FEATURE
FEATURE
end of 2016, found that IoT has the
greatest impact on the industrial
sector when it is used to monitor and
maintain operating infrastructures.
“This is no surprise,” says Morten
Illum, Vice President EMEA at Aruba,
HPE. “For decades, the industrial
sector has understood the need for
systems, processes and machines to
remain interconnected, from modern
equipment to legacy technology.
Adopters of IoT reported significant
increases in business efficiency 83%,
innovation 83%, and visibility across
the organisation 80%. These points
are important for achieving a long-
term vision for IoT in this sector.”
(Left to right) Bas de Vos, IFS Labs; Deepti Dhinakaran, Frost & Sullivan; Fadzai Deda, Frost & Sullivan; Luis Ortega, IFS.
connected assets and is standardised
across all industries. However, the
discovery and analytics are stages
that can be more industry specific.
A key disruption area for connected
assets is the transformation from
corrective maintenance to
predictive maintenance.
Vendor solutions
Other than IFS, another vendor
that has built product extensions to
support IoT solutions is Kaspersky.
The products include KasperskyOS,
Kaspersky Secure Hypervisor,
Kaspersky Internet Security for
Android via Smartwatch, amongst
others. Based on a new, developed
entirely in-house microkernel, the
Kaspersky Lab solution utilises
well-established principles such as
Separation Kernel, Reference Monitor,
Multiple Independent Levels of
Security and Flux Advanced Security
Kernel architecture.
“KasperskyOS is not a general-
purpose operating system,” says
Riaan Badenhorst, General Manager
at Kaspersky Lab Africa. “Globally, it
is designed for embedded devices
and aimed at three key industries:
telecommunication, automotive and
industrial.” In addition, Kaspersky Lab is
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INTELLIGENTCIO
Until you actually start
doing something with
observations, you have
not earned a single pound,
single euro
also developing deployment packages
for the financial industry including
secure POS-terminals, thin client,
enhancement of critical operations for
general-purpose Linux-based systems
and endpoints.
“The massive numbers of connected
things and the explosion of data
generated by connected devices will
change the way we do business forever.
The journey a company takes to get
from Things to Outcomes is becoming
the catalyst for digitisation. IoT is not
necessarily new to most companies.
However, most are collecting and
storing the data and may also have
the ability to visualise it,” explains
Umesh Sita, Manager of Digital
Transformation at SAP Africa.
Across Africa, IFS are active in asset
intensive industries like oil and gas,
manufacturing, and telecom. It is
active in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda,
Tanzania, Rwanda, Namibia and
South Africa. The differentiation
offered by IFS’ connected asset
solutions is being leveraged now
for utilities and hospitality market
segments. “We are working a lot in
asset intensive industries in Africa
and in countries where we are doing
huge investments to modernise or to
refurbish the current situation. There
are important initiatives in the utility
sector to modernise connectivity
at the substation level,” says IFS’
Gateway is a software
component that makes
sure the customer should
not be concerned with
getting that observation
into ERP
Ortega. IFS are also working on a
proof-of-concept with a hospitality
end-customer in improving its facilities
management operation, which is a
usually significant cost head.
Across sub-Saharan Africa, some of
the primary IoT use case situations
include fleet management, retail,
energy, security and surveillance.
Deepti Dhinakaran, Senior Research
Analyst, Digital Transformation
Practice, Frost & Sullivan lists the
various applications. IoT solutions are
being used in automotive, transport,
logistics, market segments for fleet
management to optimise routes and
delivery schedules, improve vehicle
utilisation, for real-time vehicle
tracking, monitoring driver behaviour,
and reducing fuel costs and emissions.
In the retail segment, applications
include distribution of mobile prepaid
airtime, payment of electricity via
mobile money and collection of
insurance premiums. In the energy
segment, applications include
pay-as-you-go energy for off-grid
homes using technologies like solar
generation and low-energy LED lights.
Perry Hutton, Vice President Africa at
Fortinet, indicates that the primary
African market segments suitable
for IoT solutions include oil and gas,
mining, healthcare, agriculture
and education.
“Africa is not dissimilar to many
markets globally. The challenges we
digital transformation journey. The
in-built components include Connected
Products to provide visibility into
compliance, Connected Assets to track
and monitor fixed assets, Connected
Fleet to track and monitor moving
assets, and Connected People to
promote safe practices.
Another vendor that is actively
adapting its solutions to secure IoT
applications is Fortinet. “To stop IoT
threats, organisations need the ability
to have complete network visibility.
Security solutions can authenticate
and classify IoT devices to build a risk
profile and assign them to IoT device
groups,” explains Perry Hutton, Vice
President Africa at Fortinet.
Market opportunities
SAP has developed Leonardo to help
end-users innovate on their IoT and
The global IoT survey by HPE at the
www.intelligentcio.com
In order to facilitate actionable intelligence, IFS have created IoT Lobby and Enterprise Operational Intelligence.
www.intelligentcio.com
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