Archive for category: Blog Entry

Embracing an Automation Economy

/by

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, automation has been a steadily growing trend for the manufacturing and process industries, to the joy of some and the dismay of others.  On the one hand, automation is synonymous with lower production costs and higher quality, providing more consistent output with less physical labor.  On the other hand, from time to time there is concern about job loss as machines replace unskilled labor, and put people out of work.  As far back as 1779, so the story goes, a young weaver’s apprentice named Ned Ludd vandalized a couple of knitting machines, thus becoming the namesake of the Luddite movement, a group of skilled workers who violently protested one of the world’s first industrial automation initiatives.

Now there is a new automation revolution taking place that may have an even greater social impact.  Thanks to new digital technologies like artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, satellite geopositioning, and others, jobs that we once thought only humans can do are now seen as potential targets for automation.

“In the past, automation was largely restricted to simple manual or procedural tasks,” said Carolyn Wilkins, Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, in a recent speech to the Toronto Board of Trade. “Today’s technology makes it possible to automate an increasing number of cognitive and non-routine tasks across a wide range of industries.”

The impact of automation on virtually every employment sector for the near future was the subject of The Future of Employment by Carl Benedikt Frey & Michael Osborne of the University of Oxford.  “According to our estimates around 47 percent of total US employment is in the high risk category,” the paper states in its conclusion.  “We refer to these as jobs at risk – i.e. jobs we expect could be automated relatively soon, perhaps over the next decade or two.”

Some of the jobs most at risk were in categories like “Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders” in various industries.  This what we might expect, given the recent robotics trend in manufacturing.  More surprising were job categories like hotel desk clerk, agricultural inspector, bill collector, animal breeder, restaurant cook, and legal secretary.  Twenty years ago, who would have imagined these occupations being automated?  Yet most of them will be in the next twenty years, according to the study.

What now?

Where does that leave us?  “What we need to do is embrace the technologies in areas where we can make a difference and promote productivity,” recommends Carolyn Wilkins.  She mentioned in particular the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) as “solid foundations that provide a platform for future learning.”  Perhaps she is right.  The Oxford study lists a number of occupational areas with a low chance of replacement, and engineering is among them, for sure.  And for those with a more humanistic interest, health care, education, the arts and entertainment are other options, as they also are not expected to be automated any time soon.

At Skkynet we our doing our part to make automation easy to embrace, by making our products and services convenient and affordable.  And internally, we are always looking for ways to streamline our work flow.  The more we automate the boring and repetitive jobs here in the office, the more time we have to do the cool, fun, and interesting stuff that keeps us at the leading edge.

5G Wireless Seems Optimal for Industrial IoT

/by

A few weeks ago two hardware giants in the telecom and chip industries, Ericsson and Intel, launched a 5G Innovators Initiative, along with Honeywell, GE, and the University of California Berkeley.  5G wireless is the next standard after 4G that will convey much more data at much higher speeds, making it ideal for IIoT applications.  In fact, the 5G Innovators Initiative’s action plan states that “The first industry segment to be explored is Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).”

Honeywell and GE, the primary industrial partners in this initiative, both recognize the value of 5G for industry.  “Industrial companies looking to optimize their assets and operations need connectivity from the edge to the cloud. … using the innovations emerging from 5G wireless will help them unlock efficiency, increase manageability and drive sustainability,” said Peter Marx, Vice President, Advanced Concepts, GE Digital.

“5G technology will be a key enabler as we continue to develop and deploy new connected solutions to improve worker productivity, safety and asset performance across our customers’ global supply chains,” said Suresh Venkatarayalu, Chief Technology Officer, Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions.  “It will help us bring to market new IoT solutions for aircraft, buildings, homes, industrial plants, logistics providers, manufacturers and retailers.”

Commenting on the value of 5G wireless for industrial applications, Bob Gill at ARC Advisory Group said last year, “The ramp-up in speed and performance that goes with the next evolution of the cellular story, 5G, brings with it increased relevance to the industrial flavor of IoT, i.e. IIoT, and some interesting potential applications. … More specific to Industrial IoT, 5G’s extremely low latency of one millisecond (versus about 25 ms for 4G) makes it viable for critical industrial applications involving control rather than just monitoring.”

This is the kind of performance that Skkynet users can appreciate. Already recognized by Nokia for its cutting-edge technology, Skkynet is well positioned to take full advantage of the high speed performance that 5G can provide.  The SkkyHub service adds only a few milliseconds to overall device-to-user data transmission via the cloud.  Running on a 5G network would mean real-world M2M response times of under 5 milliseconds for industrial applications.

“Remotely controlled operations are particularly applicable in industries like mining, construction, oil & gas, and power, where the operating environment may be hazardous and the sites distantly located, hard to reach, and inhospitable,” Gill continued. “For a remote worker to operate a machine in a mine, for example, as safely and efficiently as an on-site operator necessitates a level of sensory awareness of the surroundings, and this becomes possible with a fast, low latency 5G network transmitting live video and enabling real-time force feedback and haptic interaction.”

