I had the pleasure of attending the Industry of Things World 2019 in Berlin. Berlin has always fascinated me by its contradictory image – of modernity and traditionality. Their admired industrial companies can be conservative in terms of innovation and move slowly when adopting new technologies. However, once they decide to move, they move all at once and cause a significant change in the industry. And that is what I perceived at the event.

In Berlin, companies know what Industrial IoT (IIoT) is and IIoT solution providers’ efforts focus on how to implement IIoT.  The level of adoption in the DACH and Nordic regions is higher than in other European regions but still remains low, especially in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The first thing that was highlighted at the event is that AI has not devoured IoT. Organisers do not try to fill auditoriums and beat attendee figure records with other parallel events of AI, Blockchain, AR/VR, 5G, DevOps and so on.

It was interesting to listen to both tech buyers and vendors sharing their news and vision – clients such as Rolls Royce and thyssenkrupp sharing their implementation experiences and giving recommendations on how to succeed in IIoT projects and; IIoT vendors such as Cumulocity IoT, HPE, AWS, Siemens or Huawei presenting their capabilities. All of them are clear that IIoT must be part of a new paradigm of business systems integration.

Key Takeaways:

• In the several round tables that I attended, the ideas and conclusions presented were very educative. It was good to listen to the main actors (the actual companies implementing IIoT) talking about their challenges, requirements, solutions and desires. Most of the CEOs are in consensus on their priorities in IIoT investments: ROI, Performance and Quality.
• I validated with organisations the results of the Ecosystm IoT study regarding their vendor selection criteria for IoT projects. This ties back to their IIoT investment priorities. They are likelier to choose vendors that can deliver on all 3 of their priorities.

• The most realistic statement about IIoT came from the HPE speaker, “Don’t look for disruptive companies like Uber in the Industrial Internet of Things market.” Here the new business models will take time to emerge. Other exhibitors and visitors, that I had conversations with, agreed with this idea.
• Fortunately for the IIoT market in Germany and Europe at large, China continues to adopt these technologies at a similarly slow pace. Although China may be more advanced in digitalisation (in ePayments for example), when it comes to IIoT, they are as conservative as Europe. This gives us a window of opportunity to continue to evolve our offerings, in the region.
• Another recurrent theme through the event was the inability and hesitance of the CEOs/ CFOs/ Boards to understand the potential of data-based collaboration between companies and industries and how they continue to kill any data sharing/open data initiatives. Walled gardens should not be a medium-term objective.
• The presence of start-ups and enthusiastic entrepreneurs was very heartening – and while I could not speak with all of them, CloudRail, Juconn, TechMass , Ekkono and WolkAbout stood out in my opinion. And of course there were some IIoT Platform vendors such as AWS, Cumulocity IoT, Device Insight, Relayr and Waylay. As I have said many times it is not necessary to analyse 400 platforms – for each local, regional or global enterprise there is a maximum 3-4 platform superheroes vendors to select.
• I had some conversation on IoT connectivity with LumenRadio, SigFox and Multefire However the session discussing the impact and need for 5G in IoT was shallow because the speakers only covered high level use cases and benefits of 5G and how the German government is working on security requirements for end-to-end 5G services.
• Finally, it was great to hear people talking about IoT lifecycle management. It has become clear that IoT is real and is here to stay. Some companies have already passed the Proof of Concept stage. This reassures us that IoT is not just ideas, development and pilots. IoT projects are going beyond and thinking about operations and maintenance.

Congratulations to all nominees in the first Industry of Things World Award ceremony. The winners were Fette Compacting in the category, Best Implementation of IIoT Technology on the shop floor and BAM GmbH up2parts in the category, Best IIoT Product or Service.

One final observation on the event is the disparity in the number of men and women attending. I got the impression that not many women are involved in IIoT or at least they do not attend events such as this. I hope that skills training and the market potential will attract more women to this industry in the future.

So dear friends, contacts, followers and readers: in short, the event was a positive experience and I hope to see some medium-term outcomes in