The Week In Review: IoT

Security
The Industrial Internet Consortium this week unveiled the Industrial Internet Security Framework, a set of specifications for connected health-care devices and hospitals, intelligent transportation, smart electrical grids, smart factories, and other cyber-physical systems in the Internet of Things. AT&T, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Infineon Technologies, Intel, Microsoft, and Symantec are among the companies contributing to the security framework. The consortium will host the West Coast Industrial Internet Security Forum on Thursday, Oct. 6, from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the headquarters of Real-Time Innovations in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Deals
Cisco Systems and Salesforce.com said Thursday they will collaborate on developing and marketing products for the Internet of Things and other areas, building upon their cloud-based services. The joint effort could help the companies in their competition with Alphabet/Google, Amazon Web Services, the Microsoft Azure service, and the Oracle Cloud. Cisco Jasper and the Salesforce IoT Cloud will be integrated to provide control, insights, and visibility. Those integrations will be available in the second half of 2017. “Cisco and Salesforce coming together to form a strategic alliance can eliminate the friction users experience today so they can become more productive,” Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s IoT and Applications Groups, said in a statement.

The Bosch Group is partnering with SAP for Internet of Things applications, with Bosch providing its IoT cloud platform and SAP offering its back-end software. SAP’s HANA real-time database will be provided to Bosch customers under the agreement. Bosch CEO Volkman Denner said in a statement, “In order to make even better use of the major potential that connected industry holds, international companies must cooperate more closely than before, and they must base that cooperation on open standards.”

PTC joined SAP’s PartnerEdge program, making its ThingWorx Internet of Things platform available to run on SAP’s HANA platform for IoT application development, analytics capabilities, and augmented-reality functionality. ThingWorx is also available through the SAP App Center.

Market Research
IDC reports that 31% of enterprises now have IoT offerings for analytics, cloud, and security capabilities, while another 43% plan to bring out such offerings in the next 12 months. Says Carrie MacGillivray, IDC’s vice president of Mobility and Internet of Things, “There’s a lot of education taking place in the market, and now IoT is such a hot topic that customers are talking about it with vendors or attending events to learn more.”

Memoori Research forecasts the worldwide market for the Internet of Things in commercial buildings will increase from $23.5 billion last year to $75.5 billion by 2021 for a compound annual growth rate of 20.7%. The market research firm has a new report, The Internet of Things in Smart Commercial Buildings 2016 to 2021.

Privacy
The fourth annual Global Privacy Enforcement Network Privacy Sweep concludes that connected devices are falling short in securing the personal information of people. “With the proliferation of the Internet of Things, the activities, movements, behaviors, and preferences of individuals are being measured, recorded, and analyzed on an increasingly regular basis. As this technology expands, it is imperative that companies do a better job of explaining their personal information handling practices,” Daniel Therrien, Canada’s federal privacy commissioner, said in a statement.

Related Stories
Prior Week In Review: IoT (9/16/16)
Verizon acquires “smart cities” startup; hackers find dozens of IoT vulnerabilities; IoT market forecast to hit $883B+ in 2022.
We’re All Beta Testers Now
As more things are connected, there’s more that can go wrong.