capabilities into them, linking them through satellites, and wireless grids which connect to people’s mobile phones.

“We are not just talking about traffic management here, but also things like road maintenance and logistics, moving goods and things around. Anything to do with moving goods around can be made to work more efficiently and more securely for the people who are part of that as well.”

Other projects TSB has been involved in include IoT in the school environment. Andrew Tyrer, lead specialist at the TSB, says: “We also had some things looking at the school environment by monitoring pollution outside the school – how you do not only use that for the benefit of the school and the individual, but also use it as a teaching aid.”

According to Tyrer, it is all about repurposing data. He says: “A lot of data is collected – for example, measuring temperature or pollution. That is fine for the people who want

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to monitor it for regulation purposes, but you can use that in so many different ways if you think about other business models.”

T h r oug h t he va r iou s investment projects it has funded, the TSB has been developing the HyperCat standard. Appleyard says: “The challenge is to get all of that data to move from one system to another so it can be shared and repurposed. That is what HyperCat is about. Essentially it is an index of where all the data is.

“A machine says, I want to know about temperature in this town, how am I going to find that out? It can look into the HyperCat indexing system and

find out where the temperature centres are within this town and pull out that data automatically without a person having to intervene. We are automating the communication between different places. A lot of the smaller companies as well as the bigger guys like BT and IBM have already shown interest in what we are doing. It opens up opportunities for so many companies.”

Appleyard believes standardisation is important as without it there will be a lot of different IoT systems separately established that cannot work with each other.

With investment and standards being developed, it looks like the IoT will continue to grow.

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

Business Technology July 2014

ExpertInsight

ExpertInsight

4 | Internet of things

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The IoT is here – and it’s transforming the way we live It can even reduce supermarket queues!

INDUSTRY VIEW

T

he IoT is already having a transformative impact on businesses globally. It has enabled the development of new services and revenue streams, saved costs, and improved operational efficiency. This is not a surprise – there is huge value in adding intelligence to assets and leveraging deployed sensors.

Businesses thrive on data and by feeding machine data into enterprise systems, organisations can better understand their businesses and customers, and can apply real-time changes accordingly.

Cambridge-headquartered Arkessa is applying IoT across many sectors globally, with numerous examples that demonstrate the benefits of IoT. Its application needn’t be complex – simply counting people entering a store and predicting the effect on the store temperature saves energy. The power of IoT means that once installed, people counters can be used for many other applications: predicting checkout queues, understanding the effect of external influences like the weather on footfall,

even helping plan cleaning schedules.

The potential applications for the IoT are limitless. The technology can be applied across all sectors, with particular adoption in manufacturing, energy and utilities, health and transport infrastructure.

Another example is the way IoT is being used to improve journey planning.

Combining traffic flow, social media, weather and special event information and applying sophisticated analytics enables accurate journey predictions, thus encouraging drivers to delay journeys or to use public transport.

Applying IoT to asset management enables organisations to better predict maintenance requirements and save

energy. Smart refuse lorries can report parameters including load weight, wear, location and driver behaviour. This can be correlated with other data feeds to enable different applications such as optimising routes and collections.

Given that IoT is already transforming businesses, why aren’t more organisations embracing it? Andrew Orrock, CEO of Arkessa, says the explanation is simple.

“Although IoT is now being more widely adopted, it is still new to many organisations. CIOs and their teams are only now starting to realise the potential of connecting to and getting data from the plethora of IoT devices, whether new or already deployed,” he says.

Organisations want to be able to use their enterprise systems and big data platforms, and hence need solutions that reduce the complexities of connecting to devices. “Once we explain to organisations that we have a platform which makes it easy to connect to and manage the disparate range of IoT devices they are delighted,” adds Orrock. “By providing a unified data set, security and robust device management, we significantly boost time to market and free up the IT teams to build on this value for their business.”

As early machine-to-machine (M2M) and IoT pioneers, the Arkessa team should know, as they have been helping customers connect devices since 2002. “Some of our customers manage hundreds of thousands of devices and rely on Arkessa to securely and reliably connect these to their enterprise systems. They recognise that succesfully accessing data equates to real business value,” says Orrock. “We’re passionate about helping businesses to exploit opportunities by leveraging M2M and IoT technology. In this connected age, we should be really proud that the UK is at the leading edge of IoT innovation.” +44 (0)1279 799270 www.arkessa.com

How the IoT allows firms to create more innovative services INDUSTRY VIEW

T

he internet of things (IoT) is an enabler for business. It can help data to be used across organisations and make businesses more efficient and productive. IoT services can provide a rich source of data for advanced analytics, big data applications and enhanced mobile solutions. Through this, businesses can really start to benefit from these technologies and see operational changes which help the organisation as a whole.

John Hicklin, principal telecommunications consultant at CGI, says: “IoT platforms enable you to release data from discrete applications, allowing the information to be used right across the organisation.”

CGI believes these technologies can be utilised across multiple sectors. One of the examples is in the manufacturing sector, where CGI have recently completed a project with ThyssenKrupp Elevator, one of the world’s leading elevator manufacturers, to use big data and trend analysis to reduce costs of operations and improve safety. It maintains more than 1.1 million elevators worldwide, including those at some of the world’s most iconic buildings.

ThyssenKrupp wanted to gain a competitive edge by focusing on what matters most to their customers in buildings the world over: reliability.

Drawing on the potential of the internet of things by connecting their elevators to the cloud, gathering data from their sensors and systems, and transforming that into valuable business intelligence, ThyssenKrupp is vastly improving operations and offering something their competitors do not: “We wanted to go beyond the industry standard of preventative maintenance, to offer predictive and even preemptive maintenance,” says Andreas Schierenbeck, ThyssenKrupp Elevator CEO, “so we can guarantee a higher uptime percentage on our elevators.”

“If you start to know how your escalator or elevator is working better, then this data can be fed back into the operation and enhance the customer experience by predictive and then proactive analytics as well as deliver operational efficiency. This can change how you can deal with your customers.

It allows the manufacturer to have a closer relationship with their end users.

When you start to free up the data, you do start to empower your staff.”

CGI used Microsoft’s Azure-based Intelligence Systems Service (ISS) platform which helps enterprises embrace the IoT by securely connecting, managing and capturing machine-generated data from a variety of sensors and devices.

Hicklin says: “By using ISS we were able to simplify deployment and open up the possibilities of new intelligence and insight from the data. Once you have the data you can move away from slow decision-making processes and you get information coming into your organisation in near real-time.”

Any industry which has a reliance on a large numbers of devices, such as aviation, space and defence, manufacturing, retail, telco, healthcare or utilities, can use the IoT to make their business more efficient. IoT allows firms to create more innovative services that can impact clients.

It enables operational efficiencies in organisations and can improve customer service and loyalty.

To find out more, call Carl Vaughan on +44 (0)7919 227028 or visit www.cgi-group.co.uk/solutions/ internet-of-things

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The inner geek

Business Technology

Can you program this thing to laugh at my jokes?

