Gartner predicts 4.9 billion connected ‘things’ will be in use worldwide by the end of the year transforming the way we work and live. We take a look at five sectors that are ripe for transformation by the Internet of Things (IoT).
1. vending machines
Orange helped Nespresso build a connected professional coffee machine, which is a great example of how the IoT is transforming retail. Certainly it may seem a little gimmicky to think about a connected coffee machine, but the system has delivered tangible benefits.
It keeps coffee quality high, while managing stock control and maintenance, so, for example, it will track workload in order to recommend when to maintain your machine. It also monitors temperature, vibration and pressure to help ensure the coffee the machine makes maintains high quality standards. That’s great, of course, because better coffee means happier customers.
The system also monitors supply levels to order stock as it is required and, of course, the system detects and anticipates problems by analyzing the data it collects. Sierra Wireless provides the M2M and cloud platform technology behind the solution while Orange Business provides wireless data services. Coca-Cola also uses M2M to support its own vending machines.
2. smart agriculture
Dacom develops and supplies smart solutions for arable farmers who want to optimize their yields. Orange Business provides M2M connectivity services for these solutions, which include connected sensors for insect monitoring, weather and soil moisture and more. Together these smart systems give farmers powerful control over production throughout the growing season.
Because these systems are connected, farmers can be alerted fast if the sensors detect that action is needed to protect their crop, for example if nutrients are urgently required. Smart agricultural solutions aren’t confined to arable farms, solutions (such as Silent Herdsman and Moo Monitor) for dairy herds track ovulation cycles to make sure cattle are inseminated at the time most likely to produce optimal milk yields. Benefits beyond enhanced yield include reduced water waste and use of pesticide.
3. smart cities
Frost and Sullivan estimates the global smart city market will be valued at over $1.5 trillion in 2020. One key player in the deployment of smart city solutions, Eutech Cybernetic, chose Orange Business’ cloud infrastructure to host the iVivaCloud IoT platform. iVivaCloud provides solutions for smart cities, smart buildings and offices, enabling users to manage a building, set of buildings or an entire city from any device from anywhere in the world. With this system in place, operators can manage traffic, irrigation, sewage, utilities, lighting, car parks and more.
Worldwide, Orange is involved in multiple smart city solutions, including smart parking management solutions with Streetline and NFC-enabled transportation services in Strasbourg. In developing economies, Orange helped put together connected fleet management, public emergency calling tools and a surveillance system in India.
4. transportation
By 2020, one in five vehicles on the road (about 250 million) will have a wireless network connection, Gartner claims. These solutions will enable vehicles to become semi-autonomous, but there’s also going to be an impact on fleet management.
For example, Orange is working with Peugeot Citroën to develop a fleet management solution with which it’s possible to analyze driving styles, reduce costs and track fuel consumption. It also provides maintenance and mechanical alerts as well as staff, assets and delivery tracking through geo-location.
Beyond fleet management, connected transportation mean city management will gain a firmer grip on traffic flow. In Santiago, Chile, a traffic monitoring system tracks vehicles on the roads, assessing speed and road conditions and making this information easily available. Cloud services are part of the solution because they enable municipalities to develop smart services with less IT infrastructure investment.
5. utilities
Working with Orange, French environmental services group Veolia in 2011 announced plans to install smart water meters. ERDF has already deployed hundreds of thousands of smart electricity meters in the country. France isn’t unique in this: similar smart utilities projects are emerging worldwide, for example New York City recently announced its own electricity management system.
The promise of these solutions is that utility firms will be able to maintain higher service availability standards and will be able to minimize waste while gaining more valuable insights into the behavior of their networks. Customers should experience fewer service disruptions and those they do encounter should be short-lived.
To find out more about the Internet of things and machine to machine (M2M) solutions from Orange Business visit us online.