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Skkynet Joins Canadian Business Mission to Japan

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This past month Skkynet’s President, Paul Thomas, teamed up with a group of Ontario business leaders for a business mission to Japan.  Led by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Ontario Trade Commission, the mission met with companies like NTT-Data, Rakuten, and Softbank, and succeeded in signing 15 trade agreements valued at more than $120 million.

A high point of the visit was a signing ceremony for a memo of understanding between Cogent and BellChild at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo to launch the next generation of the iBRESS Service in 2017.  “We are pleased to strengthen our relationship with BellChild in this way,” said Thomas, “and build on the success of the current iBRESS Secure Micro Cloud Service, which we have been offering jointly for the past 18 months.  Adding the capabilities of the SkkyHub™ service to BellChild’s portfolio will significantly enhance their ability to serve their customers.”

Shown in the picture, left to right:

  • Mr. Ian Burney, Ambassador of Canada to Japan
  • Mr. Paul Thomas, President of Skkynet
  • Mr. Yoshikuni Fujita, President of BellChild
  • Ms. Kathleen Wynne, Premier of Ontario
  • Mr. Minoru Yamazaki, Senior Advisor, Cogent DataHub Application Centre (Japan)

The signing ceremony was one of many events and meetings held over a period of two weeks to establish stronger bonds of collaboration between Skkynet’s Canadian and Japanese subisidaries (Cogent and NiC), and their Japanese partners and affiliated companies.  Building on ten years of personal, business, and technical relationships, this visit not only rekindled old friendships, but also opened new doors.  Here are some highlights:

Site visits to the Tokyo Institute of Technology, as well as the Nagoya Institute of Technology, where a team of professors has been testing the new OPC UA features of the Cogent DataHub for internal communications over OPC UA in a simultated plant environment.

The launch of the Alliance Partner Group (APG), leading proponents of the Industrial IoT that share Skkynet’s and BellChild’s vision, including TOA, IBS Japan, Kobata Gauge, Japan-Direx, Device Drivers, Haneron, MACNICA Techstar Co., and Puerto, as well as Skkynet, Cogent, NiC, and BellChild.

Meetings with the ThunderCloud Alliance as a group, as well as with individual members.  The ThunderCloud Alliance is a nine company alliance to provide Industrie 4.0 and Industrial IoT hardware, software, and services to the world market. Each company is contributes from its own specialized field. TOA Musendenki Co., Ltd is in charge of communication and various sensor devices. BellChild Co., Ltd is responsible for cloud servers. Kobata Gauge Manufacturing provides various sensors. Haneron Corporation offers remote monitoring equipment. NiC is responsible for industrial networks. Nissin Systems Co., Ltd. is in charge of control systems and embedded software. Puerto Co., Ltd develops industrial protocols, and provides expertise in OPC UA. Japan Direx Corporation does real-time network intelligence analysis. Cogent Real-Time Systems provides real-time data connectivity middleware to communicate between devices (M2M) and remote monitoring.

Leading up to these events, Skkynet/BellChild iBRESS Service was used to power demos at the following trade shows:

  • ET2016 (demos by Nissin, Renesas, Renesas Easton, and BellChild)
  • JIMTOF 2016 (demos by MACNICA and BellChild)
  • Monozukuri Business Fair 2016, Osaka (demos by BellChild)

“The business mission was a resounding success, and personally very satisfying,” said Thomas. “We have sown a lot of seeds, and look forward to seeing how they grow in the coming year.”

Business Wakes Up to the IoT

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With a blast on the media trumpets and all the blaring fanfare that goes with it, the dawn of the Internet of Things (IoT) is being heralded as the next big thing in computing.  Visionaries marvel, gamers shrug, and homeowners stare up in wonder, while business people get up, make coffee, and do what they do best: check it out to see if there is any real value here.

A recent Intelligence Unit report from the Economist magazine, sponsored by ARM, titled The Internet of Things Business Index (article, video) indicates that, sure enough, “the IoT is on the agenda at most organizations–even if they disagree about its scope.”  Yes, business is waking up to the Internet of Things, and is starting to investigate the opportunities.

EconomistCover2The report’s survey methodology was based on a two-part question: How much is your organization using the IoT externally (eg. product and service offerings) and internally (eg. energy management and production)?  The main finding is that there is a quiet but growing interest in the IoT.  Among the companies surveyed, about 75% of them are at least exploring the possibility of using it internally, externally, or both.  In fact, a substantial portion of them are already moving into the planning and implementation stages, and a significant fraction are using the IoT extensively.

The more cautious companies are watching the early movers, and learning from their achievements and mistakes (42%).  Others are bringing in consultants and outside experts to help them navigate this new field of possibilities (41%).  Still others are doing market research to see what opportunities are to be had in their respective domains (27%).  A few are even releasing test products with an IoT component or tie-in to gauge the response.

One concrete step being taken by most players is to beef up basic capability.  There is some acknowledgement of a lack of knowledge and skills at both the employee and management level regarding the IoT, and so many companies are either hiring people with the know-how (31%), or getting their staff trained (36%).

In addition to this need for better knowledge and skills, respondents to the survey highlighted other areas that could impact the success of the IoT in their businesses.  Among these: infrastructure investment will be costly, many products and services are not inherently IoT-friendly, and consumers will need to be educated.

There is also some concern about developing standards for intercommunication between devices.  “Beyond storing, securing and analyzing these data,” the report states, “companies should also consider how they manage the commercial sharing of the data as the IoT becomes a platform for trading information.”  There is some agreement that the full value of the IoT will only be realized when there is universal participation across the board.  If not we may end up, they warn, with an “internet of silos.”

From our perspective, interconnectivity of data among the players in the IoT is key to its success.  The report says that Liz Brandt, CEO of Ctrl-Shift “envisages the IoT becoming one big trading system for data. The question, she says, is how those data can be traded across the whole ecosystem.”  How, indeed.  That is the challenge, and the opportunity for those who get it right.