Aiming to be an industry reference across Europe INDUSTRY VIEW

Moz & Bradders

Government champions IoT with new legislation

By Joanne Frearson The UK government is beginning to step up its game when it comes to the IoT. A new Digital Government Review – Digital Britain 2015 – plans to look at how technology can improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of peoplepowered public services.

Chi Onwurah, Labour’s shadow Cabinet Office minister who is leading the review, explains to Business Reporter how it will help develop a framework for powering digital government and put citizens in control of their relationship with government and their own data.

“The IoT will probably give rise to the biggest transformation to the way we live since electricity,” says Onwurah, the first MP to mention IoT in Parliament in a debate in 2011. “It is enabling on a household level and it gives a lot of opportunities to people to be able to control and improve their lives.

“The reason why it is comparable to electricity is because when electricity first came out it enabled people in the home – you first got washing machines and fridges, which saved people time and allowed people to use so much more food. There will be more time in everybody’s lives because all the boring stuff can be done by clever computers and machines.”

Onwurah cites the technology company Nest, which believes that in America it will be able to save people 30 per cent on energy bills through smart devices. “The opportunities there are absolutely huge. If everyone in the UK reduces their energy consumption by 20 per cent, that will have a major economic, social and climatic benefit.”

But the public sector is some way behind when it comes to the IoT and digital technology. One of the reasons why t he government review was l au nc he d w a s to

The Digital Britain review, spearheaded by Chi Onwurah (below), is designed to get the government up to speed on IoT technology

address this issue. Onwurah says: “We are lagging five to ten years behind the private sector services. We have not had the impact we have seen on music sales, travel agents… all those industries that have been hugely impacted by digital – that has not happened in public sectors.

“The government has to use IoT in the interest of people. For example, would it be possible to have a truly integrated public transport system to [reflect] what citizens want at any particular time? Buses that stop when you want them to, where you want them to, but that don’t stop if you are not there.

That is saving in terms of fuel and in terms of efficiency.”

O n w u r a h believes that the

government also needs to take leadership on introducing more internet addresses for the IoT. Internet protocol addresses (IPs) are unique identifying numbers for a computer and dictate how machines talk to each other.

The majority of existing networks, including the government’s, use IP version four, but this is reaching the end of its natural life – primarily due to the limited size of its address space, which is no longer sufficient to support the existing, and anticipated, rates of network growth and exploitation. This needs to be updated to IP version six in order for the system to tackle the growth of IoT. Onwurah is calling for a public debate on the internet of things, as people need to understand where to overcome the dangers and what the opportunities and challenges are.

“As part of that we need real examples of how people’s lives are going to be made better by it,” says Onwurah, who is also the shadow minister for digital government and cyber security. “We need some example of the upside, such as fully integrated transport systems and street lights that tell the council when they are not working when, so you do not need to.

“We also need them to be designed with security in mind from the word go.

They need to be offensively designed to guard against attack as cyber criminals are always going to try and leapfrog technology.”

The IoT is designed to help make people’s lives easier and empower the public, and hopefully the review will help the government prepare for the changes that technology is bringing.

The internet has changed the way users see services.

Consumers expect access from anywhere, at any time and on any device, PC or mobile, with updates in real time.

Instead of seeing an opportunity to strengthen bonds with customers and increase average revenue per user (ARPU), many providers perceive this move toward constant and ubiquitous connectivity as a threat. They believe the technologies needed to evolve their services are too expensive or limited to large companies in the communications sphere.

In answer to this, we at Net4Things have developed a technology to make it easy, fast and inexpensive for these firms to take their products to the next level. We create security, connected home, energy efficiency, and location-based applications, including tele-assistance, for web and mobile that can be customised to the brand of each provider.

Our cloud solution ensures quick time to market and our pay-peruse business model helps avoid large investments, reducing the economic risk associated with the launch of a new service.

We believe in open technologies and apply this philosophy to our value proposition. We constantly look to device manufacturers who can help us expand our offering and innovate. Among them, we are proud to work with Ericsson, one of the world’s leading telecommunications providers. Ericsson currently integrates Net4Things solutions for operators, utilities and large insurance groups.

Net4Things was founded in 2011 with an international scope. Currently the market leader in Spain, our priority is to become an industry reference across Europe by 2015 and to continue growth into Latin America. www.net4things.com

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Business Technology July 2014

6 | Internet of things

VIEW

By Keil Hubert

ExpertInsight

The subject of the security risks inherent in the internet of things came up over breakfast a few weeks back. Other families talk about sport or politics; we chat about risks and countermeasures because we’re a family of nerds.

I explained to my eldest how Network Address Translation works. We have a broadband router that connects to our neighbourhood’s cable television network.

The broadband router has a legitimate IP address and can be found by anyone on Earth. Behind that, we have our hardware firewall that presents only one host ID to the internet. Our firewall NATs everything behind it, giving each IP-addressable device its own unique network address.

In order to make my point, I had my eldest log into our broadband router and review its NAT table. He was surprised to see how many reservations there were, so we tracked every address back to a specific device. He identified his laptop, the PlayStation, his iPhone, the printer, and so on. Finally, we came to an entry that he couldn’t place at all… It took him nearly half an hour and a bunch of clues to associate the mystery address with our programmable thermostat.

Here in Texas, we participate in a programme where our private electricity company is allowed to turn off our aircon during peak demand for ten minutes every hour.

In exchange, we get a much lower rate for electricity all year round. It’s a great idea… and it’s also a potential

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Dangers of the modern world: getting mugged by your appliances security threat because we have zero control over the security settings on our networked thermostat.

Everything else in the house is managed according to cyber-defence best practices: all computers are actively managed for patches, have top-rated anti-virus applications installed, have software firewalls configured, and so on.

The firewall’s firmware is updated immediately when patches become available, and its logs are emailed to me for review. Every device gets backed up regularly to up to two different sources. We pay attention to industry advisories about new vulnerabilities and ensure that we implement best-practice countermeasures immediately if we have a vulnerable piece of kit in the house.

Despite our best effort, though, there are factors that we just can’t control. I showed my son where one of his friends visited the house and was allowed to connect to the family Wi-Fi network. We can’t be sure whether Bob was dutifully patching his phone like he should unless we demand to inspect it.

That is, at least, an option (although not a polite one). Our thermostat, though, lives in our house inside our defensive perimeter all day every day, and remains a “black box” to us. We can’t inspect it. We can’t patch it. Our

thermostat is controlled by our electric company’s servers, and w e c a n ’t inspect or cont rol them, either.

This is the inescapable security problem posed by the internet of things: every device inside your home perimeter is a potentially invisible (and often unmitigatable) security risk. Your smart TV and programmable toaster are running minimalist operating systems. They connect to the internet, and can speak to all of their neighbours on the home network. Any device may, at any moment, have unrealised technical vulnerabilities … and you don’t know about them. Any innocuous consumer appliance can become a pivot point for an external attacker. A baddie can compromise your networked clothes dryer, and then use it to attack all of your other devices from inside your house.

I predict that consumers will need to learn how to engineer their home networks to include a business-grade demilitarized zone between two different firewalls, just to protect themselves from their own smart appliances.

Oh I say!

