An increasingly connected world and the Big Data generated by it have made household names out of terms and acronyms describing data analysis. Chief among them is artificial intelligence (AI), which generally refers to the ability for a computer to reason. In the context of industrial systems, this typically means predictive maintenance and proactive response to machine behavior. The interconnectedness of data—much of it generated from the Internet of Things (IoT)—and AI cannot be overstated. I can’t remember the last time I heard about IoT without also hearing about AI. This is particularly true with Industrial IoT (IIoT), where systems often stream more information to the cloud than most—some send entire protocol registers directly to the cloud in real-time. As product companies in the IIoT space attempt to move from merely connected machines to truly smart machines, they face both technical and business hurdles. In the blog below, we’ll discuss a few of these hurdles. Namely, if product manufacturers can do AI, how do they implement that intelligence and what is the end user experience?

In part one of this blog series entitled “How to Quickly Deploy IoT Pilots,” we discussed how an IoT pilot project is often a good first step to understand the feasibility of an IoT idea and provided some tips for quickly deploying a successful pilot project. Once you’ve completed a pilot and built confidence in your IoT solution, it’s time to move to full-scale production.

As the growth of IoT continues to rise, businesses often feel pressure to integrate connectivity into new or existing products lines quickly. As a result, security can become a last-minute consideration, making billions of devices vulnerable to attacks and intrusions that can compromise personal privacy, public safety, and company reputations. Leveraging public key infrastructure (PKI) technology during the manufacturing and provisioning process can serve as a valuable way to establish trust and ensure secure communication between your connected devices in the field and your cloud platform. In this blog, we’ll discuss the importance of authentication in the PKI process and provide an overview of typical PKI scenarios.

Do you have an IoT idea? Have you considered running a pilot project? A pilot project is often a good first step to validate the feasibility and viability of an IoT idea. In this blog, we’ll discuss tips for quickly deploying successful IoT pilot projects.

The central enabling technology for Internet of Things (IoT) deployments is the IoT platform—it is the piece of web-resident software that lies between the Thing and the rest of the Internet. It allows a real-time, or near-real-time, interface to devices, by one or more users, from anywhere in the world. The ramifications of this type of interaction, whether user or device-initiated, are significant for every industry.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect on May 25, 2018. GDPR is the EU’s data privacy directive that grants EU citizens more control over their personal data. For example, an EU citizen will now have the right to know what’s being done with their personal data, be deleted from any organization’s database, and have their data delivered to them in a portable format. With GDPR enforcement looming, organizations have been scrambling to understand what they need to do to be in compliance.

In a previous blog entitled, The Stages of the IoT Project Lifecycle, we walked through all of the stages each IoT project faces. In this blog we highlight the final stage of your IoT journey, known as the Commercialize stage, to give you the questions you need to have answered and some tips to avoid the common obstacles many organizations face so you can successfully commercialize your IoT product.

Forbes Technology Council members, including Exosite CTO Mark Benson, addresses cybersecurity trends companies of all sizes should be aware of in a new Forbes article entitled, "Nine Things That Are Poised to Impact Cybersecurity." Mark Benson states that cybersecurity attacks on IoT devices will be one of the nine trends companies should pay close attention to. Read the full article to stay up to date on cybersecurity trends so you can help keep your company safe.

In a previous blog entitled, The Stages of the IoT Project Lifecycle, we walked through all of the stages each IoT project faces. In this blog we highlight the third stage, known as the Accelerate stage, to provide tips on what areas you should focus on, so you will be ready for commercialization.

One of IoT’s most useful tools is the gateway. Gateways are the bridge that connects a device in the field to an IoT platform and, ultimately, the end application. Though gateways are incredibly useful, they can be a challenging part of any solution—establishing a connection, building a framework, and configuring software can be hard to do. To assist with these difficulties, Exosite created software to both simplify and optimize the use of gateways in IoT applications. Before we jump into how Exosite can make your gateway experience simple and efficient, let's take a second to look at when an IoT solution would benefit from a gateway.

In a previous blog entitled, The Stages of the IoT Project Lifecycle, we walked through all of the stages each IoT project faces. We also did a deep dive on the first stage in How to Gain Traction and Avoid Common Mistakes in the Early Stage of Your IoT Program. In this blog, we'll highlight the second stage, known as the Validation stage, to provide tips on how to create a solid business case and avoid the common obstacles that prevent project momentum.

In a previous blog entitled, The Stages of the IoT Project Lifecycle, we walked through all the stages each IoT project faces. In this blog we dive deeper into the first stage, known as the Explore stage, to provide tips on how to start your IoT project off on the right foot.

Moving Towards Holistic Cold-Chain Management

The cold chain of the future is much more than the simple monitoring of temperature and humidity of goods. Rather than looking only at the goods themselves, it also monitors the health of the equipment, vehicles, fuel, labor, time, and maintenance history that surrounds and supports the cold chain and makes it possible. Without this, true cold-chain integrity is impossible. This is true not only for food and pharmaceuticals, where regulatory compliance is mandatory, but also for medical supplies, biological products, and chemicals. Companies that are able to manage cold-chain elements more efficiently will rise to the top as market leaders with better margins and more ecosystem leverage.

Creating successful IoT-enabled products and services is not an impossible task; it’s just a challenging one when organizations try to do too much at once, make project commitments without asking the right questions, or do things in the wrong order. To be successful, it’s critical to understand what the entire IoT journey looks like and accurately identify where an organization is in that journey—after all, it’s only possible to know what immediate next steps to take when the final destination is clear.

Speed to market is important, but a fully-functional connected product isn’t the only measure of market viability. It’s never too early to plan your go-to-market strategy to ensure you’re ready to take your market (and your competition) by storm.