Tech Talk and Action in IIoT Data Communications

Is summer over already?  It may be hard to accept, but on my morning walks the sun rises later each day, the wind is more brisk, and the leaves are turning yellow and red.  Before fall arrives in earnest, I’d like to share a bountiful harvest of summer activity here at Skkynet.  While most of the world was on holiday and taking it easy for a few weeks, our technical team took the opportunity to jot down some of their thoughts on our specialty: data communication for Industrial IoT.

In this first installment of a new series of Tech Talk blogs, lead developer and company CEO Andrew Thomas discusses IIoT security, data protocols, best practices, and common pitfalls.  He starts by introducing the unique requirements for Industial IoT, and he challenges the assumptions that lead to inherently insecure system design.  He then discusses each of the data protocols often suggested for use in the IIoT: UDP, MQTT, OPC UA, and REST, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each.  The best approach, he argues, exhibits the best qualities of these and more, as well as supporting edge and fog processing and public, private, or hybrid clouds.

This is the thinking that underlies SkkyHub, Skkynet’s secure-by-design approach to Industrial IoT.  Combined with our ETK and Cogent DataHub, the result is Industrial IoT that actually works.  You can install it in green field or brownfield projects, and connect to new or existing systems, use open protocols, and provide secure, robust, real-time performance at speeds not much slower than Internet propagation speeds.  And it is available today, right now.

This fall we are putting SkkyHub, DataHub, and ETK on display and into play in several arenas.  We will be at conferences and trade shows in North America, Europe and the Far East, including OPC Foundation Seminars in Vancouver and Toronto, Industry of Things World 2017 in Berlin, Sensors Midwest in Chicago, ARM TechCon in Santa Clara, SPS Drives in Nuremberg, and SCF in Tokyo.  If you are attending any of these, please stop by.

In the field, SkkyHub customers are enjoying the benefits of the service, and some have expressed an interest in sharing their experiences.  We will be blogging about those soon.  Meanwhile, the tech team has shfited back into development mode, and we expect some exciting news from them soon as well.  Summer may be winding down, but Skkynet continues to move rapidly ahead.