Troy Smith, Director, Intel® Intelligent
Systems Alliance, talked with executives
of Wind River, National Instruments
and Dell OEM about their thoughts on
IoT challenges and opportunities in the
healthcare, industrial control, mass tran-
sit, and energy markets.
Research by IDC, Intel, and the United
Nations suggests that the Internet of Things
(IoT) is at an inflection point, with the
number of connected devices predicted to
reach to 50 billion by 2020. For the IoT to
reach this point though, we must find a
way to network the 85 percent of today’s equipment that, according to
IMS Research, is isolated in legacy infrastructure. Looking for solutions
to this IoT implementation challenge, I talked with three executives of
companies which are part of the Intel® Intelligent Systems Alliance:
Ido Sarig, IoT General Manager, Wind River, an Associate member
Dr. Tom Bradicich, R&D Fellow and Corporate Officer, National
Instruments, an Associate member
Joyce Mullen, Vice President/General Manager Global Alliances and
OEM Solutions, Dell OEM, a Premier member
Our conversations focused on healthcare, industrial control, mass
transit, and energy – some of the most promising and active IoT
markets. Dell, NI, and Wind River are providing critical leadership in
these applications by collaborating closely with Intel and the other
250+ global members of the Alliance. With solutions ranging from
modular components to market-ready systems, these companies are
delivering the performance, connectivity, manageability, and security
developers need to unleash the IoT. Here are their thoughts on the
challenges and opportunities in these emerging markets.
Industry Viewpoints on the Internet of Things
What’s Ahead for 2014 and Beyond
February 2014
6
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Ido Sarig, IoT General Manager,
Wind River
Q:
What are the biggest issues in connecting
legacy equipment?
A:
“For security and safety reasons, many
legacy devices were simply not designed
to connect to an IP-based IT system. This
makes bolting on connectivity difficult.
There’s no single standard or solution.
Some will need a wired connection. Some
will require a wireless connection – and
there are so many to choose from. We
have one customer with a billion devices they want to connect. This
effort will require selecting and dealing with a wide variety of protocols.
Regulated industries provide a special use case. If you cannot offer
end-to-end secure connections, you won’t even get in the door.
Security is essential to safety, too. From the electrical grid to healthcare
to mass transit, bad things can happen when the wrong people gain
access to the network and devices. Fortunately, security is one of
Wind River’s strengths. For 30 years we have provided safe, secure
and certified operating systems for highly regulated industries and
mission-critical applications where security is paramount and failure
is not an option.”
Q:
How does the Wind River Intelligent Device Platform (IDP) support
connection of legacy equipment?
A:
“IDP is a complete software development environment designed to
play a major role in enabling intelligent, secure systems-to-systems
gateways and hubs. As part of Intel’s gateway solutions for the IoT, IDP
provides a turnkey, integrated hardware and software solution for ad-
dressing connectivity and security. The solution supports an extremely
wide range of wired and wireless protocols, including WiFi, 2G, 3G in
LTE, various flavors of Bluetooth, personal area networks, LoWPAN,
ZigBee, and more.”
Q:
How will developers use this platform to help more industries
participate in the IoT?
A:
“Imagine a factory floor with two hundred standalone robots. Each
has a USB port for programming and periodic firmware updates. If
you use these ports to connect the robots to IDP-enabled gateways, you
have nearly instant secure connectivity through a wide variety of proto-
cols. For security, the gateway provides a hardware-based root of trust
that ensures that as the gateway boots up, it’s secure and hasn’t been
tampered with. The connection itself is done over the Secure Socket
Layer (SSL), so data is protected in transit. We protect access to the data
from the back end as well through role-based access control.
To help developers, IDP comes with a development environment and
several programming environments. We expect most customization to
The Wind River Intelligent Device Platform (IDP) provides all the
components for a complete software development environment for
enabling intelligent, secure systems-to-systems gateways and hubs.