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How sensors on Babolat’s new racquet help players find the sweet spot

Simplifying the complex Providing high resilience coupled with expert technical support in IoT and M2M INDUSTRY VIEW

F

ar from the common belief, cellular, satellite and low-power radio network (LPRN) wireless connectivity is far from simple or ubiquitous. Inherent to each are complexities, typically comprising significant variations in backhaul infrastructure design, connectivity management platforms, tariffing and technical support resources.

Nigel Chadwick (left), CEO of Stream Technologies, says: “Potential customers at the outset often believe that the best service and tariffs they are going to obtain will be from a mobile network operator (MNO) direct.

“They overlook the point that MNOs can only provide services on their own single network, a restricted range of tariffs, no special private APN or backhaul infrastructure designed for IoT and often only a very

limited management platform to manage their SIM connections. It is primarily such factors that combine to create immense challenges for enterprise clients that seek to scale their volumes of connected devices over different regions in the UK and indeed, geographies worldwide” With this in mind, since its formation in 2000, UK-based Stream Technologies has evolved as a world leader in providing all main types of wireless connectivity for IoT, agnostic towards telco carrier brands. Its focus has been to provide the IoT sector with wireless connectivity in GPRS, 3G, 4G, satellite and LPRN that ensures a consistent enterprise grade of delivery in the key aspects demanded by IoT device manufacturers, system integrators and solution providers, specifically: • Security and resilience of end-to-end data transfer • Ease in management of wireless connectivity • Experienced and helpful technical support • Global provision of services from a single supplier The security and resilience of network services have a critical impact on the reliability and control of transferring data from A to B, which is central to IoT and M2M. Network infrastructure should ideally incorporate an N+1 resilient architecture and packet loss mitigation technology to improve the efficiency of IP traffic over the wireless network. Combining leading-edge innovations

such as these with a management platform that has been designed with the demands of the end customer in mind will make management of data flows significantly more reliable and easier to manage.

Specifically, wireless connectivity management platforms need to incorporate monitoring tools, analytics, alarming and graphical visualisation options if tens or hundreds of thousands of connections are going to be managed and the associated risks minimised. The ability to manage all connections, irrespective of carrier network type or brand, from a single user interface, is emerging as a key priority in the demands of IoT enterprise clients.

Stream is experiencing high levels of interest in its range of wireless technologies from a broad range of companies, working across a diversity of IoT sectors.

High growth is currently being experienced in those sectors that seek high resilience, coupled with expert technical support – typically smartmetering, insurance telematics, digital signage, CCTV and telemetry solutions.

Stream Technologies, with offices in Canary Wharf, San Jose, Vancouver and Glasgow, and shortly to include New York, provides wireless connectivity internationally for M2M and IoT. +44 (0) 844 800 8520 www.stream-technologies.com www.IoT-X.com

Joanne Frearson pulls on her tennis kit to test the game’s newest technology

T

he last time I played tennis was with my sister and her two children, both in primary school.

I bought my niece and nephew a tennis racquet each as a Christmas present, and we decided to test them out.

I’m only a novice at the game and it was a hard slog running around a court keeping pace with a nine and an 11-year-old. But my game could be set to improve, as I am about to test out the new Babolat Play Pure Drive.

The Babolat Play Pure Drive is no ordinary racquet, but the world’s first connected one.

It comes with sensors built into the handle, which give the user feedback on how they are performing.

Launched in the US last December, the Play Pure Drive has been used by some of the tennis greats, including world number two Rafael Nadal, and has now reached the UK market. It collects data about shot power, ball impact locations, number of strokes, spin level, total and effective play time, endurance, technique, consistency, energy and rallies, while you are playing. This information is collected on a smartphone or computer.

To give the Play Pure Drive a test run, I’m about to play a few sets with Franck Debeauvais, UK sales and marketing director at Babolat. “It is the first smart racquet of its kind and can make you aware of blind spots you might have in the game,” says Debeauvais. “All you need is a mobile phone a nd t he racquet – over the course of a number of sessions, most people see an improvement in their game.”

He connects the racquet I am going to play with to his iPhone to collect the data on my performance, and it only takes a few short rallies for the sensors to classify me as a novice.

Above: Babolat’s UK sales and marketing director Franck Debeauvais; below: the data is transmitted to a dedicated smartphone app

The statistical analysis tells me my backhand is my weakness, and that instead of hitting it straight-on I tend to slice the ball.

For our next session I focus on improving my backhand and hitting it straight on. The results are impressive – the analysis of my next session says I am hitting my backhands better and my game is improving.

The racquet has been a big help to many players. Ten years in the making, it involved extensive testing and input from the tennis community, and was eventually approved by the International Tennis Federation in January for use by players, although coaches are forbidden to use the data during matches.

Debeauvais tells me there has been much interest from coaches since its approval.

President and CEO of the company Eric Babolat’s vision is that all tennis racquets will be connected in the near future. Gathering data to quantify a player’s game and skills is a relatively new concept in tennis, but Babolat believes that sharing and comparing experiences through digital tools is becoming the new normal.

Babolat’s technology is a great example of how the internet of things can be used to improve sports performance. It certainly helped me to improve my game by pointing out my weak spots. Who knows – after a few sessions, I might stand a chance against my niece and nephew after all…

July 2014

Business Technology

Internet of things | 7

The internet of things needs a new network INDUSTRY VIEW The projected numbers are staggering for the next wave of devices to be connected to the internet. Ericsson and Cisco have predicted there will be 50 billion by 2020, and an executive at Samsung recently predicted 1.5 trillion by 2030. This is a big jump from an estimated 14 billion devices today.

What are these new connected devices? They are mostly sensors, such as environmental sensors for better weather prediction, radiation detectors, carbon dioxide sensors to improve indoor building health, and moisture probes for precision agriculture.

These inexpensive sensors send out little bits of data every day.

The social implications for deploying them will be as far-reaching on our daily lives as the internet itself.

Today the challenge for collecting this sensor data is the cost. Cellular modems start at $80.

Monthly service fees can start at $5 a month in volume. If you want to deploy hundreds of thousands of devices, the costs multiply quickly.

The new 4G LTE cellular network architecture is efficient for moving large amounts of data, but is a poor choice for sensor data because simply initiating a call will quickly drain the battery in days.

MultiTech is developing a new wireless network that is designed from the ground up for long range, low data usage applications. Costing less than $10, with a service fee around $1 a month, these radios can talk from the basements of buildings three to five kilometres out, and for outdoor application up to 15-20 kilometres, all with coinsize batteries that can last for up to 7-10 years.

Bryan M Eagle III is VP of business development and communications at Multitech +1 901 229 1451 beagle@multitech.com

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Business Technology July 2014

8 | Internet of things

By Joanne Frearson

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July 2014

The schoolboy whose idea was sold to Yahoo! for $30million

Portrait: Rupert Peace that other news apps have shied away from.

That was part of ethos I had at Summly as well. When I was doing that, it was crazy.

I was just 15 or 16 years old and even looking

back now, I don’t know how I did it. So much has happened with Yahoo! and with this new app it has all got far more formal. It is a really fun process which is constantly evolving. I

am really fortunate in coming here – I feel like the start-up mentality has continued.

