Electrical Business

News Photo Gallery

PHOTOS: Connected+ 2016 reminds industry IoT is about value

October 14, 2016 | By Renée Francoeur


Mike Kraus, a Connected+ attendee and presenter, gets the lowdown from start-up Litmus Automation on Wednesday afternoon. Photo R. Francoeur

October 14, 2016 – The Internet of Things (IoT) isn’t the future—it’s in the now and it’s happening all around us. This was what the 3rd Annual Connected+ Conference & Expo reminded attendees on Wednesday and Thursday at the Arcadian Loft in Toronto this week.

Formerly known as Home Connect, the show featured 47 speakers and various product demos centring on IoT business, market and strategy. Topics included capitalizing on the connected car, connected lighting, IoT sensors and devices in a smart city, interoperability challenges, BoT (Blockchains of Things), among much more.

Charles Marsh of MNUBO talked about the industrial internet and smart boilers that can characterize faults and lockouts as well as predict unscheduled downtime, saving companies times and money.

Kars-Michiel Lenssen of Philips Lighting noted how there are “50 billion light points around the world” and how research giant Gartner expects LEDs to be the leading carrier of IoT in the future.

Advertisement

“Lighting enabled by connectivity can deliver even greater value than illumination,” Lenssen said.

IoT has to be all about value, agreed Isabel Chapman, a principal analyst with Machina Research.

“There has to be some sort of ROI… We have to think of IoT as a strategic business decision, perhaps even co-operating with people you usually compete with like Ericsson and Cisco,” Chapman said during a panel on the Canadian competitive landscape.

Rogers and PowerStream also presented on the Residential Energy Management pilot they teamed up for recently, an “energy product” bundle that leveraged smart home monitoring capabilities for more value with energy consumption monitoring.

Daniel Carr, manager of smart grid projects with PowerStream, said the pilot was about exploring new energy saving opportunities.

The conference also highlighted some interesting facts, including: IDC Canada projects spending on IoT in Canada will reach a high as $6.5 billion by 2018 and Cisco estimates there will be 50 billion connected things by 2020, with a total market worth of $19 trillion. To put that into perspective, Gartner says there were 3.8 billion connected things out there in 2015, including smart cars, smoke detectors, door locks, industrial robots, streetlights, wind turbines and more.

EBMag and sister publication Energy Manager are media partners for Connected+ as well as Plant magazine and Connections Plus magazine.

See yourself in the gallery below? Want a copy? Email rfrancoeur@annexweb.com. (Photos R. Francoeur.)


Print this page

Advertisement

Stories continue below