Smart Industry 1/2016

their business model, instead, look
at all the partners that are leveraging
Azure, like SAP, Oracle or Red Hat. We
want to empower them to compete
with disruptive services on the highest
level through innovation such as
cognitive services or global hyper
scale. And, we want to enable breakthrough
global development through
Visual Studio on all platforms and
make Windows 10 the best choice for
most devices in terms of security and
manageability.
Many companies today lack fully networked
end2end processes. Instead,
their infrastructure resembles an archipelago
of “digital islands” – unconnected
systems, where information
constantly needs to be re-entered,
in the worst case by hand. Is this lack
of true digitalization a serious roadblock
on our way to an IoT world?
In most cases, it is a sign that business
processes are not optimized. Operating
procedures grow over time, and
as long as they are not challenged,
they continue to grow. IoT in fact provides
ways to optimize procedures,
e.g. through B2B wearables, digital assistants
like Cortana and process optimization
through Machine Learning.
It also enables the integration of data
siloes and better decisions based on
near real-time, personalized KPIs. Microsoft
is enabling this with Power BI.
Are certain European countries further
along than others in this area?
In fact, we see companies across
EMEA embracing IoT at different
speeds. It is less a question of the
country, but more of vision and execution
of key decision makers and
their influencers. Even within large
companies, we see teams embracing
IoT at very different speeds. But let
me be clear: Some companies in Europe
are building IoT solutions with
amazing speed and are expected to
have a significant impact in their vertical
industry. They have the potential
to become a global leader or maintain
their leadership position with
new, disruptive services. Some organizations
on the other hand have for
various reasons not yet taken a first
step in the direction of digitalization.
Nanobiosensors
Creating a Nanonet of Things
WATTx
Smart Climate Innovation
His goal is to shoot for the moon in IoT, and
Bastian Bergmann, CEO at WATTx in Berlin, is
well on his way. His company, an innovation
lab focused on IoT and specifically smart climate
solutions, specializes in IoT Engineering
as well as connecting machine and consumer
data to empower a smart climate future. By
Beyond Smart Phones, a vast new world of sensor
technology and sensor deployments is emerging
in the field of nanotechnology, where some are
now talking about the Internet of NanoThings
(IoNT). Nanotechnology is actually a combination
of multiple disciplines such as physics, chemistry,
and mechanical engineering. It describes a host
of techniques for bending nature to the will of
humanity at or near the molecular scale where
things are measured in nanometers (one billionth
of a meter). Within the United States, for 2017 the
federal government is investing more than $1.4
billion for the National Nanotechnology Initiative
(NNI). This brings to approximately $24 billion the
total investment made by that government in the
field since 2001. To be sure, most of this spending
goes to fundamental research rather than the applied
research which nanosensors would include.
However, the feasibility of using nanotechnology
to provide many kinds of data that were not
available in the past and in some cases to initiate
functions at nanoscale means this field is also ripe
for IoT engagement. For instance, the Nanobioelectronics
& Biosensors Group (http://www.
nanobiosensors.org), led by Prof. Arben Merkoçi
at the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology in
Barcelona, Spain is conducting research on the
integration of nanotechnology methods, tools
and materials into low cost, user friendly and
efficient sensors and biosensors. According to
the group’s website “The developed (bio)sensors
take the advantages of nanoparticles, nanotubes,
graphene, nanochannels and other nanomaterials
while being integrated into innovative, high
sensitive and mass production platforms”, with
the aim of designing nanotech devices that can
deliver fast medical diagnostics, control food
quality, and more.
creating innovative digital experiences along
the customer journey, Bergmann hopes to
reimagine service models for residential and
industrial customers to empower smart climate
innovation. “We think big”, he maintains,
“and we strive to turn the most ambitious
ideas into reality.”
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