I have had the flexibility with the mobile team to be able to come up with really cool ideas.

We have a good mix of [employees with] five or six disciplines who interact with the team on a daily basis, and that means we have this real melting pot of ideas.”

D’Aloisio is clearly a creative guy, and Yahoo!

News Digest seems to be very much influenced by what he has learned in design and art.

The way the software works is by giving users a sum ma r y of a ll t he need-toknow news, once in the morning and once in the evening. All top stories are summarised and presented with the key information that you need to stay on top of what’s happening. Around 40 per cent of people who downloaded the app have been coming back to it on a daily basis.

Each story is created from multiple sources to present the essential bits and pieces of information, known as “atoms”, such as key quotes, images, videos, stock tickers, maps, infographics and Wikipedia excerpts. These elements provide a unique context to the news.

Stories are curated both algorithmically and by hand, to ensure high quality, and come with a textual summary.

Yahoo! News Digest launched in January this year at CES in Las Vegas. Since launching in America it has been in the top 10 on Apple’s App Store in news categories, with a current rating of 4.5 stars out of five. The product launched in the UK not long after. D’Aloisio believes he has a great platform which has limitless potential.

Yahoo! has plans to expand the app into other markets, with both a Canadian and a more generalised global version launched recently.

An Android version is also now available on Google Play Store.

D’Aloisio says the idea of only having the product deliver news “twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, is inspired by the paradigm of morning and evening news, which we have always had from newspapers and television. People are used to it.

“The news cycle actually develops over a 12-hour period, so it makes a lot of sense. The stories themselves are summaries, not a traditional headline with 1,000 words.

What we do is take a cluster of articles that all relate to each other and from that we are able to produce one summary – a multidocument summary that contains the best fit from all of those articles.”

In this way, D’Aloisio expla ins, readers a re not deluged with masses

Above: Young inventor Nick D’Aloisio; below: Yahoo! News Digest, which evolved from D’Aloisio’s Summly app

Business Technology

Internet of things | 9

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I was just 15 or 16 years old. Looking back now I don’t know how I did it

The big interview Nick D’Aloisio

A

s soon as I meet Nick D’Aloisio in the Yahoo! offices, we immediately start chatting about the firm’s new product Yahoo! News Digest, which delivers top news to users on their mobile device twice a day.

The latest in a string of bright young innovators who have come to the attention of tech giants like Google and Yahoo!, D’Aloisio is very relaxed and talkative, as he perches in the boardroom next to me, animatedly showing me the top stories that Yahoo! News Digest has picked up for the day- the kind of stories I had just spent 30 minutes reading, using the traditional means of looking for news by trawling through websites and newspapers.

Yahoo! News Digest is what Summly, an app which D’Aloisio invented in his bedroom when he was only 15 years old, eventually evolved into. As the name suggests, Summly was an app that summarises content. It became an instant hit as soon as it launched, receiving Apple’s Best Apps of 2012 award for Intuitive Touch.

It’s popularity caught the eye of venture funding from Hong Kong-based billionaire Li Ka-Shing, as well as investors from celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Yoko Ono. In March 2013, Summly was eventually sold to Yahoo for a reported $30million and D’Aloisio rocketed to fame. Last year he was included in TIME Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential teenagers.

Now 18, D’Aloisio works for Yahoo! full-time as product manager, where his app has evolved to the next level and turned into Yahoo! News Digest.

“This Yahoo! Digest News product has really been a combination of an effort internally inside Yahoo,” he tells me. “Between the editorial, laboratory and science team, design, product and engineering it has been a very interdisciplinary effort. It has been very passionate for me because it is like my baby.

“We have intentionally done things that we believe are experimental or innovative

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of information that they have to pick through to find what they want. Readers can expect to find stories which would appear in the front few pages of a newspaper. All categories are covered on the app, including world affairs, politics, entertainment and sport. D’Aloisio’s theory is that the app gives you a sense of completion after reading the download, because it shows you what is important for the day.

He says: “The power of the product comes after you use it for a few days – then you really do get that idea of completion, you stop reading other sources. I don’t check any other news site anymore. I know it is going to be here for me at 6pm. It is only going to take me a minute [whereas it] would have taken me hours of trawling before. Then I can just move on.”

D’Aloisio is still enthusiastically taking me through the rest of the app on his phone when an icon pops up, signalling the end of the interview. Perhaps it’s this natural sense of efficiency and order that has overflowed into his news apps – I feel like I’ve already digested everything newsworthy the day has to offer, when an icon starts flashing to tell me how long until the next digest appears.

My TV needs a software update INDUSTRY VIEW As you sit on your sofa, look around and notice how many items you know rely on software – your mobile phone, laptop and tablet. Fastforward five years with the realisation that the number of software-driven devices in your home and business is going to grow exponentially.

Soon, everything from televisions to refrigerators and electrical grids will run on software and become part of the internet of things.

The manufacturers of these connected items must have a strategy to keep these devices, many of which will be lowcost and have minimal processing power, secure and updated. Even more interesting is that these devices can be updated with new revenuegenerating applications and services as time evolves – extending the life of the device and ensuring an ongoing customer relationship and great user experience.

In order to answer this call to have devices become continuously better, device manufacturers can benefit from lessons already learned in the automotive industry. When you think of cars, you don’t really think low cost and minimal processing power. However, many of the electronic modules in a car are just that. The control units that manage the functionality of windshield wipers, rearview mirrors and windows are very small and very resource constrained.

The company that is leading the way to help keep devices relevant is called Red Bend Software.

Red Bend has a long history of updating mobile devices. Today, all kinds of manufacturers, including car manufacturers, are reaching out to Red Bend to benefit from its broad experience ensuring the internet of things – even the internet of tiny things – is secure and updated to deliver the best user experience possible. +44 (0)1628 484472 www.redbend.com

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Business Technology July 2014

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Looking beyond the hype and delivering the promise INDUSTRY VIEW

T

he internet of things is not just “things with IP addresses”. New generations of connected machines are joining the world’s networks at an astounding pace, and they promise an industrial revolution. By analysing industrial data from control systems and sensors, there is a massive opportunity to transform the way we do business.

Gartner predicts the total economic value for the internet of things will be $1.9trillion in 2020, benefiting a wide range of industries such as transportation, healthcare and energy. One example is Industry 4.0 in Germany, part of the German government’s hi-tech strategy, which promotes the computerisation of traditional industries. This strategy goes far beyond the hype of connected toothbrushes and smart fridges – it has the potential to impact an organisation’s bottom line.

For example, New York Air Brake, a manufacturer of control and braking systems for freight trains, uses Splunk® Enterprise to analyse train forces, fuel consumption, driving behaviour, rail topography, weather conditions and other key performance indicators. Currently in operation with a number of Class I railroads, New York Air Brake reports the system gives the US railroads the potential to save up to $1billion in fuel and other costs annually.

With rapid introduction of connected devices in hospitals, informatics is becoming a key area of focus for healthcare IT. A leading hospital chain with more than 150 hospitals

is using Splunk software to monitor and gain insight from data generated by more than 4,000 mobile devices that collect patient vital signs. This approach has enabled them to save millions of dollars in operational costs, improve device adoption and assure that critical information is entered into patient records.