At Skkynet we are following the development of 5G wireless with interest, while we continue to build and enhance the necessary secure infrastructure to support Gill’s vision.  Even with just 3G or 4G, engineers and managers are able today to do supervisory control with live video in real time using DataHub and SkkyHub technology.  5G can only enhance the performance and user experience.

AWS Outage Calls Attention to Hybrid Cloud

/by

At the end of February Amazon Web Services (AWS) slowed to a crawl for about four hours, causing a major loss of service for hundreds of thousands of websites in North America.  Sites with videos, images, and data files stored on the AWS cloud server suddenly lost much or all of their content, and/or shut down altogether.

After the initial weeping, moaning, and outrage died down, a lively discussion ensued among IT technicians, managers, and concerned citizens on to how to deal with this kind of incident in the future.  The comment section on a story at The Register gives a sample of the kinds of ideas put forward, and there is a clear consensus on a number of them.  Most experts agree that the occasional service outage is one of the inherent risks of using the Internet and cloud services, and that if you need high reliability for your data, you’d better have some kind of redundant or backup solution.

There are normal, accepted ways of building redundancy into a data communications system, including IoT and cloud applications.  One approach mentioned frequently is “hybrid cloud“, a public and a private cloud running simultaneously.  A public cloud is service offered to anyone, typically by a company for paying customers, like AWS.  A private cloud is a service operated and maintained by an individual or company for its own internal use.  To achieve redundancy for AWS in this past outage, a private cloud would have been up and running with a copy of all the company’s data and software, the same as AWS, but just not online.  When AWS stopped serving data, the system would have automatically switched to the private cloud, and someone using the website would not even have noticed.

This is how it works in theory, but building and maintaining a hybrid cloud system that can perform this kind of redundant operation is no small task.  Depending on the level of data and functional replication, in addition to the speed of error detection and  switch-over capability, the hybrid site could cost as much, or even more than the cloud site.  Companies considering such an option would need to do a cost/benefit analysis, based on their specific circumstances.

For Industrial IoT applications a hybrid cloud approach to redundancy may be useful.  Although low-level process control systems should typically not be dependant on the Internet or cloud services, companies who use the IIoT for process monitoring, data collection, or high-level control applications may find it worthwhile to maintain a hybrid cloud.

Skkynet’s SkkyHub service lends itself particularly well to hybrid cloud solutions.  It is possible, and not very difficult, to run a replica system on an in-house server, using the DataHub. Although the DataHub is different from SkkyHub in some respects, for the primary task of data connectivity the two function in an equivalent way.  Readers interested in trying this out are encouraged to contact Cogent for technical tips to ensure a secure and robust implementation.

Skkynet at Automate Show in Chicago

/by

There will be live demonstrations of DataHub, SkkyHub, and the ETK in two different areas of the Automate show at the McCormick Place in Chicago next week.  The Automate show is one of the largest industrial automation shows in North America, with displays of robotics, vision and motion control, and other cutting-edge technologies that attract automation and control engineers, managers, and researchers from across the world.

A Renesas demo at the Renesas pavilion, Booth #866, is being powered by Skkynet’s SkkyHub service and ETK.  The demo lets show attendees monitor the movement of a Festo linear piston from their mobile phones.  The base-level control of the piston is through a PLC that is connected to a Renesas Synergy S7 chip running on a development board.  The S7 chip has the Skkynet ETK loaded on it, which makes a connection to SkkyHub to provide the data and a user interface. Anyone can call up a URL on their smartphone and then view the data in a seamless connection.

“This demo makes the Industrial IoT come alive,” said Paul Thomas, President of Skkynet.  “Everyone attending the Automate show has probably heard about the IIoT, and now they will have a chance to experience a secure-by-design implementation of it, first-hand.”

The Cogent demo will be shown at the OPC Foundation pavilion, Booth #2265.  We will be demonstrating the latest features of the DataHub, in addition to an integrated solution using Red Lion’s mobile gateway and an embedded demo using Renesas Synergy S7 running Cogent’s beta implementation of OPC UA.  Attendees will be able to control LEDs on the S7 demo board itself, as well as control a bank of lights on the booth.  Additionally, they will be able to see output from the board’s light and motion sensors in their mobile displays.

Backing up the demo with insight, Xavier Mesrobian, Cogent’s VP of Sales and Marketing will be presenting a talk, Share your Data Not your Network, at the Future of Automation Theater on Tuesday afternoon. “Both of our demos at this show rely on our secure-by-design technology,” said Mesrobian, “but few realize how revolutionary it is. When you are talking about security for the IIoT, most people think ‘VPN’. But that’s the wrong technology, by far. We want people to know that there is a better, safer, and more affordable alternative.”

Come and meet us, hear the talk, and see the demos.  Members of the Skkynet and Cogent team will be at the Cogent area in the OPC Foundation pavilion, Booth #2265.  Don’t forget to bring your smartphone!

