October 2015
12
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over
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tory
parameters in everyday life, without them
needing to be in hospital or to visit a doctor
daily. In such applications the IoT not only
provides for a much higher quality of life but
also reduces the treatment costs at the same
time, so that the improvement in the quality
of life is also of interest from the purely finan-
cial point of view. This type of patient moni-
toring system primarily uses BLE and Wi-Fi
for data transmission.
While EBV provides its customers with the
necessary technical support in connection
with the IoT, the support also extends far
beyond purely technical aspects. It begins with
information about the possibilities offered by
the IoT, continues with technical seminars
with specific manufacturers on applications
and/or vertical markets and extends to consul-
tancy services which can sometimes even lead
to a radical review of the business model. For
example, one of its customers had previously
developed and manufactured compressors but
now sells compressed air as a service: instead
of selling its customers a machine, it now pro-
vides them with air with a well-defined, per-
manently available quality and specification.
Making use of the previously mentioned pre-
dictive maintenance in the framework of the
IoT and the resulting reliability, by virtue of
offering a service, this customer is now able
to create much more value. Of course the EBV
customers themselves determine their busi-
ness models, but with the right questions EBV
experts are able to trigger interesting discus-
sions about relevant points.
Although EBV core business is very clearly
semiconductor distribution, the company has
also been investing in software support for
some time. This means one EBV employee is
solely concerned with the investigation and
qualification of the software of potential and
existing partners, so EBV is able to involve
qualified third-party suppliers in order to
facilitate the fastest possible implementation
of the customer solution. It has already cer-
tified some 20 companies whose software is
specially tailored to IoT applications. The
spectrum ranges from engineering services
and software houses to Cloud partners.
Data security is a sensitive but extremely
important topic. EBV increases the aware-
ness of its customers for this topic by asking
questions like: have your products already
been copied? During an analysis of compet-
itors, one of our customers discovered that a
certain device, albeit with an outwardly dif-
ferent appearance, was an exact copy of its
own product. How high is the risk that peo-
ple will access the data, manipulate them or
pass themselves off as authorised to access the
data and tap into them? The level of demand
for security and identification products is
currently accelerating massively: while up to
about a year ago EBV only received three or
four queries per year about ID and security
solutions, it is currently receiving between15
and 20 queries per month.
As far as the topic of identification and secu-
rity is concerned EBV has all the market lead-
ers on its product line card, including the
manufacturers Atmel, Infineon, NXP and ST.
Depending on the application, even a small
crypto-component can have a large effect,
and sometimes complete security solutions
with key management etc are also required.
In this area too EBV works with correspond-
ing partners such as the Fraunhofer Institute
for Applied and Integrated Security (Fraun-
hofer AISEC) in Garching near Munich. EBV
FAEs are specially trained in security and help
developers to recognise the potential dangers
and work through the corresponding issues.
Since very few medium-sized companies have
the resources to create their own secure server
infrastructure, collaboration with the appropri-
ate specialists in the field is an absolute must
in this area in order to ensure the long-term
success and the survival of the business.
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