LUMO Energy, an Australian energy retailer, is using Splunk software to analyse energy pricing and demand data from the Australian Energy Market Operator. The company then uses Splunk software to communicate with programmable logic controllers running hardware and equipment on site at LUMO Energy power stations. This has given the company unparalleled visibility into plant and equipment efficiency, market information, and failsafe security for private online control of its energy assets operating in the Australian market.

While connected devices represent a massive

opportunity, they also expose companies to new cybersecurity threats. The ability to correlate IT data from the core technology infrastructure with data from operational and industrial technology becomes critical. Customers are increasingly expanding their usage of Splunk software to mitigate these sophisticated threats.

The real potential for the internet of things lies in the ability to easily ask questions of the machine data generated by sensors, machines and industrial applications to get answers immediately, regardless of volume, format or velocity of that data. For organisations worldwide, insight into industrial data and the internet of things opens up the possibility to revolutionise the way they operate.

Splunk goes beyond the hype of big data and delivers the promise of the IoT to your business. www.splunk.com/IoT

Connecting the UK’s smart cities

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Dogberry likes to chase shiny objects in his spare time – and now through CleverPet he will be able to do this on a regular basis.

CleverPet is a smart WiFi-connected game console for dogs. Cutting edge algorithms based on behavioural science are used which rewards dogs when they learn something new. The console has three sensi-

tive touch pads, which light up interactively and are designed for dog’s noses or paws.

The console can keep also keep dogs entertained when they are home alone. Many dogs left at home alone can suffer from separation anxiety, which can lead to destructive behaviour.

CleverPet can keep dogs occupied through

BlackBerry has launched Project Ion which will provide its customers with end-to-end solutions for the IoT. John Chen, executive chairman and CEO of BlackBerry, says: “As connectivity costs continue to fall and connected technologies become pervasive, a new market is emerging – the IoT. Billions of connections, generating trillions of transactions and exabytes of data daily, will require platforms that can operate securely on a global scale.

Project Ion will offer the resources necessary to access massive amounts of data from multiple disparate sources and distill it into meaningful, actionable information using open source and third party analytic tools.

Internet of things connectivity is essential for cities to compete and grow

INDUSTRY VIEW

T

he UK’s leading cities are engaged in a global competition that has never been tougher. Cities with 21st-century digital infrastructure are in the best position to attract investment and talent; using digital services to drive social and economic regeneration. On the other hand, cities with outdated infrastructure will fall behind in this global race.

The latest digital wave of growth is coming from the internet of things (IoT) – connecting millions of devices or “things” to drive actionable intelligence,

bringing massive benefits to businesses and citizens alike. This connected intelligence helps cities tackle many of the big challenges they face today from reducing pollution and enhancing security, through to efficient heating and lighting.

The UK’s leading cities possess the capability and ingenuity to become world IoT leaders, as we have already shown in the digital creative industries and hi-tech life sciences. Yet we are being held back from realising the full potential of the IoT because we lack the right infrastructure.

In particular, connectivity needs vary considerably and a broad portfolio of communications technologies is required to make cities truly smart.

Specific technologies are needed to meet particular requirements, like the network Arqiva is building to connect smart meters in around 10 million homes. Moreover, existing commercial technology, which is ideal for high-bandwidth communications for applications like CCTV or in-car entertainment, is not economical when it comes to providing small-message size connectivity for simple sensor devices.

interactions on the console.

Owners can also keep track of their dog’s process through the CleverPet app on their phones or computers. Games can be designed by owners with their internet-connected devices.

It is designed to engage dogs at all levels and adapts to their learning pattern, so the dog never gets bored.

Dogs can even be entertained whenever they have a meal. By putting food in the CleverPet bowl, dogs get to solve simple puzzles designed especially for pets to receive their food.

The English weather is known to be unpredictable, but a new US product can give you the heads up about when it is going to rain.

BloomSky uses a smart highdefinition ultra-wide angle lens camera which takes pictures of the sky every three to five minutes. It is powered by atmospheric sensors that see changes in the weather. A sensor detects when rain begins and ends through its 205 contact points and angled surface.

The outdoor module is designed to perform under harsh weather conditions – resistant to water, dust and sunlight. It is wireless and powered by rechargeable battery or solar panel.

create new services – adding to live applications developed by SIGFOX and its partners internationally. These services will help all organisations to reduce operational costs and risks, and provide better customer service.

Citizens’ lives will improve, from the convenience of finding a parking space quickly, or emptying rubbish bins at the right time, to providing the peace of mind that smoke alarms are working properly – to name just a few existing applications that can be delivered using Arqiva’s IoT network.

The UK can take a lead by grasping the full potential of the internet of things, to make our cities more attractive, drive economic growth and improve people’s day-to-day lives. It is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss.

Find out more about Arqiva’s approach to the internet of things at www.arqiva.com/m2m m2m@arqiva.com

Business Technology

Internet of things | 11

A study by the Pew Research Internet Project shows embedded and wearable computing will become the next tech revolution. It is expected that by 2025 the benefits of IoT and embedded and wearable technology will be everywhere.

Th e study showed people expected sensors or chips would help give real-time vital signs to medical providers, while in the home people would be using phone apps to monitor and adjust household activities.

This included pre-heating the oven to running a bath to alerting users via apps or texts when too much moisture or heat was building up in various parts of the home.

By Natasha Clark, web assistant

u Editor’s pick The Web of Things www.webofthings.org A community of developers, researchers and designers use this blog to explore the future of the physical web and what it can achieve with interconnectivity.

Their latest eBay internet of things collection series show a range of connected items that can be made for the home, such as hooking up your phone with your coffee machine.

IMB Internet of Things

Silver linings

Twitter: @dogberryTweets

Now this is changing. Arqiva is building an internet of things network to provide nationwide low-power, low-cost connectivity for the first time, starting with ten major UK cities

by April 2015 and in partnership with SIGFOX which already has similar networks in place internationally.

Low-power consumption allows batteries to last longer, avoiding the cost and inconvenience of swapping these out. Total costs are also considerably lower owing to inexpensive devices that need replacing less often and highly competitive costs for communications connectivity. These advantages massively expand the range of things that feasibly can be connected, increasing the benefits to consumers and businesses alike.

For businesses, including those in technology clusters like TechCity London, Bristol and Glasgow, this creates the unique opportunity to shape a whole new industry. Arqiva is already bringing together UK businesses to

July 2014

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Inspector Dogberry

ExpertInsight

ExpertInsight

ExpertInsight

10 | Internet of things

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

BloomSky aims to create a real-time weather network and the information can be collected through your smartphone.

Building Internet of Things

ibminternetofthings. tumblr.com

blog.buildinginternetofthings. com

This Tumblr blog is a simply laid out, interesting resource with a range of content, interviews, lists and videos. It covers sectors from retail to IT, and includes how-to coding guides alongside professional application videos of developments currently taking place. A thorough read for IoT enthusiasts.

This personal blog on the IoT dates back to 2011, way before the popularisation of the phrase, and discusses the global infrastructure of linking physical and virtual objects using the internet to connect with each other, from covering news on commercial products to reports on industry conferences.