Cyber Security: Over 90% of IIoT Experts Express Concerns

/by

Respondents to the 2017 Industrial Internet of Things Security Survey by Tripwire paint a pretty bleak picture of cyber security for the Industrial IoT (IIoT).  Among the more than 400 IT professionals responsible for securing their companies against IIoT-related threats, 96% said they expect to see an increase in cyber attacks in the coming year.  At the same time, less than 50% of them feel prepared for those attacks.

This is cause for concern, according to David Meltzer, chief technology officer at Tripwire, who said, “Industry professionals know that the Industrial Internet of Things security is a problem today. More than half of the respondents said they don’t feel prepared to detect and stop cyber attacks against IIoT.”

At the same time, 90% of these same IIoT experts expect the use of IIoT to increase.  They acknowledge that innovation must go forward, and that the benefits of the IIoT outweigh the costs.  Two out of three of them recognize the need to protect against cyber attacks, despite the fact that less than half of them feel prepared for attacks on insecure IIoT devices.

“The Industrial Internet of Things ultimately delivers value to organizations, and that’s why we’re seeing an increase in deployments,” said Meltzer.  “Security can’t be an industry of ‘no’ in the face of innovation, and businesses can’t be effective without addressing risks. The apparent contradiction of known risks and continued deployment demonstrates that security and operations need to coordinate on these issues.”

Meltzer points out that the consequences of insecure IoT implementations leading to a cyber attack are far more severe for industrial applications.  “Greater connectivity with operational technology (OT) exposes operational teams to the types of attacks that IT teams are used to seeing, but with even higher stakes,” he said.  “The concern for a cyber attack is no longer focused on loss of data, but safety and availability. Consider an energy utility as an example – cyber attacks could disrupt power supply for communities and potentially have impact to life and safety.”

Here at Skkynet, we could not agree more. It was this kind of thinking that led us to develop our secure-by-design SkkyHub service. Those who understand the risks of the IIoT and the difficulty of securing it using conventional IT or OT approaches recognize the value of what we are doing. We invite every survey participant and anyone else who wants to get the most out of the IIoT to see for themselves how these concerns fall away when using an IIoT platform that is secure by design.

Top 10 IoT Technology Challenges for 2017 and 2018

/by

Gartner, Inc., the IT research firm based in Stamford, Connecticut, recently published a forecast for the top ten IoT technology challenges for the coming two years.  The list covers a lot of ground, from hardware issues like optimizing device-level processors and network performance to such software considerations as developing analytics and IoT operating systems to abstract concepts like maintaining standards, ecosystems, and security.

“The IoT demands an extensive range of new technologies and skills that many organizations have yet to master,” said Nick Jones, Gartner vice president analyst. “A recurring theme in the IoT space is the immaturity of technologies and services and of the vendors providing them.”

Heading the list of needed expertise is security.  “Experienced IoT security specialists are scarce, and security solutions are currently fragmented and involve multiple vendors,” said Mr. Jones. “New threats will emerge through 2021 as hackers find new ways to attack IoT devices and protocols, so long-lived ‘things’ may need updatable hardware and software to adapt during their life span.”

To anyone considering the IoT, and particularly the Industrial IoT (IIoT) or Industrie 4.0, this should be a wake-up call.  As the recent power-grid hack in the Ukraine shows us, old-school approaches like VPNs will not be sufficient when an industrial system is exposed to the Internet. In the IoT environment, Skkynet’s secure by design approach ensures not only a fully integrated approach for the security issues that many are aware of today, but also a forward-looking approach that will meet future challenges.

Having taken security into consideration, there are other items on the list that we see as significant challenges, and for which we provide solutions.  Among these are:

  • IoT Device Management – Each device needs some way to manage software updates, do crash analysis and reporting, implement security, and more. This in turn needs some kind of bidirectional data flow such as provided by SkkyHub, along with a management system capable of working with huge numbers of devices.
  • Low-Power Network Support – Range, power and bandwidth restraints are among the constraints of IoT networks.  The data-centric architecture of SkkyHub and the Skkynet ETK ensure the most efficient use of available resources.
  • IoT Processors and Operating Systems – The tiny devices that will make up most of the IoT demand specialized hardware and software that combine the necessary capabilities of low power consumption, strong security, tiny footprint, and real-time response.  The Skkynet ETK was designed for specifically this kind of system, and can be modified to meet the requirements of virtually any operating system.
  • Event-Stream Processing – As data flows through the system, some IoT applications may need to process and/or analyze it in real time.  This ability, combined with edge processing in which some data aggregation or analysis might take place on the device itself, can enhance the value of an IoT system with little added cost.  Skkynet’s unique architecture provides this kind of capability as well.

According to Gartner, and in our experience, these are some of the technical hurdles facing the designers and implementers of the IoT for the coming years.  As IoT technology continues to advance and mature, we can expect other challenges to appear, and we look forward to meeting those as well.