Florian Michahelles florian-michahelles.blogspot. co.uk

Thingsquare (iPhone – from €95 per year)

Sky Plus (iPhone, Android – Free)

This application works with home routers to connect devices to a smartphone platform using cloud technology.

Record an entire TV series, search downloads, and set your favourite programmes to record, all from your phone.

A project manager and associate director at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Dr Michahelles blogs here on his research, presentations and speeches, projects and comments on current developments on the virtual and real world colliding.

Technology bringing the IoT to life INDUSTRY VIEW

T

he IoT is beginning to shape our modern world, a world in which smart machines not only interact with humans, but with one another, objects, environments and infrastructures. The network of 50 billion connected devices, software and services is brought to life by the embedded processing brought by companies like Freescale.

Almost any manufactured product today includes an embedded processor. IoT services will rely on the foundation of smart sensing, processing and control solutions to distribute and secure services across the IoT. From the edge nodes, through gateways and routers and eventually to the cloud, the IoT depends on embedded processing. The demands of an always-on infrastructure supporting billions of nodes are immense, and the smallest parts – the processors – play a vital role. In fact,

it is these embedded processors that turn the not-sointelligent devices of yesterday into uniquely identifiable smart things that can be connected. But for an embedded processor to be successful in the world of IoT, it must: • Be simple – the wide variety of IoT applications needs an easy to use (and re-use) software development environment that ties together the applications, the command, control and routing processing • Be scalable – IoT demands a breadth of portfolio that cost-effectively enables different levels of performance and mix of I/O interfaces – a one-size-fits-all approach

will not be cost or performance-optimised enough to satisfy the needs of this market.

• Secure – From edge to cloud, there must be a variety of cryptographic engines to support data encryption, and methods of establishing trust • Be stable – in many cases, the sensing nodes are battery-operated remote nodes, possibly in harsh environments, so low-power and reliability are basic requirements • Conform to wireless communications standards to demonstrate interoperability Freescale is one of the only major semiconductor companies in the world offering all the fundamental IoT building blocks, making us an essential source for the embedded technologies that bring the IoT to life.

Andrew Birnie is systems engineering manager at Freescale www.freescale.com/IoT

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12 | Internet of things

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SMEs move into smart products as IoT gains momentum

By Joanne Frearson

ExpertInsight

Small companies are jumping onto the IoT band wagon, using alternative finance to create smart products people can use in their everyday lives.

Simon McCalla, CTO at domain name registry Nominet, says: “What excites me about the growth of the IoT is we are seeing small players making some significant moves. We are seeing small start-ups funded by crowdfunding sources prototyping products and people adopting them and getting them to the marketplace.

“It is a great opportunity for engineers, innovators and manufacturers to have something to get to grips with and get excited about in an area dominated by large players for so long.

It is an exciting future.

“We are seeing things like smart light bulbs and connected devices. I have seen a prototype for a

smartwatch to compete with Apple’s iWatch. It was a 3D printed watch that had components that could click together depending on what you wanted your watch to do – you could add GPS or a heart monitor to it.

“Instead of having to buy a big monolithic £400 or £500 smartwatch you could buy a basic watch and add components to it. It was again a start-up company that was able to innovate quickly and get prototypes out to the market.”

The IoT is an important evolution of the internet.

It has become so popular that the number of machines talking to each other online has now surpassed the number of humans doing the same.

McCalla expects there will be significant growth in consumer devices and wearable technology in the IoT field.

Whether it will be a fitness watch that can take your heart rate or sensors in your clothing, he believes innovation in the IoT can only grow in this kind of environment.

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BizTech’s

C-Suite spot

INDUSTRY VIEW

T

he internet of things (IoT) represents the next consumer and industrial revolution, encompassing a vast number of internet-enabled devices that can connect and communicate with each other and with people.

The possibilities are endless. Imagine, for example, your house switching on the lights as you come up the driveway, having predicted your return home based upon your smartphone’s GPS data.

Or being able to sit down with your GP to analyse your personalised health data report based on a lightweight wristband you’ve been wearing.

Imagination designs and licenses a unique range of semiconductor, software and system technologies that can be highly optimised for IoT applications. They are ideal for companies looking to build innovative, connected products that offer consumers a fully unified experience. To speed up mainstream IoT adoption, Imagination is leveraging its core strengths in GPU, CPU and communications IP that are easy to integrate and deploy in a wide range of end devices.

One example is the connected processor IP platform, which combines a MIPS CPU, low-power connectivity (Bluetooth Smart) and, optionally, Wi-Fi using Ensigma RPUs. Such connected processors can power smart sensors that only transmit the minimum event data needed to cloud-based servers.

This will be essential, as the number of IoT devices skyrockets into billions over the next few years: IoT sensors, from cameras to simple IR detectors, must be much smarter than they are today.

The aggregation and deep analysis of big data allows the creation of advanced, intelligent services. However, the data centres to handle this are growing too, needing ever more efficient and highly secure processing. Imagination is working with many partners to tackle these issues, building on many years’ experience in ultra-low-power, highperformance processor design and multi-domain security to disrupt the future of data centres.

Imagination has also developed and deployed its FlowCloud cloud-to-device platform, ideal for powering applications such as security, e-health, energy management and many more specialised use cases where device-to-cloud optimisation is key. FlowCloud removes a primary barrier to developing cloud-based services by making a robust infrastructure readily available for anyone building valuable, connected applications.

FlowCloud core services include registration, authentication, association, security, notifications, software updates and remote control; optional

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R

plug-in modules including FlowTalk (video/ voice calls), FlowFunds (electronic payments), and FlowAudio (radio/music streaming services), and others can accelerate development.

FlowCloud is extremely scalable and therefore equally adept at handling everything from small realtime monitoring applications to full-scale internetbased subscription services with millions of users.

The IoT market is being built around partnerships and collaborations between companies which come together to create innovative solutions leveraging new technologies. Imagination is at the heart of an increasing number of these ecosystems, bringing together semiconductor, hardware, software and systems engineers and ensuring their skills are integrated into compelling new solutions.

As Imagination’s CEO, Sir Hossein Yassaie, observed: “The victorious companies in this brave new connected world will be the ones bringing complete and open offerings to market.” www.imgtec.com www.imgtec.com/platforms

July 2014

right now, which is just the screen sizes and the dimensions and how you deliver the right content to those screens, how you optimise media for those screens.

“What we are seeing at the moment is an inconsistency in things like internet connection for mobiles. James Brooke, chief executive of Amplience, and I have got this premise of the Tube test. When you are on the underground you get an internet connection for 10 seconds when the doors open, but as soon as those doors shut and you are whizzed off to the next stop your internet connection drops.

“What actually happens is the system builds a page that is sent off to your browser on your mobile. Your browser tries to frantically load all of that data into your mobile device, but if your internet connection drops you lose everything.”

He explains mobile websites are moving away from a system which uses pages and towards an approach that uses application programming interfaces (API). “The reason this makes a difference is because you can send bite-sized chunks to the browser,” says Williams. “All it requires is to atomise your content. You need

Business Technology

Internet of things | 13

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The upside of downloads

ecession in the North East of England made John Williams (below right), CTO of Amplience, decide to move out of a career in the manufacturing industry, go to university and retrain as a software engineer.

Williams says: “I have always been a tech enthusiast since I was very young. I have had games published in magazines. I was self-taught and used those skills to help me get into university and get out of the recession up in the North East.”

Williams moved quickly up the ladder, and after working as a CTO for an agency working on content management systems for big brands he moved to Amplience, which creates digital experiences for retailers to engage customers.

Amplience’s technology is used by retailers such as Marks & Spencer, Superdry and furniture store DFS. Williams is now in charge of the technical vision and strategy of Amplience, and is currently seeing some big changes in the market when it comes to creating mobile digital experiences.

Williams says: “There have been some obvious challenges that people have been dealing with

Creating a brave new connected world The victorious companies will be the ones bringing complete offerings to market

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

ExpertInsight

Business Technology July 2014

The economic downturn gave John Williams a chance to move into digital with mobile marketing firm Amplience

to turn your content from being big pages of editorial blocks into smaller atomised pieces of content that can be digested on the browser when you need it.”

According to Williams, existing technologies could struggle with adopting an applicationbased model. He reckons the speed in which technology is changing in the industry makes it difficult for companies to respond.

He says: “There will be a real war in the industry around who is going to deliver the right APIs. A lot of the applications will become more bespoke. There will be some content management systems that will struggle to deal with that in the right way.

“The way people buy technology is starting to change more towards the cloud – instead of having applications you buy and stick on a server, you will buy API services wh ic h w ill a llow you to bring those together to build

those experiences. Once you have that open architecture and that way of doing things you can build all of these experiences and be ready for the future. When you have to glue the system together with lots of developers it becomes very difficult to move.”

Amplience is building a whole series of user experience APIs that can deliver content dynamically in smaller chunks. Williams says: “We can deliver images, video, and all kinds of media, in different shapes, sizes and formats that can be optimised for the device. If your device has a certain screen size we can deliver the right media and the right content to that screen size.”

Retraining as a software engineer has led Williams into a career which has him creating the technology vision for companies as a CTO. At Amplience, he’s keeping ahead of the latest developments and changes in the market to help retailers create a digital experience that engages their customers.

Are you under cyber-attack?

The average financial cost of significant cyber-attacks to large organisations is in excess of £500,000.

But the impact can go beyond direct financial damage. If loss of customer data or intellectual property is not bad enough, the damage to the trust, reputation and goodwill associated with the victim’s brand can inflict far longer lasting pain.

How do I know if I’ve been attacked?

You might find out in one of the following four ways:

It’s no longer a question of if. It’s now a question of when INDUSTRY VIEW

W

e’ve all see stories of cyberattacks in the news. Highprofile data breaches at reputable organisations from eBay to Sony have catapulted cyber into the public consciousness. Industrial-scale attacks on banks and energy firms have led the government to designate cyber as

a major threat to UK national security. The government believes 81 per cent of large organisations and 60 per cent of small organisations in the UK have suffered a security breach in the past 12 months.

Why should I care?

It is entirely possible that your organisation has already been breached but you just do not know about it yet.

Attackers are, on average, present on a victim’s network for 229 days before they are discovered. In most cases, it takes an external party to notify the victim that they were under attack.

• Technical issues prevent customers from using your services • Competitors launch similar products to market before you • A third party informs you • Your advanced network monitoring service alerts you – if you have one Modern cyber-attacks can bypass firewalls and anti-virus software but there are now products available such as FireEye that will monitor your IT network for malicious activity, enabling you to act immediately and minimise the damage.

What should I do if I’ve been hacked?

Act quickly. Once inside your network, a sophisticated cyber-attack can evolve

rapidly and hide its activity, making it far more challenging to detect. The first 48 hours after identifying one are critical.

We recommend the following steps: 1. C ontact a professional, accredited cyber-incident response team 2. Verify the nature, extent and potential impact of the attack 3. Block the attacker’s means of entry and exit 4. Address any identified security vulnerabilities 5. Collect and protect critical data and evidence associated with the incident

You are not alone For most of us, cyber-crime is a new and frightening threat. British businesses large and small face often sophisticated cross-border attacks from organised crime or state-sponsored agents.

Our Cyber Incident Response team is here to help you. Thales is a leading provider of cyber-security solutions to governments, militaries and businesses around the globe. We can help you recover from attacks, strengthen your cyber-defences and enable you to do business with confidence in cyberspace.

01256 376633 cyber@uk.thalesgroup.com

The future Protect and respect: Why we must achieve both Bill Gates The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow

Internet of things Industry view

Business Zone

“

I

f the internet of things is to be a success, it will need the support of the people who own the connected devices. To win them over, the industry must reassure them that their privacy is being not only protected, but also respected. Achieving both requires a rethink in how technologies are designed and deployed.

Firstly, the issue of respect: our data sketches a picture of our daily lives, and people feel alarmed when that picture becomes too detailed.

An energy meter might hint at whether somebody is at home; a vehicle tracker might reveal where people go regularly; and a smart

fridge might indicate when we’re on holiday. The IoT might be connecting machines, but it’s often measuring and monitoring human behaviour.

Companies need to limit both the information they gather and what they do with it to what the individual would reasonably expect. Companies that do this, and clearly articulate it, have an opportunity to win customer trust and lead the market.

Secondly, security must be built in from the start – and at every level – to ensure that the data and the devices remain protected. As devices are connected to the internet, they become vulnerable to attack, either to access the information they hold,

or to seize control of the devices themselves. Earlier this year, the BBC reported that home routers, smart TV sets and even a fridge were found to be sending spam, having been compromised. That kind of attack can be prevented if devices use whitelisting and hardened operating systems, so they only run authorised software. IoT devices have highly specialised applications and don’t need to be able to run a wide range of software, so they can viably be locked down much more easily than PCs. Encryption is essential too, to protect data in transit and at rest, whether it is stored in devices or in huge centralised databases. That will ensure that data remains secure even if a device is compromised, or worse still, if the entire database is stolen.

In the past, security has too often been seen as a burden. In the IoT, it represents an opportunity: to lead a nascent market, and to build the trust that successful IoT deployments will ultimately depend on.

Rod O’Shea (right) is director of IoT for Intel in EMEA +44 1793 403000 www.intel.co.uk

In focus: A knowledge repository for all involved in electronics design

D

esignSpark.com is an engineering community created by global electronics component distributor RS Components.

The site is a major knowledge repository for engineers and students, or indeed anyone wanting to get involved in electronics design. In addition to the latest news on development platforms such as Raspberry Pi and Arduino, which have been important tools in providing a basic introduction to software programming and electronics development, the site provides key information and guidance on emerging technologies such as the internet of things, along with

free software tools and other resources such as example designs and applications for use in either the home or industrial environment.

The Oxford Flood Network is just one of many ongoing electronics and IoT projects described at DesignSpark.com. Founded

by DesignSpark member Ben

Ward, the project is adopting the IoT to help people detect water levels in the Oxford floodplain. Members of the local community are deploying open-source sensor-based networks in remote outdoor locations to monitor water levels and create a flood map with data freely available to everyone.

The system is enabled by low-cost sensors that feed data to the internet via Raspberry Pi based gateways and free wireless bandwidth made available by Ofcom’s TV White Space pilot scheme.

It has been said that the IoT promises a technological revolution for our society and, if so, then information channels such as DesignSpark can play a crucial role in enabling people to learn about the IoT, how to connect to it, and how to build products and applications that can take full advantage of its possibilities. lisa.townsend @rs-components.com

Industrial internet of things The internet of things describes two general uses: the enterprise-grade IoT that is already running our companies, cities and transportation; and the consumer-focused IoT to link our homes, hobbies and personal electronics.

Both will touch our lives in ways we could once only dream about but we believe the enterprisegrade IoT has the power to truly transform.

This enterprisegrade IoT is helping manufacturers, utilities and governments create more efficient businesses and better understand and serve their customers.

More importantly, it is enabling them to transform their products into services, as RollsRoyce has done by moving from selling aircraft engines to renting power by the hour. This so-called servitisation is creating a future where things will not be bought and sold but rented based on usage. We are seeing the consumervisible elements of this with companies like Uber for ride sharing, but the real transformations are happening at the businessto-business level, where everything from street lighting to water pumping will become services.

Enterprise-grade challenges need enterprise-grade solutions, like those built on PLAT.ONE®, the first enterprise-grade IoT application platform.

PLAT.ONE® is a complete, cloud-ready, end-to-end application platform used to develop and deploy large-scale enterprise and mission-critical IoT applications. It provides end-to-end fault-tolerance, scalability and security and has open big dataready features and integration. Since 2011 PLAT.ONE® has been successfully deployed in three major telecoms and more than 25 enterprise customers, managing hundreds of thousands of devices globally.

Filippo Murroni is chief technology officer at ABO DATA info@platone.io www.platone.io

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

July 2014 Business Technology • 15

The debate How will the IoT affect businesses?

Abraham Joseph Founder IOT Insights IoT has the potential to transform business.

Possible benefits fall into four broad categories: • New revenue opportunities • Efficiency improvements • Cost savings • Innovation Much has been written about potential gains in specific industries but many unanticipated needs are likely to emerge as IoT evolves. It will present challenges too, chiefly in security and privacy. Also, as industries transform there will be losers as well as winners. For example, despite playing an essential role in many IoT solutions, some network operators might find it difficult to capture revenues for services beyond connectivity.

Capturing opportunities might also be challenging for some IoT solution providers.

For example, over the last year, I chaired two conferences on M2M communication in the oil and gas industry. Feedback at both events indicated that solution providers needed to do more work to understand that industry’s specific needs and operating environments. www.iotinsights.com

ExpertInsight

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

14 • Business Technology July 2014

Dr Eshwar Pittampalli

Eric Schneider Chairman M2M Alliance

Justin Anderson Chairman and CEO Flexeye

The internet of things will change the way we work by saving time, resources and opening new opportunities for growth and innovation. It will be possible for everybody and everything to be connected at the same time, receiving and processing information in real time.

The opportunity of being online and traceable at all times has led to the emergence of a new generation of consumers, who demand information on new products and services based on universality and interconnectivity.

These shifts in production and consumption patterns are changing relations in the business market. There is a variety of new opportunities to design as well as offer new products and services, creating a new playing field for entrepreneurs.

Connecting all kind of devices and machines to one huge network will have a significant impact on internal business processes. With the internet of things, operational resources will be used more efficiently than ever before.

The proximity to customers is becoming increasingly important. The internet of things is changing the value chain as we know it. New services will arise and help competitors to stand out of the crowd.

The biggest challenge will be to analyse and use the gathered information in the best possible way. With the right information at hand, business partners can and will work closer together, including the co-ordination of processes. A fact-oriented business relationship will further increase potential.

However, companies must change their vertical business models towards a horizontal business view across the different industries. The solutions must be driven from a business perspective and not by any technology. The technology is crucial, but only as an enabler.

The IoT will change everything for ever, not least business. It will allow humans and machines to do what they are best at. This means huge increases in efficiency and therefore a profound change of approach for business.

Market pressures will quickly force vertically integrated IoT technology to be broken apart and replaced with interoperable horizontal IoT solutions from multiple specialist vendors. IoT will bring enormous competitive advantages to its early adopters and a levelling of the playing field between the large and the small.

In the same way that Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web specification unlocked the potential of the internet, an inclusive, open standard is required to realise the full power of the IoT. Britain is leading the way on this front with the HyperCat standard (www. hypercat.io) and the UK could see £100m of value by 2020 if it is able to capitalise on this lead. By taking a central role, the UK can really grow back its industrial teeth.

+1 201 575 9944 openmobilealliance.org

+49 241 8897074 m2m-alliance.com

+44 7976 253 103 www.flexeye.com

Director, marketing development Open Mobile Alliance

Three steps to a connected heaven How managing data efficiently can put you on the front foot

C

ompanies should treat IoT data as the new currency if they want to be market leaders of the future and take advantage of the valuable insights it can bring their customers.

John Glendenning, vice president of EMEA at DataStax, says: “If you consider the IoT as being based on three parts – the device, the data that the device creates and how that data can be leveraged by applications – you start to get an idea of the components organisations need to think about to really start to leverage and take advantage of this new term.

“There has been an explosion of devices connected to the internet creating data. You need a way to be able to store that data and not be limited by speed. You need a way to scale the infrastructure of the data to meet demand. You need to be able to access that data as part of an online service, because as data ages it becomes less valuable and relevant.

“It is no good being able to track the data coming in from sensors unless you are able to take meaning out of it close to real time and identify problems and issues from it.”

DataStax helps companies overcome these problems with its open-source database, Apache Cassandra™. Cassandra is the fastest and most scalable distributed database available on the market, and provides a platform for companies to use their IoT data efficiently.

Apache Cassandra was built from the ground up for online services and was born among the pioneers of the internet – the likes of Google, Amazon and Facebook. More than 500 firms including 25 per cent of the Fortune 100 companies use DataStax.

For example, Glendenning says device integration specialist Riptide IO uses Apache Cassandra to “help US retail chain Walgreens to save $14million dollars each year through managing its power across its network of stores of 11,000.”

It is also used by i2O Water to spot trends and usage across their networks.

The company estimates this data helps utility companies reduce the amount of burst pipes in the network by up to 40 per cent.

Cassandra supports IoT companies by saving the time-series data created by their devices. That data is captured within

a database which has been built from the ground up and grows linearly as the growth of that requirement increases.

Glendenning says: “The future of the IoT holds several things. Devices are increasingly being designed, manufactured and distributed to connect to the internet.

Fridges and any white goods now seem to have a connected-to-the-internet option; when you get into your car, everything is getting connected. That is just going to increase.”

Companies need to take this seriously.

If organisations do not get their heads around the IoT and how they can leverage it their competition will and their customers will go to their competition. It is both an opportunity and a threat. +44(0) 20 8622 3021 info@datastax.com